TV On The Radio - 'Return To Cookie Mountain' (4AD) Released 03/07/06

TV On The Radio may reference Super Mario World in the title of their sophomore long player, but that’s about as frivolous as it gets – the Brooklyn quintet have got much bigger issues than computer games on their minds. What would you expect though from a band whose reaction to Hurricane Katrina was to almost immediately write, record and release via their website a song criticising the actions of the Bush administration in the wake of the tragedy? ‘Return To Cookie Mountain’ is a political album.  But not left vs. right, Democrat vs. Republican party politics. The politics of life, of love, and as they put it “good vibes”.

Unsurprisingly, a record that deals with such grand narratives isn’t going to be the most immediate of listens. On first spin, it seems like 56 minutes of psychobabble and musically throwing everything they know at you. But when you’re feeling contemplative, listen quietly. Maybe in the middle of the night.  With headphones. The sort of multi-layered epics on show here take time to appreciate. And even then, there’s so much going on at once they sound like the sort of free-for-all jams that might be played at the local Arcade Fire Anti-War Club’s social night.  But eventually, you’ll realise that every note of '...Cookie Mountain’s double-choc-chip-and-the-kitchen-sink instrumentation works towards a single purpose: touching your soul in a way only the rarest of records can.

Not exactly faint praise, sure, but you just listen to any track here and claim differently. Go on, any of them’ll do – they’ve each got more ideas in their 4-5 minutes than most bands have in a bloated ‘best of’ box set. The opener, ‘I Was A Lover’? Stuttering CD-skip beats and looped brass stabs. Standout track ‘Wolf Like Me’?  Droning synth bass and euphorically chanted vocals. How about fan fave ‘Province’?  Well, guest vocal appearances from David Bowie are normally a pretty good guarantee of quality. And light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel pop songs like this are just one of the reasons why The Thin White Duke loves TV On The Radio, and why you will too.