TV on the Radio: The Best Shot at Utopiaby Daniel Alleva

Brooklyn’s TV on the Radio are back again with Dear Science, another exceptionally remarkable album that is the follow up to their previous record, Return to Cookie Mountain. Recorded between February and April at Staygold Studios in Brooklyn, Dear Science picks up where Return to Cookie Mountain left off – ducking and weaving to its right with a crisp and persistent exertion of body and mind.

The payoff from a TV on the Radio record lies way beneath the instant gratification you receive from the initial spin. Dear Science’s first single “Golden Age” makes me want to roller skate around my living room today, as we head towards a transitional period in life: seasons, elections, and things of that nature. Singer Tunde Adebimpe says that, “It's pretty positive song. Kyp (Malone, vocals/guitar) said he was trying to write a Utopian pop song, giving as much time to optimism as perhaps we as a band had collectively given to pessimism in the past - which I think is a good idea, making a conscious effort to give those feelings equal space.”

Return to Cookie Mountain was the perfect soundtrack to a purple and wounded December sky. Adebimpe describes the album as “foggy, pretty, and loud.” But when it came to the writing of Dear Science, he concedes that there really wasn’t much of a plan. “Kyp and I write demos - all voice for me. Him, usually just voice and guitar. And Dave (Sitek, production/vocals/guitar) has many beats, so we do a show and tell at the beginning of the allotted recording time, see what's interesting, and then work on those ones. The loose guideline was to make something different that moved in a different way from the last record.” The result is a lot of weary - if not punch drunk - emotion. Without question, each track on Dear Science is another shiny, blank canvas for the former painters turned songwriters to work on - and today’s listen of the album will surely not feel like tomorrow’s. How could it possibly? Like most TV on the Radio albums, Dear Science is a well that never runs dry - it creates the possibility in a dream future coming true, and it’s welcoming to the listener whenever they should arrive at it.

Critics will always fight the temptation to look at TV on the Radio under a magnifying glass, but any truly great band goes through this. I myself am brought back down to earth when I ask about the source of the overt sexuality found in TV on the Radio’s music. Adebimpe replies, “Mostly the genitals, hopefully by way of the heart and soul,” and I laugh, but mainly I’m laughing at my own build-up to the question, especially now that I’ve heard his answer to it. Rolling with the punches, I ask Adebimpe to describe what the title Dear Science really means, and this answer is equally as amusing as the last. “This record is our contribution to science,” he says “We are not degree holders or experts, but we are used to speaking with utter conviction concerning iffy hunches, bad ideas, and the straight up imaginary.”

Fair enough. Adebimpe has given me the slip on the “serious music guy” questions, just like the marching band that slips out the backdoor on Dear Science’s final track, “Lovers Day.” Malone, who wrote the track, croaks "I wanna love ya/All the way off/I wanna break your back," and hearing that, I now gather that the answers missing to the out-loud wonders of sex and science are better searched for within the rhythms of the album itself. Talk, after all, is cheap. But great music like TV on the Radio’s is indeed priceless.

Much like Adebimpe’s wit and imagination. As two guys who have dwelled in Brooklyn a time or two again, I ask him what’s the very first thing that comes to mind when he reflects on TV on the Radio’s rise to fame in the billowing borough. “Rent,” he says flatly. I hear ya, brother. I really should have known that asking such socio-salacious questions was going to throw of my whole game here. And figuring that I might as well go out with a bang, I put forth the question to Adebimpe that if a DJ was to play TV on the Radio in his set, what would be the songs he’d like to hear before and after his band. “No songs. Just crickets, because they were here before us, and they'll probably be here after us - but bigger, probably. Like car-sized crickets. So, before us, just crickets, and after us, unbearably loud mega-crickets.”

You see, now we’re on to something. We’re either just leaving, or about to be entering into, a true Golden Age. Degree holders and experts - cling to what you can. It’s about to get bumpy.

Cold War Kids: Q & A with Nathan Willettby Daniel Alleva

Last month, California’s Cold War Kids returned to the scene with their amazing new album, Loyalty to Loyalty – the follow-up to their 2006 critically acclaimed debut, Robbers & Cowards. Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with lead singer and pianist Nathan Willett.


Hi Nathan. Can you tell me a little bit about how the band formed?
Yeah, we’ve known each other for years and were just all fans of music… through different schools and different friends, we just got together. Beyond that, we really didn’t have a lot of intention of touring, or doing things on a major scale.


So it sounds as if you guys all gravitated together very naturally.
Yeah, definitely.

