Return to Cookie Mountain (with Bonus Tracks) Reviews

Their second album and first for Interscope is almost wholly brilliant. Like Mogwai, Sigur Ros and a dozen others, TVOTR excels at making slowly-evolving tunes with vaguely anthemic choruses and lots of loud-soft dynamics. Unlike virtually any of those other bands, TV on the Radio mix a genuine and actual songwriting ability with their knack for finding sounds that appear to be "new." This record is crisper-sounding and incorporates more dance-based elements, but it's essentially a pop album. While the lack of the free web-released "Dry Drunk Emperor, a tribute to President Bush, is initially a bummer, the album percolates with enough pre-apocalyptic tension to satisfy anyone. In a Prince-pitched falsetto, the group sings "I was a lover/ Before this war," While throughout, the combination of melody and invention is always pitch-perfect (well, except on "Province" and "Let the Devil In," those songs sort of suck.) People of Earth: please make this band into total superstars and buy several copies of their album: one for the car, another for the office, etc. What we really need in our popular music is more weirdness, and more truth. --Mike McGonigal