TV on the Radio - Nine Types of Light

Nine Types of Light will be TV on the Radio's fourth studio album, to be released on Interscope Records on April 12, 2011.

Doesn't everyone but me hate them now?

I thought their most recent album was their best, so I hope this one is more of that.

i never had much interest in them before that one, it totally made my year.

i hate them now, yes.

have had little use for them since desperate youth.

well the modern romance cover was prob the last great thing they did. dear science was just drearily bland and them trying too hard to write 'good' songs.

i hate them now, yes.
have had little use for them since desperate youth.

Desperate Youths was their sellout record, made only for poseurs. Personally, I hated them way before that.

Their only good stuff are the bootlegs of Kyp Malone's early guitar lessons. He does a killer version of Camptown Ladies.

If hate means loved their last album and hope they build on that then yes I hate them very much.

(Once again will never understand indie music asethetic and culture. I even read a book on it and still lost.)

never fully connected with their last one; truthfully, never fully connected with the prior one, but for a few songs (the towering wolf like me being the obv. exception). but still v. much looking forward to this.

huh i never knew they covered modern romance ill have to hunt that down

~thought dear science, was great

i always think these guys are on the verge of something interesting but either retreat or lose the plot, so they're both mediocre and disappointing.

but i will probably give a listen to the new record.

i thought they were gonna be a "gospel-rock" act, which sounded interesting.

not sure where i got that. i guess a combination of their vocal harmony vibe plus some press write-ups?

one of their early songs i know got written-up as some blended rock/gospel combination. maybe from the debut EP.

yeah it was the pixies cover with like 30 tunde vocal overdubs

On balance, I'm psyched that they're back. Love the EP, esp. "Satellite" and the Pixies cover.
Desperate Youth = pretty awesome.
Cookie Mountain was about 4 ish stone cold amazing tracks and some interesting but not entirely fruitful new things
Dear Science was about as 'normal' as they got but for all that is a wonderful album. I really liked that, even in it's most verging-on-Coldplay territory.
And live they are unfuckwithable.

love these guys, dear science was their best yet, the more they sound like PG the better, fuiud

^,^,^,^

Thirded. They're not very good at "difficult."

i will vibe to this

heard Dear Science due to a family friend going "can you believe how shit they are now" and never having bothered to listen to previous albums and going (silently) "this is ace". Surely the only coldplay bit is in Family tree where he says "I will die by your side"? Always reminded me of Coldplay but the rest of it is so far away I find the comparison a bit weird, even though I've heard it a lot and am even looking for it.

"DLZ" never gets old.

yeah they need to get weird again

Dear Science brought the jams, can't front.

for some reason whenever these guys put out albums i go nuts for like 2 weeks & then i stop listening to them but those 2 weeks are pretty awesome

tunde is an amazing songwriter

theyve been crap ever since they got the drummer in full time.

also when i saw them live around the time of cookie mountain tunde looked really silly bouncing around the stage doing his ian curtis impersonation.

I'm realizing I may have never heard Dear Science. Or it wasn't memorable if I did. I was so put off by Cookie Mountain that this band is more or less dead to me. So many elements I like but Kyp Malone's backing vocals mar almost every song. And production-wise Cookie Mountain was too piled-on; the best parts of their early material were stripped down and minimal. Staring at the Sun, Mr Grieves, Ambulance, Satellite. All those tracks ate genius but they went off the rails from there.

the best parts of their early material were stripped down and minimal

You will likely hate Dear Science.

Duly noted!

"All those songs ate genius." just want to highlight that typo, thx.

i still like them. i liked how their simplicity in their early days allowed them the freedom to play with any styles they wanted, but i also like how they've taken a few of those styles and moved forward with them on their more recent records (cookie & science)

Dear Science was my favorite of theirs as well. I have no desire to relisten to Cookie Monster Mountain (whatever) album, even though I enjoyed about half of it at the time.

wolf like me is still a towering single, and i was a lover, a method and one blues-y song still burn. i think about half of all their albums are fairly pedestrian, but that's hardly a criticism unique to them.

Oddly enough, even though I loved the "Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes" and only marginally less so "Return to Cookie Mountain" I never picked up "Dear Science" until I found it for a very reasonable $5.98 at the Philadlephia Record Exchange yesterday...

I must say that I don't like it nearly as much as the previous recordings after a few listens. Not as immediate, not as minimalist (as others mentioned) and when they get busy with a lot of instrumentation, it just sounds too busy. Oddly enough, the more funky they get the less I like it - when they are more rigid and stilted, such as "Dancing Choose" and the lead track "Halfway Home," but both of them are closer to the older stuff I like more anyway.

Still, I will probably listen to it a few times to see what grows on me. I feel I owe it to them. And all that said, I await the new one. Maybe it wont take me two-plus years to get it this time...

"And production-wise Cookie Mountain was too piled-on; the best parts of their early material were stripped down and minimal."

totally otm

ill still check for them regardless but i think it will for me at least be a case of diminishing returns. prob a large part of that is due to how siteks production approach has changed so much over the years.