Reflecting a bit on your influences, if the four of you sat down in a room and started talking about music, what would some of the key threads be?
Um, probably Tom Waits and The Velvet Underground - they would be some of the big ones, and people like Nina Simone. But we’re just all over the place in terms of style.


Were you personally very engrossed with music from an early age?
Yeah, you know, my mom was in a lot of different folk groups, and we had a piano in our house. Growing up in Southern California, I had a lot of friends that were in punk and hardcore bands – just stuff that I really wasn’t interested in - so I didn’t really figure I had much of a place for playing, or meeting like-minded musicians around where I was. I didn’t actually end up playing with people all that much until I met these guys. I had recorded this tape of Elvis Costello covers that I done, and some of the guys heard it and wanted to do something.

And how did the name Cold War Kids come about? I always thought that was such a classic name.
It came from our bass player, Matt Maust. There was this park in Europe, near Budapest, that had fallen statues of Communist, cold war-era leaders, that kids would literally play on, and we liked that whole aesthetic.

That’s very interesting. So, the new album is called Loyalty to Loyalty. Can you explain what the title means?
Yeah, it’s a phrase coined by Josiah Royce, a writer from the early 1900’s. We started writing Loyalty to Loyalty as a reaction to (his writings) - kind of how man should not rise above one another, but instead be a support to each other, and a lot of the songs are sort of in-between these different philosophies.

Where did you record the album, and did it take awhile?
We recorded in a few different rooms in L.A., some of the bigger named studios in the area. But we’re a very frugal band in that we don’t want to allow ourselves too much time in the studio.

Because the approach is, “let’s knock this out on the first take because that’s the freshest and most organic,” or is it just about economics? Or, is it a mixture of both?
It’s a mixture of both. We do a few takes and then put it to rest… trying to be as live as possible.

So, you cut a lot of tracks live?
Oh, yeah, definitely.

And most of those takes made it to Loyalty to Loyalty?
Yeah.

You can definitely hear that on tracks like “Against Privacy,” which has a very open-room feel to it - it’s almost feels like your sitting in a concert hall while listening to that song. So, did you guys have set objectives going into the sessions for this album, or even when you were writing the record?
You know, we don’t necessarily know how to describe what it is that we do, so we try to not even be super-aware of what a record is going to be like, or how it is different from the last record. We try to be unaware while we know that, ultimately, we wanna go in and write more songs. I think it’s important for bands – or at least us, anyway – to approach it naturally.

But with that being said, now that the record is done, and you’ve completed this creative process, could you make any comparisons or contrasts between this record and your last album, Robbers & Cowards? The reason I ask is because while Robbers & Cowards is a great record that received a lot of critical acclaim, this record, Loyalty to Loyalty – to my ears, anyway – is really something special. Just from the opening notes of the record, you can tell…it’s like, “Oh, wow… we’re going somewhere here.”
Oh, definitely. I mean, our first record had a much slicker sound than this new album, which has a much darker sound to it. It’s interesting for me, because we think this record is much better than the first, but of course, going into that whole thing about a second record - people kind of read into it what they want to. I don’t know… I think we’re just kind of preparing ourselves for the fact that you never know what to expect from people’s thoughts. But we just kind of have to roll with it. All of this is very new for us, so….

New in the sense that it’s just not about the four of you guys anymore?
Yeah. New in the sense that we have never really been through this criticism game when people’s opinions - way outside of our existence - are very strong. And that’s kind of the reality with any entertainment. It’s new to us, but I guess that’s how it works.


Is this record a political record at all?
Yeah, I think there are political things going on there. The song “Welcome to the Occupation” is one that I think most strongly deals with the “loyalty to loyalty” theme, and it’s also the most autobiographical. I was a doing student teaching right before we started touring, and that song is about teaching as a public institution that is kind of owned by the state, and the feelings of an artist trying to break out of that situation. There are a lot of other capitalist and socialist themes going on the record, and a lot of other things relevant to a lot of the questions our country is asking itself right now.

Cold War Kids will play two very special shows in the area this month – first on October 15th at Webster Hall in NYC, and on October 16th at the Williamsburg Hall of Music in Brooklyn.

The Verve: Leaving It Up to the Godsby Daniel Alleva

As Verve bassist Simon Jones would tell it, sometimes all it takes in this world is the desire to take care of unfinished business. For those that have not been keeping score, this is the second time that The Verve – arguably the best group to come from Britain in the past two decades - has risen from the ashes with a great new record in tow. The first time was in 1997, when they released the highly successful Urban Hymns – but only after disbanding in the wake of the psychedelic epic that was 1995’s A Northern Soul. Now, with the release of Forth – their first album in ten years – The Verve have returned with the same swagger that they were known for. “This band is a big part of our lives, and we’ve got a lot of things left to do in this band,” says Jones, calling from the U.K. “But when you keep breaking up after every album, you look like a fucking idiot.”

