TV on the Radio - Nine Types of Light

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/

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.