TV On The Radio`s ‘Dear Science,’-'Age Of Miracles. Age Of Sound.’

I`m beginning to see why so many music mags (Rolling Stone, The Guardian, MTV, & Spin) have named “Dear Science,” by TV On The Radio, as the best album for 2008. With a chameleon-like suffusion of genres, a hybrid of hip-hop, electronica, pop, and funk, “Dear Science,” is the newest aggregate of fresh sounds and new ideas around. This is thoroughly modern, a subconscious diary of a post Nine-Eleven World that surfaces to light bashfully, with a gradually evolving optimism, tempered by strife, peeping forth.

The lyric sheet is printed like a antiqued ‘Dead Sea Scroll’ parchment, and the words hit you like an iron pipe, Walt Whitman`s “Leaves Of Grass,” but rather in the shadow of the World Trade Center attacks, instead of The Civil War-same difference. Listen to “Family Tree” for brooding, philosophical wordplay about evolving generational ideas, as if through suffering, a new synthesis can emerge, that still retains a smooth flow from an earlier era. “We`re hanging in the shadow. Of your family tree. Your haunted heart and me. Brought down by an old idea. Whose time has come.”

TV On The Radio will play for Lollapalooza, Grant Park-Chicago, on Saturday, August 8th, from 6:30-7:30 PM.