TV on the Radio
Seeds

Countless times I've read the expression "artistic maturity" meant as a goal achieved by artist x in turn with such a work; most of the time, it is not the artist themselves who labels the work as such, but the critic in turn. Tale operam tele tule tale operandum teles. The Latins used to say.

Look, maybe this bullshit enlightens me for a metaphor between the TOTR and the Latin versions I used to butcher in the good old days. No, I'm sorry. Fog in the Po Valley.

I was saying that this artistic maturity, to be honest, I've never learned to recognize it; in short, I've never understood what the hell it really is. I always have my reservations about this kind of oxymoron; I have no clear idea of what maturity does in art, given the countless examples of profound immaturity fused with profound art.
So there's no way I'm talking about artistic maturity for this album like I've read somewhere.

That said, I consider Dear Science a bomb, and as much as it's praised everywhere due to and thanks to being the album that most flaunted their pop roots, it deserves credit for making me want to delve into their entire oeuvre, because labeling them as simple glossy acts is a mistake I initially made myself. Because, come on, in the end, it's pop we are talking about.
Art Rock, indie-newsynth-brass-wave-pop my ass; I'm not being the rebel against the genre conspiracy but what the hell, it takes you two seconds to turn Happy Idiot into Katy Perry, just as Trouble has a concept that's couldn't be simpler, and the harmonic construction of the chord progression is based on a damned interval of a damned tone.
In fact, it's not the initial triad (Quartz, Careful You, Could You), with its devastating impact, or the pieces mentioned above, in their entirety, that give an idea of the dress TOTR give to pop. But it's also true that I don't care. I can notice that Winter with a halved drum beat (maybe even coming in forty minutes earlier) would have been a kind of I like the way you mooooooooove, and yet it isn't. And whatever they choose, the shape the piece takes pleases me. And so even a Test Pilot with its candlelight romance isn't a pop song but a song by Tv on the Radio. Did I convey the most basic concept? Maybe I made a profoundly basic concept. In that case, I apologize.

No, it's not true, I don't give a damn.

I don't recommend the album; I think you'll hate it.