TV on the Radio
Return To Cookie Mountain

THE REVIEW

I had been waiting for the TVOTR album for quite some time, let's say ever since I first listened to "Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes" in 2004 and was practically enchanted by it. I remember going on for at least a couple of months listening to it without being able to put it back in its designated case; I was mesmerized. I immediately thought I was facing something new, something different, something I had never heard before.

Naturally, for "Return To Cookie Mountain" that wasn't possible; it would have been too much and probably wrong to ask TVOTR to produce and bring to life a significantly different album from the previous one. Indeed, it isn't, significantly. The real question is another: how has the sound of the New York band truly changed in these almost two years of absence? What direction have they chosen to follow, and what kind of sound did they seek out in these months? The answer came spontaneously to me already at the first listen: soul, gospel. What immediately stands out to the ear is the voice; everything revolves around it, which is the focal point of every single track on the album. The voices of the two vocalists, so different (one with a very high pitch and the other very low), overlap in unison and become one, proceeding hand in hand step by step. The lyrics (I admit I haven't been able to translate them all as they were not written) are certainly better and more intense compared to "Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes" and testify to the path the band has taken.
However, all this goes to the detriment of the electronic part of the pieces, which in my opinion has been deliberately "neglected" by the band or at least placed in the background compared to the vocal and instrumental part. In addition, in my opinion, there is a lack of a track like "Staring at the Sun" or "Dreams" present in the previous album, which in my opinion remain among the most beautiful of the last two years of experimental music. However, this does not mean that there are no tracks of great value and prominence such as "Wolf Like Me", the first track of the album and perhaps the one whose motif sticks most easily in the listener's head, "Province" track 3, where the voices of TVOTR intertwine and merge with that of a Bowie in great shape (although I would have liked to hear him alone for a few seconds), "Playhouses" track 5 with a killer start and a drum line that characterizes the sound of this album a bit.

Ultimately, we are facing one of the best bands of the moment, best understood as synonymous with originality, experimentation, innovation, and contamination. The mere fact of managing to perfectly mix gospel vocals with electronic backgrounds makes TVOTR one of the most revolutionary bands of recent years. Now it's just a matter of waiting for the new album of Massive Attack (produced in collaboration with TVOTR) and hopefully catching them live in Italy.