TV On The Radio are one of those rare bands who command total attention straight away. They don’t look or sound like anybody else - which makes seeing or hearing them for the first time an immediately convincing experience.
Praise like this can often be heaped on bands for just looking cool, or for being in the right place at the right time - but in TV On The Radio's case, it's the music that does the talking. Admittedly, they’ve got style in abundance, but the visual appeal is counterbalanced perfectly by an instantaneous, charged, organic sound that - crucially - can’t be squeezed into any convenient pigeonhole. They're too good to stay in the art-rock ghetto, too self-aware to be straightforwardly 'cool', too distinctive to be comfortably mainstream yet catchier than most of the pop out there, loud and soulful, complex and rocking... we could go on. Just one thing is for sure - they're a much needed addition to any self-respecting record collection.
Digging deeper, you'll find a rich history, and it becomes clearer how they have won so many people over in such a short time. Founding member David Sitek produced albums for the Liars and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but he'd be the first to say that TV On The Radio are something else altogether. He met singer and lyricist Tunde Adebimpe - an NYU film student specialising in stop-frame animation - back in 2000 when they became neighbours in a Brooklyn apartment building. The pair began exchanging their stockpiles of home-made four track recordings and, shortly afterwards, they ventured onto local stages as a completely improvisational two-piece.
Gradually, songs emerged from these explorations, and the live side of things was bolstered by the arrival of guitarist Kyp Malone - who also supplies sweet falsetto harmony vocals - bassist Gerard Smith, and drummer Jaleel Bunton, Brooklyn residents all (although a couple have since moved). People started really taking the band seriously when their debut EP, Young Liars, appeared on the Touch And Go label in the summer of 2003. The heady blend of bedroom electronics, warm distortion and killer soul vocals sounded - and still sounds - like nothing else around. A tour with label mates Coco Rosie kept things building. The live shows started to get real busy and, before the year was out, these ripples of intrigue had grown into a tidal wave of excitement. By the time of the South By Southwest music convention in March 2004, TV On The Radio were the hottest ticket in town.
Meanwhile, the band had made a debut album which raised the musical stakes still further. Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes consists of nine tracks that gather in intensity and invention as the record goes on. Tunde and Kyp's endlessly appealing vocals weave their way through music that somehow combines cosmic jazz (sax and flute), amped-up electronica, twitchy, danceable beats and swathes of treated guitar into rich and endlessly surprising folds of sound. TV On The Radio draw on post-rock, gospel, New York new wave and the deepest dub, but they mark everything they use with their own unique signature, and an instinctive use of melody lightens even the darkest passages.
Live, TVOTR are spellbinding, conjuring a wall of sound within the first few bars, then surging and retreating with a boxer's dexterity. Harmony vocals float unerringly through the noise, and the rhythm section lock into place with a swinging urgency, propelling the music breathlessly forward.
October 2004 saw the release of the non-LP single "New Health Rock", which was declared Single Of The Week in NME. The following month, TV On The Radio capped a year of critical acclaim and non-stop activity when Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes won the Shortlist Music Prize, which was founded in 2001 "to honour the most creative and adventurous albums of the year across all genres of music". The band took a break from their US tour to perform at the awards ceremony in Los Angeles, alongside fellow nominees Dizzee Rascal and Nellie McKay before receiving the award. Other acts in contention included Air, Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, The Streets and Wilco.