Will Do, first single, presumably.

Slow and sort of lovely.

this

I liked it. Hope the disc rocks out appropriately as well.

Mmm. The production is still appropriately fuzzy near the end of the track.

Love this.

http://www.mediafire.com/?uq9m9m6a11xd7ue

Now Portable

I had an intense but fairly brief love affair with Hello Science. They are astoundingly good arrangers, but ultimately I grew to find the melodies and vocal delivery grating and a little trite. This new song sounds like it won't change either of those opinions. I'll certainly check out the album though, it's not like I think they're boring.

Hello Science would have been an album title.

I have two records by these guys (Desperate Youth and Dear Science) and have listened to each a handful of times and can't recall a single tune. I recognize their sound when I hear it and on paper it seems like it should be interesting but I dunno... something about it just doesn't work for me. Peter Gabriel vocal comparisons also very apt

I've meant to get more into these guys than the smattering of tracks I have in the past (that I liked a lot).

This new one's really great!

young liars >>>> desperate youth > dear science >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> cookie mtn.

new track is p. good; kyp has been the better writer for a bit now, will wait for his songs but i expect that this will be a jam

that is a pretty good song, hoping for good things from this album.

I stopped liking them nearly as much when they stopped understanding how to make the bass sound awesome.

Pitchfork says this is the album cover. I continue to mourn the loss of typography as an integral part of good cover design.

http://cdn.pitchfork.com/media/tvotrcovsss452.jpg

Its not a bad image though. But yeah that sort of thing also leads to shitty stickers on the cover so you know what band it is and that sucks.

when has tv on the radio's typography been any good

yeah, compared to their last two covers, this new one is pretty great.

Dear Typography

alternately

http://grab.by/9b4I

i really like this band, but i must admit i have a concern, theyre a lot like radiohead arent they

I stopped liking them nearly as much when they stopped understanding how to make the bass sound awesome.

my main reservation about 'dear science' was always how trebly it is, but i figured that was just kind of a side-effect of whatever they had to do to pull off the arranging and production.

but lately i've been playing it again because of this thread, on two different sound sources than in the past, and i'm hearing all kinds of bass parts that i never ever noticed before. they're not very deep or loud, but they're a lot more active than i thought—and they add some motion to parts that seem otherwise superficially monotonous, the opening track especially. (the switch-up at the end of the track makes more sense that way, somehow.)

One of the key things you do to make a record seem louder is turn down the bass.

well that's just barbaric

I think so.

I just can't get along with this band...they remind me of the famous Eric Morcambe quote
"I'm playing all the write notes...just not necessarily in the right order"

I stopped liking them nearly as much when they stopped understandinghow to make the bass sound awesome. that being electronic on record was the best thing for them

Caffeinated Consciousness reminds me of INXS's Guns in the Sky a little bit, which isn't at all a bad thing.

OH YES

It only took three plays for me to fall head over heels in love with this song.

song title "caffeinated consciousness" annoys me to no end (havent heard the song)

Leaked

Got it yesterday. I like "Repetition" and "You"; the rest seemed rather scattered.

Likewise, got it yesterday, but I haven't listened to it yet.

Yeah i was surprised no one had bumped the thread. I only listened once but it seemed to have sort of a ramshackle (even vaguely countryish) air that i was kind of digging.

on 1st listen i wasnt really feelin it, it's def mostly in a diff direction than dear science

yeah i haven't listened to it much so i don't have a real picture of it yet. i haven't heard that inxs song, but i'll check it out now. "caffinated consciousness" reminds me of 90s funk-rock or something.

Seeing them in Phully next Friday... Hope to hear some of it.

First listen through was a bit underwhelming but I'm on my second time around and it's growing on me. It's certainly a more intimate listen than Dear Science, and a less enveloping one, but it has its charms.

'Second Song' is nice. Not so sure about 'Keep Your Heart'. Let's see the 3rd track.

"Will Do" -- a love song! -- and "You" are for me the keepers.

Definitely better than Dear Science for me

I read the first couple half-assed one-line reactions and I vowed not to listen to it or read anything more until I have the CD in my hands next week. It deserves better, I hope.

"caffeinated consciousness" is my fucking jam right now -- just so, so good

i want to wake up to this song every day

I kind of find it amusing (and damning, maybe?) that no one is talking about this album at all.

these guys have become strangely boring

I like it a lot - I just haven't had a lot to say about it, really. It doesn't hit my buttons as strongly as Dear Science, and while Will Do is a gorgeous song and approaches 'Ambulance' in terms of knee-wobbling gorgeous romanticism, it hasn't settled in yet.

It's growing on me, though. They alternate between albums that ingratiate themselves with me immediately (desperate youth, Dear Science) and growers (Return to Cookie Mountain, Nine Types), at least for me. YMMV.

