Tune In: TV on the Radio
The band talks about the ideas and motives behind 'Dear Science'

By Jonathan Zwickel
Special to MSN Music

The important thing is to not overthink TV on the Radio.

It's true that lyrically, musically and thematically, the Brooklyn, N.Y., quintet bristles with ideas. It's true that clarity is not their strong suit. They dwell comfortably in the uncomfortable ambivalence and misguided king-making of a post-"Idol" America with a sound that's equal parts thrumming alt-rock, gleaming R&B, and hazy electronic atmospherics. They've somehow eluded mainstream embrace over the past several years, though Rolling Stone, Spin, Pitchfork and Metacritic ranked their "Return to Cookie Mountain" among the top five albums of 2006.

Released this week, "Dear Science," their awkwardly punctuated second album for Interscope, throws open the door to their dark world. The record, the best of 2008 it must be noted, is their most accessible; the music is beautiful, sinister, unabashed and skeptical. Complex stuff, but if there's a simple reason for its success, it's this: balance. TV on the Radio may be the most important band in the world that isn't Radiohead, but their graveness and grandeur are tempered by humor and humility.

"A friend of mine used to say even a manic depressive is completely happy half the time," says Tunde Adebimpe, TV on the Radio's Nigerian-born vocalist. "There's always a point I get to where I realize the humor of being -- the luxury of happiness and the luxury of sadness -- ultimately you're lucky to be alive and feeling both of those things. Hanging on too much to either one is kind of unnatural."

"We were excited to make something dancier," says guitarist/vocalist Kyp Malone. "There's a time and a place for music that turns people off, but that's not anyone in this band's mission. It's not f------ Stockhausen, it's a rock band, you know?" he laughs, referring to the notoriously difficult 20th century composer.

"We play shows and a bunch of people come out, and it's a super good feeling to see people engaged and enjoying music. We're not writing specifically so that we can make people more engaged, but there's nothing wrong with people being more engaged."

2008 has been a milestone year for grandeur. Witness the sonic melodrama of rock's other upstart heavyweights, Death Cab for Cutie and Coldplay, both of whom released albums this year. "Dear Science," with a title suggesting a salutation, an endearment, and an entreaty, offers something more. Call it groove, call it funk, call it lightness. Whatever it is, it adheres to the prime directive of one George "Uncle Jam" Clinton: Free your mind and your ass will follow.

"If someone is taken over by music to the point that they're driven to dance to it ..." Malone says, trailing off. "Dancing is, I don't know -- it's a really important and special thing that we have as human animals. I can't really articulate what I'm trying to say because it's beyond words, because it's dance -- being completely in your body and at the same time being taken away. It's a pretty incredible and sacred experience."

For all its movement and energy, there's no lack of pathos to the record. Its most memorable moments, in fact, may be its quietest. Two particular songs stand out: slow-blooming allegory ballad "Stork & Owl" and album closer "Lover's Day," an orchestral call for a new calendar date to celebrate sensuality. Sublime in their beauty, both are penned by Malone and, like "Dear Science," in general, attempt to establish a new mythology for a hyperstimulated modern world.

"I'm spending a lot of time reading about different people's myths and thinking of the purpose of those stories and what occupies that space today in the supposedly modern world," Malone says, pointing to ancient stories of the Hopi, Navajo, and Dogon of Africa. People, he says, "that lived on the planet in balance, not to overromanticize."

"They keep reoccurring with different characters attached to them via different cultures because they're quintessential stories of the human experience, you know?"

What about mythology for our age? "CSI," "Star Wars," "Grand Theft Auto" -- can we cite them as our myths while drowning in cultural clutter?

"I feel like myth is being created today, but it's for a very temporal society, for a society that's not sustainable, for a society that doesn't really believe in death and doesn't believe in the future because it's all going so fast forward that it has to, like, pretend that there isn't one, even though it's teetering on the brink of complete collapse," Malone says. "I feel like it's important to start telling those [ancient] stories again if we can. Looking at it in a completely empirical, scientific way, the systems we live under -- the economic systems, the social systems -- they're unsustainable, you know? And it's going to fall apart. And whatever's left, the only thing that I feel like realistically could survive, if even this could survive, is a way that is more like the way people lived before industrialization, before the patriarchy, before what we look at when we talk about history. Prehistory."

This is what TV on the Radio thinks about when they make a "dancier" album. It's not overthinking, it's thinking just enough to create their art, to create something personal and lasting and, yes, grandiose.

Jonathan Zwickel writes about music for The Seattle Times and is working on a biography of the Beastie Boys.