Basement’s Best: ​TV on the Radio

What’s really in a name? In an age when music is consumed à la carte, listeners dragging and dropping their earworms of choice into infinite playlists, what value does an album title hold? With the passing of bassist Gerard Smith in 2011, as well as the weight of expectations driven by the group’s excellent string of albums previous, the title of TV on the Radio’s fifth album is worthy of rumination.

Suggesting rebirth and promise, a fresh beginning borne of familiar roots, “Seeds” encapsulates the conundrum faced by a band in the center of the spectrum between infancy and institution. After the individual members took an understood break from the band in the wake of Smith’s death to pursue a handful of side projects and production credits, TV on the Radio’s reconvention is not so much a somber reflection as it is a celebration of perseverance and unity.

The group’s melting pot experimentation remains intact, yet never obstructs the oft-hummable melodicism spread across its 14 tracks. True to form, the group dabbles with the constructs of a laundry list of genres, letting them fall atop each other rather than form a single-file line. Pulsing from the word “go,” album opener “Quartz” cascades with a doo-wop-tinged Afropop (Afrowop?) feel into a playground chorus, and dovetails into “Careful You,” an arena-filling hip hop descent, dotted with longing Franglish hooks. The album is generous with such left turns, subtly woven into the mix thanks to the production of the band’s Swiss Army knife, multi-instrumentalist David Sitek.

Lead single “Happy Idiot” marks just one of the album’s high points, with a metronomic drive that demands of the listener, at the very least, a shimmy of the hip. Practically all of “Seeds” is dancefloor-ready, really. However the beats turn and churn, TV on the Radio provides an LP equally deserving of blissed-out woofer-bumping and headphone concentration.

Smartly pushing onward and outward while maintaining its own art-school sense of self, TV on the Radio plants itself as a necessary name in the canon of indie royalty with “Seeds,” however you read into it.

KNDS Suggests

“Content Nausea” – Parkay Quarts
Though billed with a humorously homophonic margarine moniker, Parquet Courts retains its Ph.D.-level wit and stoner charm. Frontman Andrew Savage barks spitfire satire (“Ignore this part, it’s an advertisement/These people are famous, I’d trust ‘em”) with a velocity that’s apparently necessary in a post-clickbait world.

“Daffodils” – Mark Ronson feat. Kevin Parker
One of three tracks to feature the Tame Impala mastermind on his upcoming “Uptown Special” LP, Ronson’s skronky, chic space-funk jam sounds like a remnant left behind by Parliament’s Mothership.

“The Shins” – Flake Music
Before The Shins were The Shins, they were Flake Music. And they had a song called “The Shins.” Still with me? Culled from its remixed, remastered, and all-around spit-shined 1997 debut “When You Land Here, It’s Time to Return,” Flake Music’s “The Shins” is a fine artifact, capturing the raw basement jangle that would, in turn, become the soundtrack to the iPod era.

“Shirim” – Melody’s Echo Chamber
With the aid of Kevin Parker’s (see above) hazy production, Melody Prochet crafted one of 2012’s finest debuts. Daringly shedding his assistance for her sophomore effort, Prochet proves her creative autonomy with this dancey kaleido-pop nugget.

“What a Dream I Had” – Cool Ghouls
In the realm of garage rock, the descriptor “raw” is almost always an honorable spin on “lacking musicianship.” While San Francisco’s retro-rocking Cool Ghouls are not ones to hide their fraying seams, their Fillmore-filling three-part harmonies set them far apart from their scrappier peers.