{"id":41365,"date":"2009-02-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-19T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/dear-science\/"},"modified":"2009-02-19T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-19T00:00:00","slug":"dear-science","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/dear-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify\">Maybe TV On The Radio should have switched the titles of their last two albums. The artfully experimental grime rock of 2006\u2019s\u00a0<i>Return To Cookie Mountain<\/i>, a daunting labyrinth of acid-washed vocals, guitar fuzz and zany alien textures, deserves a laboratory setting more than their latest release.\u00a0<o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify\"><i>Dear Science<\/i>\u00a0tones the experimentation down a little, favoring more accessible art-funk rhythms, hooky choruses and foggy piano melodies that Coldplay could play with a calculatedly subdued punk spirit boiling underneath. And while TV\u2019s new style doesn\u2019t exactly bring cookies or any other baked goods to mind, the twinkling keys and circus-nabbed horn harmonies addle the songs with something <i>Cookie Mountain<\/i>\u00a0lacked: pop sensibility.\u00a0<o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify\">The new style waxes refinement more than commercial surrender, however. \u201cGolden Age\u201d pits a quick, bumpy bass line against a sinewy horn symphony, resulting in an explosive James Brown-meets-Radiohead mash-up. The appealingly bittersweet \u201cCrying,\u201d featuring funked-up guitar melodies atop a twister of electronic bleeps and swirls, recalls Michael Jackson\u2019s \u201cWanna Be Startin\u2019 Somethin\u2019\u201d with a vocal part that\u2019s just as high and peculiar. And in the Coldplay-influenced \u201cFamily Tree,\u201d eerily gorgeous strings waft delicately over Tunde Adebimpe\u2019s ghostlike laments before cascading into a Velvet Underground-worthy piano-drum trot.<o:p><\/o:p><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify\">Adebimpe makes some insightful observations about the current state of political <st1:country-region w:st=\"on\"><st1:place w:st=\"on\">America<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region>. In \u201cGolden Age,\u201d he sings about \u201cnatural disasters blowing up like a ghetto blaster\u201d as if he\u2019s prophesying, and \u201cRed Dress\u201d starts off with a brash kiss-off to the war in Iraq amid a turbulent cross-pollination of guitars, feedback, and hysteria. The political insight in <i>Dear Science<\/i> adds an extra layer of intellectual potency to the already astute production.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"text-align: justify\">With\u00a0<i>Dear Science<\/i>, TV tweaks the murky kookiness of\u00a0<i>Return To <st1:place w:st=\"on\"><st1:placename w:st=\"on\">Cookie<\/st1:placename>  <st1:placetype w:st=\"on\">Mountain<\/st1:placetype><\/st1:place><\/i>, resulting in something just as aesthetic but more pleasurable. The album draws on late-\u201870s funk but at the same time pushes the boundaries of music into a new dimension &#8212; not an easy feat, and something definitely worthy of whatever title its makers prefer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":29758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7883],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-41365","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-tv-on-the-radio","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/78"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41365"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}