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I’ve liked TV ON THE RADIO since their debut EP “Young Liars” came out, but I never truly loved them until I saw them live. Well that’s the short version anyway. While I really enjoyed that first EP as well as their debut album Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes, I never saw them live until about a year ago, when I saw them opening for THE ROOTS and then a few weeks later opening for FRANZ FERDINAND. I really enjoyed both of these opening sets and I took note that I should check them out as a headliner at some point. Sure enough, they announced a show at New York’s Bowery Ballroom back in April of this year (my review can be found here), so I bought a ticket. I expected to like the show, but instead I was completely blown away. In fact, their set that night is one of my favorite live moments of the entire year.
At this show, they combined older material with selections from their then-unreleased (but already leaked) new album Return to Cookie Mountain. Although I didn’t take to the new album initially, I got into it after their excellent performance. So now that I’ve had more time to live with the album, the question for me was if TV on the Radio could top their amazing performance from earlier this year. The answer, unbelievably, was yes. Quite simply, they played one of the best, most jaw-dropping shows I’ve ever seen in my life (and trust me, I’ve seen a lot).
Their sheer physicality, musicianship and energy just completely overwhelm and punish the listener into submission and in the most satisfying way possible. If you have the chance to go see them in the near future, then by all means do it. It was simply unbelievable. They opened with “Dirty Whirl Wind” and played several slower new tracks like “I Was a Lover” and “Province,” before launching into “Wolf Like Me,” which is perhaps the new album’s centerpiece and a contender for not only their best song ever but my favorite song of the year. In the second half of the set, they combined more older material (like “The Wrong Way” from their debut as well as “Young Liars”) with more new material. For their encore, they played the obligatory “Staring at the Sun” and then openers GRIZZLY BEAR joined them on stage for the final song, which I believe was a cover that I didn’t recognize.
Before seeing their set, I was unfamiliar with Grizzly Bear’s recorded output. After watching them, however, I made a mental note to seek out their stuff. They were less freak-folk or acid-folk influenced than I thought they would be from the press they’ve gathered. Instead, they were louder and featured more electric guitar than I expected, though far from straight-ahead rocking or the maniacal intensity of the headliners. At times, singer ED DROSTE’s voice reminded me a bit of THOM YORKE, but musically they were like a more controlled and less experimental ANIMAL COLLECTIVE, which is fitting given their name.
The above photo of TV On the Radio comes from this flickr photostream and was taken several days after this show at the TIM festival in Brazil.
