Too hot to be cool - TV on the Radio interview

Published on Friday 12 September 2008 16:17

TV on the Radio boasts rock's most exciting new producer on a mission to bust out of the underground scene, writes Jon Pareles

ONE sunny day in July a bulldozer mistakenly ploughed into the outside wall of a recording studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Little did the builders know that inside this ordinary looking building was the place where the majorly influential producer, guitarist, photographer and painter Dave Sitek worked with Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Liars, Foals, and with his own band, TV on the Radio.

If you haven't yet heard of Sitek, you soon will. He's the hot producer du jour who earlier this year gained the top spot in the NME's Future 50 list of the most forward-thinking people in music today. We're going to be hearing a lot more about this 36-year-old musician, who most recently produced Scarlett Johansson's debut album, Anywhere I Lay My Head.

TV on the Radio started out passing around homemade CDs at Brooklyn cafs, the musicians squeezing recording time between day jobs. That was five years ago. Since, Sitek's band has made its way from independent to major label, and from local clubs to world tours, while its music has grown ever more ambitious, in a bohemian way, of course. The band's second album, Return To Cookie Mountain, was voted fourth best of the year by Rolling Stone, while contributors include David Bowie and Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It's thanks to Sitek, in fact, that Bowie made a guest appearance on Johansson's album of Tom Waits covers.

And now TV on the Radio return with a magnificent third album, Dear Science, (the comma is part of the title). The songs are vertiginous, full of cantilevered rhythms and synthetic sounds, yet catchy too. Singers Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone take on meaty subjects including war and technology, environmental damage and racism, while also invoking pleasure and a glimmer of hope.

"If you're going to reach for it, reach all the way," says Sitek. "With albums like Purple Rain and Thriller you had to reach far above the din of cynicism and modern living to get to that place. The industry used to support that kind of record making, and just because (it] doesn't now doesn't mean you shouldn't still try for it."

The album was made on a local scale in Sitek's studio, with a horn section borrowed from the Brooklyn Afrobeat band Antibalas. "I think the album as a format is dying," he muses. "To do a record of this magnitude, just in terms of the sheer number of things that had to be done and the amount of musicians involved and the amount of studio hours spent – if we didn't have my studio, who knows?"

Back in 1997 Adebimpe – at the time a filmmaker – and Sitek found themselves sharing a loft apartment, which quickly led to a musical partnership. "It just became apparent very quickly that we were going to be friends," Adebimpe recalls at a local cafe. "His room was full of all this musical equipment with nothing but a mattress, and my room was full of paints and video equipment… and a mattress."

Early on, the band benefited from the reputation-building of the indie-rock blogosphere. But eventually they felt typecast. "I'm done with cool," says Malone. "I've been done with cool for years."

"We always wanted to reach a lot of people," adds Sitek. "I think it was just hard for us to get a handle on how to make the kind of music we make. And it started to be misunderstood that we were trying to do some kind of weird art-house-rock obscure thing. But that's not it at all. In our minds these songs are simple."

Dear Science, is in many ways an extension of TV on the Radio's past work. Nervous energy and apocalyptic scenarios filled the band's 2003 EP, Young Liars, and their first two albums, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes and Return To Cookie Mountain. The songs contemplated the aftermath of September 11, the war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. The lyrics were surreal and allusive, arriving in dense art-rock productions that melded looped drumbeats, doo-wop harmonies, noise, and improbable pop hooks.

"I like pop music," says Malone. "But I also like the sound of a dying refrigerator. I can listen to that for an hour and a half if I'm in the mood."

There's a deep streak of dread on the new album. Dear Science, includes the comma because it was the salutation of a letter Sitek posted on the studio wall while the band was working on the album. The letter was addressed to Science itself, demanding that it "fix all the things you're talking about" or shut up.

But Sitek doesn't agree that it's all about wallowing in darkness: "We were unpeeling these layers and what we thought was absolutely stunning and beautiful, and not so depressing... this time."

• Dear Science, is released September 22 (4AD)