TV On The Radio - Seeds (2014)

Video for the first single off the record is at Funny Or Die.

Ignoring the video's collaboration of Pee Wee Herman and the chick from Dr. Who (which is tough to ignore), I fucking love the song's minimalistic pop sheen and disco percussion. I have loved some TVOTR though some of the latter releases have been spotty, but this bodes well for "Seeds" which comes out 11/18.

why r u ignoring peewee

that is amy pond

i mean, its decent, but they seem to sound more and more ordinary with every new album of theirs. its like the interest level they had on young liars/desperate youth is in inverse proportion to their career length. i should check the kyp solo stuff to see if thats a bit weirder.

Yes the first ep & lp were awesome than they got popular and decided to become a 'proper' band and got boring as hell

second album has its moments but yeah

becoming a proper band was the death of them imo

that and sitek upgrading his kit or wanting to be the new brian eno (or whatever happened to him, i dont know)

But Dear Science is by far their best album, so...

maybe, but the sound was really bland iirc - you could tell they were really taking care with and polishing that record (too much imo). they might be making better songs but as a band, they sound so much more generic than they used to. id say young liars and half of desp youth make a much better album than dear science.

id even be willing to say ok calculator is better and far more interesting than DS :P

return to cookie mountain owns imho

Can understand the 'proper' band= boring argument, but still listen to a few tracks off both Dear Science & RTCM quite regularly (Halfway Home more than most), but do find some of the tracks really off-putting (enough to not go back and give the albums full listens).

Halfway Home and maaaybe Shout Me Down are imo the only keepers from Dear Science. The mallpop cru loved the whole thing tho so

lagoon so otm

family tree is one of the best fake coldplay songs by anyone iirc

Just woke up at 4:30 AM and found the song "Happy Idiot" in my head. I really do like it, I guess.

all of their albums have been good to different degrees. Dear Science is really great. the last one finally grew on me.

I had to listen to "Happy Idiot" to realize how commonplace it sounds. I can't hear anything distinctive. Even the programming (their strength) is meh.

Aside from NYCNative and akm, this thread reads like a satire of ILM. How to suck the joy and excitement from anticipating a new release by a great band. Nine Types of Light is a really good album. What's all this iirc bs? You can't be bothered to go back and listen to something but you care enough to post your complete lack of enthusiasm on a thread? What's the point?

I love the video, Reubens' expressions, even obscured by the helmet, are priceless. Tunde's rocking the bald head and graying beard like a boss. I like "Happy Idiot" but not as much as, say, "Province," "Will Do," "Wolf Like Me" or "Golden Age," but am very excited for the album.

If you say so.

I like Dear Science!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B5GP0AiQMc&feature=youtu.be

i'm probably just repeating what i said on its own thread, but at the time something about 'light' just turned me off immediately, and i couldn't be bothered. and i loved 'dear science,' it was a big record for me that year it came out.

the lack of enthusiasm is a data point, at least. i think it's worth asking why they don't inspire more loyalty maybe? i mean, before 'dear science' i had heard some of their older records, and tried once with 'cookie mountain' and the same way had zero interest from the outset. loving 'dear science' did not incline me to pursue the prior records at all.

i don't know how accurate this is, but my feeling about their music, over their catalog, is sort of that they're just doing stuff. this stuff, then that stuff. and i feel it's possible for those changes to seem more motivated by something. that would make them more attractive.

I liked Return to Cookie Mountain and Dear Science but couldn't even make it through Nine Types of Light. Tunde does look very handsome these days tho.

re: lack of enthusiasm: I have stoner/nerd friends who worship this band, fwiw

Nine Types of Light is the first thing they've done that I really dug (NB I passed on Dear Science because Cookie Mountain was so blah, plus the aforementioned stoner bros being insufferable in their praises of it)

this thread made me dig out (i.e. download, though i dont feel guilty as i own them all on vinyl anyway) YL, DYBB and DS again. i didnt realise how much of DS i remembered so well, its a good pop record, very polished, lots of attention to the production, and a lot of effort made on it all round, its like their bid for a 'big' album, though im not sure i prefer tvtor in ultra polished/focused/poppy mode really, i prefer them taking more risks. DS does actually have a lot more going on production wise than i remembered, its not just a simple band record like some of the posts upthread (including mine) might have made out, but its really shiny and gleaming where the earlier stuff was a bit dingier, and not so into 'getting it right'. ill always be interested in what TVOTR do, but that new single, while nice, just sounds so sapped of all energy (then again i always got the feeling with these guys that even that is a bit of a pose), i dont get why theyre acting/singing like theyre about 50.

never you mind death professor

Don't like the second song as much:

http://www.vevo.com/watch/tv-on-the-radio/Careful-You-(Lyric-Video)/USUMV1400456

um speak english this is america hello

makes me think theyre just really into latter period massive attack (like a lot of the last album). its very slick. theyve gotten very middlebrow.

happy idiot is a good song!

Their transition to dad rock is really, really disheartening.

"Happy Idiot" isn't bad at all.

OK Calculator > Dear Science

Their transition to dad rock is really, really disheartening.