The future of the Verve post-Urban Hymns was short-lived, when in 1999, singer Richard Ashcroft decided to disband the group and pursue a solo career. So, what drew Ashcroft, Jones, Nick McCabe, and Peter Salisbury back into the dazzling spectrum of The Verve again was purely a series of phone calls. Salisbury and McCabe – after not being in touch since McCabe left the band shortly after the release of Urban Hymns - reconnected again, and began to throw around the idea of playing together once more. Jones - who had never once given up on the idea of playing music again with his old mate Nick McCabe - needed no persuasion whatsoever. According to Jones, “It was down to Richard, really… and Richard did the right thing and called.”

When talking about the mega-success of Urban Hymns, Jones compares the experience to that of a train losing its wheels, and says that the band wasn’t geared up enough emotionally to handle the pressure. During the time, even the confident Ashcroft seemed taken aback by all the commotion. He sent fans into frenzy, weeks before the album was released, when he was spotted in the crowd at an Oasis show in New York City. Weeks later during a promo spot, he likened the experience to something out of The Who’s Quadrophenia and said, “It was like The Verve turned into Michael Jackson or something!” Tension would soon boil over in the group: resulting first in McCabe’s departure, then fallout from the legal matter that ensued around the band’s big hit “Bittersweet Symphony.” But while Ashcroft may have had enough, Jones now has other thoughts on the band’s ultimate second demise. He would have preferred a hiatus, which would have given the band time to regroup. “I don’t think we’re the sort of band to put out a record every year. You know, we’re not that type of band,” he says. “But everyone’s got their own opinion about it.” Jones continues to say that, “It’s all in the past now. It’s important to learn from our mistakes, and make sure it doesn’t happen again - to really hold on to this thing that’s precious, and to value it, and not be so flippant.”

With Forth, these four distinct personalities that each has their own ideas about making music have made a record that sounds intuitive and fresh. Because The Verve’s intention was never just to reunite to do a few gigs, Forth has the concentration and flow of a true rock epic. Many of the albums tracks punch with power, and are reminiscent of the band’s very first records. A lot of this has to do with Nick McCabe. A brilliant musician, McCabe rejoined the group late into the recording sessions for Urban Hymns. But on Forth, his presence is layered deep into the mix of the album, and his atmospheric sound runs rampant.

Despite all this, Jones knows that his band could be described as tumultuous, and there are always rumors that claim another break-up is inevitable. “I’ve found the best way to deal with that is to not to dip your toes in that sort of environment,” he says. “If you’ve got four people, and it’s supposed to be a democracy, then you are always going to butt heads. But that, for us, has always created great music.” And with a new generation of fans being enlightened by The Verve’s music, the impact of reforming has been incredibly positive. “I say to people that (Forth) is the most definitive Verve record,” says Jones. When the band played The Theater at Madison Square Garden in April, their two-hour set was comprised of fan-favorites that covered their deep catalog through and through. “A lot of people who only bought Urban Hymns come to the gigs not realizing that we’re a pretty psychedelic fucking band, and I love when they walk out looking like, ‘Holy fuck!” One of the tracks from Forth that is sure to make its way into The Verve’s sets when they tour in support of the album is “Noise Epic,” an 8-minute freakout a la “Gravity Grave,” a song from the band’s very first EP.

The Verve, for now, is embracing the freedom to be totally spontaneous, and they have re-lit the torch that burns so brightly in the memory of many fans across the world. The time in-between The Verve’s latest jaunts was long and hard. But listening to Jones, there seems to be reason to stay optimistic. “We’ve learned that this is how we’ve got to do it... instead of looking at a calendar that’s full for the next three years of your life, and it being this sort of daunting, ‘how the fuck am I going to do this?’ sort of thing.” For all of their ups and downs, there has always been a simple premise in The Verve, one that has held true since they started such a long time ago. “We’ve just gotta go in there and leave it all on the floor, and leave it to the gods.” One can only hope that the gods Jones speaks of aren’t in the habit of taking things away, because a world without The Verve again is too unbearable a thought.

