TV on the Radio 2.0

Coming out of touring with Franz Ferdinand, with bigger productions under their belt, TV on the Radio suited up for this summer’s Brooklyn blow out show. The Prospect Park ‘Celebrate Brooklyn’ series has been good to me three years running, spanning diverse genres I know and love as well as many I’d never come across. The show last friday was no exception, and as I’ve become more familiar with TVOTR and the crew of musicians and styles they tap, they seem to me as dynamic a force as Brooklyn can boast these days. Their inclusion of the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra on this their biggest show to date (a packed out Prospect Park Bandshell is no sneezing matter) was a significant merge of two very powerful BK voices, both climbing up and reaching more ears. Featuring selected Antibalas horns over the years has been regular, but last Friday brought the majority of that collective to the stage for most of the set. At times the stage filled up to capacity, when horns, percussion, and three female singers joined in, with cameramen zipping around and production in the wings.

Interscope (TVOTR’s new label) was sure to document this defining jump-off show with no less than 9 cameras, including a giant crane. The lights were dialed in, and all systems were a go, the aesthetic was amped to eleven. Having seen this band awe crowds in smaller clubs (Mercury Lounge and Union Pool, personally), and assuming many in the crowd had done the same, there was an overwhelming sense of witnessing an arrival of sorts. They’ve always impressed with their approach, the simultaneous clashing of craze and control, with a rock solid backbone in arrangements and vocal mastery. Seeing the grander visual production brought on a feeling of “well, here this band goes into the upper stratosphere, another deserved jump to the masses.”

I certainly hope they’re welcomed with open arms. The new material off The Return to Cookie Mountain (Interscope, 2006) is dark and apocalyptic, but it is all-consuming once it sinks in and paints a beautiful, eerie sunrise by song’s end. Orchestral at times, TV on the Radio is perfecting its own brand of epic. If justice is served, it will inspire a new movement of large and in-charge within and outside NYC.

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