In my ninth grade English class, we spent an entire week examining what ingredients made text "rich." Dense pages, meticulous diction, vivid description, a healthy sprinkling of rhetorical devices and unapologetically engaging arguments were the watchwords of the day. We should be able to, we were told, envision the expression on the author's face as he was crafting the words. If TV on the Radio is a generally "wealthy" band by artistic standards, then Dear Science is an embarrassment of riches. This isn't just "rocktronica" at its finest. It is music in its freest form. And though third albums often mark periods of idealistic over-reaching or directional misfire, their third disc has helped them ascend the ladder and produce the sonic equivalent of a pan-genre OK Computer.
This album's crowning achievement lies in the band's ability to fit their trademark energy into nearly any song design. Slower songs ("Family Tree"), ebullient ones ("Dancing Choose"), equilibrium-setting ones ("Halfway Home") - each embody the frenetic-ness that is TVOTR. They form-fit their tone into different sonic challenges better than any band I've ever heard - save perhaps early Arcade Fire, a group whose nervous tension TVOTR unapologetically and expertly expands upon. Give them a hoop to jump through, and they won't try and stretch the hoop; they'll mold themselves into something dazzling, frightening and unthinkably malleable with every new track. Energy that seems wandering is revealed to be strikingly purposeful, sculpted and evolutionary, as showcased on cuts like "Shout Me Out" and "Love Dog." It's not merely that where they end is oftentimes nowhere near where they begin; it's that you can't get your mind around the method they use to take the trip.
Dear Science keeps you on your toes. And yet, with all its energy, experimentation and raw beauty, it is something I could just as easily fall asleep to as I could work out to at the gym. No passage of the album is more indicative of this than tracks four through seven. It starts with the stand out moment, "Stork & Owl." The only reason I can trust the gorgeous string-laden affair is even a TVOTR recording is because of Tunde Adebimpe's unmistakable falsetto in the song's outro, which leads into the funk electro-bass groove of single "Golden Age." On the whole, this is a slightly above average TVOTR track and, aside from the brooding "DLZ," is as good a bridge as any between the band of the past and of the present (note: the stream isn't very wide). Immediately after this, we're back to another delicate arrangement - piano this time, in the dazzling "Family Tree." If "Stork & Owl" was the closest they'll ever get to Andrew Bird, this may be the closest they ever get to Coldplay. But as soon as we have time to find our bearings, we're thrust into quick, choppy dap horns and angry images about war on "Red Dress." Most aesthetic seesaws like this can get pedantic and downright annoying. Dear Science, on the other hand, is an entire playground of genre-flips, mood swings and time signatures, and we're better off for it.
One of the catchiest hooks of the album sums up critical reaction to Dear Science's foothold atop the mountain of musical innovation. On the eponymous track, Adebimpe sings "Lord, if you've got lungs, shout me out."
TVOTR should be expecting a call.