This is the first TVotR album that to me feels like it goes, well, one album beyond what this band had to say. I mean, I've been reading that it ends a band hiatus, and I was all, huh, TV on the Radio was on hiatus? I had no idea. I like this band well enough, but I think an even longer break would have done them well.

i need to spend more time with it before i really have a strong sense of how i feel about it. i've been a big fan over the years, so they really deserve more from me than just the few listens i've had a chance to partake in so far. at this point, i find it somewhat unremarkable, with songs like "second song" "forgotten" and "caffeinated consciousness" coming out on top as the standouts. overall, this album seems to be a combination of the cleaner sound the band debuted with dear science and the moodiness and atmospherics heard on desperate youth.

Ok I got three songs into this and realized I'm going to have to try it again when I'm in a lower mood.

i've basically just mostly been listening to the first and last songs, both of which are outstanding. i loved dear science a lot and hope this'll be as good

Always had a love/hate relationship with their production. Like a dog on a leash.

RIP Gerard Smith
http://www.tvontheradio.com/splash/

):

Gerard Smith (TV On The Radio bassist) RIP

Dammmn, that's sad. He couldn't have been more than 40?

Am I the only one who thinks the single kinda takes its whole vibe from "Pretty Wings"?

haha

this album seems to be a combination of the cleaner sound the band debuted with dear science and the moodiness and atmospherics heard on desperate youth.

good definition. maybe that's why I'm so into this album

Some of the material, especially in the first third, is the dirgiest stuff the act's ever done.

not really feeling this one, like 'cookie mountain' it seems to just not stick with me. shame that it is forever going to be shadowed now with the bassist's death.

"Caffeinated Consciousness reminds me of INXS's Guns in the Sky a little bit, which isn't at all a bad thing."

I was thinking Pixies "U-Mass" but INXS is actually closer.

I like "you" a lot but this album seems kind of unremarkable considering how much I like their other stuff

"You" and "Will Do" I kept before dumping the rest.

I liked it when I first got it, but rarely have the urge to listen to it much anymore. The first song is excellent.

i only played it once.

entire revive p otm so far

they feel very unessential now

i predict a breakup in the near future

unless they somehow relocate their muse (or just remember what made them half interesting in the first place)

i think sitek has gotten far too into 80s production and a dense kind of gloss though to really be that interesting anymore

i mean, second light sounds like bad 80s/90s bowie (actually more like bowie in his comeback phase, around reality/heathen maybe)

Everyone in the revive pretty much otm, I think part of the problem is that there are so many bands milking this same sort of 80s vibe that they don't really stand out as much as they used to and, as a result, feel a lot less essential than they used to. Its still a nice enough album and I like it whenever I put it on, but I rarely feel compelled to do so.

This is the greatest late summer / Fall album. Probably their best and prettiest writing on this (soul) record. So in love.

yo paul thanks for that post -- i think dear science is great, and i've listened to and enjoyed parts of nine types of light but never really even listened to all of it iirc due to the muted response it got from ppl

now i'm going to give it another chance, so thankig u

i dunno...haven't spent that much time with this record yet, but i feel like it is their strongest. guess we'll see how it ages...

I love this album. Really surprised by the lack of reaction, especially here.

Can't get in to this one at all, I've tried a few times since it came out... Most of it I just find boring. The first track is quite good.

more like Nine Types of BORING

j/k I never heard this

the chorus of "will do" always makes me think of the "any cock'll do!" skit from Mr. Show

more like Nine Types of BORING

Considering there are eleven songs and I like two of them...

it was certainly a step down from dear science. they're kind of running a reverse pattern from the star trek films, where all their odd numbered albums are great.

I've actually really come round to this in the last few days after giving it three or four proper listens. The songs are gentler than on previous releases, but no worse for it really. Some of them are right little earworms once they've been given a chance to percolate.

I revisited this the last few days, and I'm surprised how much I like it now. Maybe the lack of new TVOTR recordings has something to do with it, but I thought it was half a great album back in the day with another half that never took off. Now the whole thing sounds great to me, a nice slow album. (And I just noticed some reviews back in the day actually knocking it for not being fast - so it never sprints, so what?)

I should've broken up that second sentence in two, those two comments shouldn't be connected - what I meant was, the lack of new stuff may have made me more receptive of something I underrated before. This could be for a number of reasons, one of which is that I'm more appreciative of familiar strengths rather than taking them for granted.

There are a few numbers that see them indulge their most mawkish urges which I dislike, eg Killer Crane and You. Other than that it's pretty good.

I particularly like Repetition and Forgotten.

xp I'm not sure if I liked them before (I definitely didn't care for "Killer Crane"), but hearing them now the music sold them on me, at least within the context of the album. What I most liked about TVOTR was the soundscapes, like this massive fog that envelopes you and you can pick out the details or really just float through them, and that's what I'm kind of doing when I enjoy those tracks. Even with the vocals it's more about the phrasing rather than the actual words - a collection of love songs can be more sentimental than I'd like, but I think that happens only with the lyrics here and not so much the actual sound coming through.