Blending doo-wop, hip-hop, and soul into post-punk, TV on the Radio s discography is unlike anything released this century. Their music still sounds singular.
TV On The Radio sounded like the future. In the early 2000s, there was room for a lot of music in New York. A post-9/11 city went through upheavals, and a new scene flourished. Sometimes we think of eras more clearly delineated than they were the early ’00s owned by the downtown Manhattan cool of the Strokes and Interpol, the second half of the decade belonging to Brooklynites like LCD Soundsystem and the National. Of course, things bleed over more than that. At the dawn of the decade, Tunde Adebimpe and Dave Sitek hung around with the likes of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Liars, adopting the then-cheap neighborhood of Williamsburg as their home base while they chased a sound that was more alien and provocative than any of their peers.
“I’m rich.” It’s the first thing that Karen O sings on the first Yeah Yeah Yeahs album. Karen delivers that line in a sleepy murmur, over a Nick Zinner guitar riff that sounds like a malfunctioning sonar machine and a Brian Chase drumbeat that sounds like an ogre smashing two boulders together. Karen O extrapolates: “I’m rich, like a hot noise. Rich, rich, rich!” Then, her voice suddenly veers into a roar: “I’ll take you out, boy! I’ll take you out!” This was how the Yeah Yeah Yeahs introduced themselves to the larger world. As introductions go, that’s pretty good.