Oxford Collapse: Now That's a Throwbackby Daniel Alleva

About twenty minutes into my interview with Michael Pace of Oxford Collapse - the Brooklyn trio that just released Bits, their second record on the legendary Sup Pop label - I find out that Pace and I grew up not far from one another on Long Island, and that we had mutual friends that played in bands way back when; hardcore enthusiasts that enjoyed local notoriety. Talking to Pace, much like listening to Oxford Collapse’s records, reminds me that the era in which we were raised stands in stark contrast to this place in time. “Everyone in the band kind of came of age in the early to mid nineties,” says Pace. “We were listening to a lot of punk music and hardcore; you start with a touchstone band like Nirvana, and from there, you read about all these other bands that those guys loved, and you start getting into them, as well.”

Very seldom do bands today like to talk about their influences in specifics without being pressed. Quite possibly it’s because they’re afraid of getting hung by them in the press. But Pace’s knowledge of music over the last four decades is practically encyclopedic. “From my own experiences, I started getting into the SST bands - Meat Puppets, Husker Du, Black Flag, and more bands like that. I was fortunate enough to have a radio station at my high school that I was involved with, and there was a lot of new stuff coming out at the time like Superchunk and Archers of Loaf, so that stuff also had a big impact on me, also – it was like ‘Oh, this is what I like.’ It’s all about kind of refining what you’re listening to, and if you’re really into it, you do your research, and you discover bands all the time.”

Anyone who’s ever really cared about music in the last fifteen years or so loves a band exactly like Oxford Collpase. A band like Oxford Collapse commits only to making music that they themselves would want to hear, resulting in an album as rewarding as Bits - drawing their inspiration from the poetry, the performance, or just the power of will. “We don’t like to rest on our laurels, we like to challenge ourselves and try new things.” New things include songs based solely around string arrangements, like the tender track “A Wedding,” or the acoustic refuge of “Featherbeds.” “The sound has matured over time as we’ve gotten more comfortable with the way that we write, the way that we play, and the way that we think about music,” says Pace.

“With this record,” he continues, “we wanted to record with friends over an extended period of time. So, we recorded the record between September and December of 2007. The first session was with our friend C.R. Matheny, and we did 15 songs straight to cassette - like hi-bias, regular cassette tape – and we did all the basic tracks like that. The second session was with our friend Eric Emm who has a studio in Greenpoint, and that was more traditional in terms of the ways bands record these days with Pro-tools. So, we had these two sessions worth of material, and we mixed them together with both producers, so everyone had their hand in each other’s work, and so that there was cohesion between the cassette tape stuff and the computer stuff. The main point is that we took our time, and we collaborated a lot more with other people.”

At one point, Bits almost became a double-album. Says Pace, “We wanted to challenge ourselves and write 30 songs that we could release, and for awhile we thought, ‘yeah, let’s do a double record.” He then starts to rattle off one double-album classic after another. Double Nickels on the Dime. London Calling. Exile on Main Street. Physical Graffiti. The River. Tusk, even! “There’s something so satisfying about a double album if you can pull it off. But in the end, more prudent heads prevailed and we kind of realized that maybe the world wasn’t ready for an Oxford Collapse double album – or maybe the world doesn’t want an Oxford Collapse double album (laughs)!” Still in all, many additional tracks from the Bits sessions will be released on a series of 7” vinyl.

Signed to Sub Pop? Releasing b-sides on vinyl? Just what time machine have we stepped into exactly? Oxford Collapse is no retro trip, but something about them is making me nostalgic “We are all huge proponents of the album concept – where the record has a beginning, middle, and an end – and the emphasis on that has sort of been lost.” Yes, it certainly has. I ask why this has happened to a lot of artists, but truth be told, the answers seem more genuine when I’m not the one to broach the subject. “Maybe it’s because it got so easy to put out a record now,” Pace says. “I feel like there’s been an emphasis on singles, where you want to put only the best songs from a session on your record, instead of looking at the big picture.”

But this is not to suggest that Michael Pace thinks some of the songs on his new album are lesser than others. “The whole idea behind an album is that you have peaks and valleys sonically, and there’s an ebb and flow to the album. So, with all of these songs at our disposal, sitting down and making a track listing was really fun, because we put a lot of care into it, and it wasn’t like we said ‘These are the best songs’ and then just threw them all together. We had one song that, at first, we were dead-set about putting on the album. But, ultimately, we found that it worked better as a b-side one of the seven-inches.”

Thank the Christmas Baby for pawnshop record players, and the good sense in not always show your hand. Oxford Collapse will be heading to Europe in the beginning of 2009, but before that, they make two very special stops in NYC – first a CMJ showcase on October 24th at Pianos, and then a headlining set at Webster Hall on November 15th.