― avant-sarsgaard (litel)

Thought this the first couple of times I listened to Nine Types, but there's actually enough craftsmanship and interesting production details that it grew on me and now I quite rate it. They've still definitely got a weird edge, it's just expressed more subtly than before.

My first TVOR album was Dear Science, so I probably expect different things than people who have been following them since the start. To me they're a polished pop/rock act with some leftfield tendancies buzzing round the fringes.

tv on the radio are an art rock band like peter gabriel

The Barack Obama of modern rock then

My first impression of them was Young Liars which is pretty much perfect. I actually didn't know about OK Calc until around the time Dear Science was released - someone posted one of their more bizarre older songs on a muxtape (lol) and it encouraged me to dig deeper into their weird stuff. There's def some really good songs on Dear Science, but it kinda baffled me to see it topping on so many AOTY lists, since IMO it always sounded like a dip in quality.

"OK Calculator > Dear Science"

otm

been saying that they fell off with cookie mountain so its heartening to see other people finally realise (i mean cookie was cool, but it needed more songs like province, and less like wolf like me, which i do like, but i just expected more from this band). just bizarre and depressing to see them get so middlebrow. i hope they call it a day now.

Careful You sounds like a Coldplay song with balls. Not that good but doesn't make me feel like the album will be awful.

Happy Idiot is great. Of course it's not up to Young Liars but nothing they have released ever since measures up. Is anyone really expecting them to sound like that at this point?

They had already sold out and become boring dad yacht rockers by the time of Young Liars. Tunde Adebimpe never got better than the bootlegs of his early piano lessons.

i liked them better when they were called RADIOHEAD

is this so bad? it's not. it's a little less edgy that some of their other albums but I'd posit this is exactly the album they wanted to make.

By the time OK Calculator came out (most overproduced and glossy piece of shit since 'Jobriath'), TVOTR had lost whatever energy and spark that initially made them so great, back when Tunde and Kyp used to read/scream passages from James Patterson novels over 'Buffalo Stance' into my cassette recorder while we snorted Claritin on the school bus. Those first two fan-club-only flexi discs (35 copies only!) were magnificent.

Also, 'Seeds' is really beautiful and strange, I hope you give it a chance!

I don't really like OK Calculator. It sounds like the experimental project it was, not intended for wide release.

i saw kips previous band at a loft party once and its all been down the hill to dadsrockville since then tbqh

lol they sounded like terrible dadrock when i saw them live in 03, never saw the appeal

I'm telling you, after junior high it was all downhill for all of them.

they were cooler when they were radio on the radio imo

heard "careful you" today, i think the next album could have their "sledgehammer" if they go for it

pray to god they do

I swear that one of the new songs they played live sounded like Tom Petty and I loved it.

i mispoke, i meant to say "bar band rock", dadrock is a-ok by me

Quartz, Careful You and Happy Idiot are all great. Not sold on the rest yet, but their last one was a real grower so I'll definitely listen a few more times with open ears.

Can't get Careful You out of my head, actually. They're good at stealth earworms.

I swear that one of the new songs they played live sounded like Tom Petty and I loved it.

It wouldn't be the first time. "Shout Me Out" borrows the vocal melody from "Runnin' Down a Dream".

'Ride' is bloody awful.

btw my friend telling me the threads opinion on their recent work is shared by others said theyre playing a ~700 capacity club in boston when last time he saw them they were at a ~3000 seat hall (paradise, orpheum)

I saw them open for massive attack at the bowl and the crowd was pretty light. but I attributed that mostly to our noise ordinance and early start time on a weekday.

i do worry that where gabriel had years of knockin' prog rockers dead live to buttress his pop crossover, tvotr will have already lost their nerd mojo by the time they're truly ready to give the label a "counting stars" or "radioactive"

Decided I have no time for this beyond the admittedly excellent first four tracks.

First listening: I like the first track, then get into this post-prog mainstream romance for a while, as I just tweeted before seeing this thread:

TV On The Radio, Seeds: Crooning? But on 1/2 the tracks *so far*, relationships more overtly complex, vox adapts, arrangements always ready Fave so far: "Winter." Want more of this higher, rougher voice, more of this guitar. Male singers are often my main prob w rock bands (even Parquet Courts, initially). I'll keep listening.

meant *they* get into post-prog mainstream romance for a while, not me.

Careful You is amazing.

After over a dozen listens and writing my review a while back, surprisingly the two songs that were most stuck in my head were "Test Pilot" and "Love Stained," both of which I praised but somewhat backhandedly. Do not underestimate the power of their simple but persistent hooky choruses. Either one could do well as singles/videos, but I fear Harvest doesn't have the proper pop marketing machine in place.

I was disappointed by three misses, but still a great album.

was not expecting much from this but am surprised to find out how much i like it. its bland at times, a bit too polished, a bit like an AOR record from the 80s/90s (some of the production touches seem kinda dated, even if the sonics are modern) and i think the lyrics might have gotten a bit worse in terms of trying a bit too hard to sound beautiful and important but careful you is so, so good. a lot of really good melodies on this. and winter is one of the best 'rock' songs theyve ever done (i know the riff is so blatantly obvious but for some reason im drawing a blank - is it the damned?). if this IS their last album (not sure it is), then its a great way to go. much better than the last one.