The fifth album from TV on the Radio, Seeds, is a primed, ripened batch. Melodies spin inside of melodies, with layers opening into each other by trapdoor (see: the bookshelf that rotates to a secret room when you pull the book titled Purple Rain). The punctuation of TVOTR’s Brooklyn-based funk sorcery is still taut and foreboding, but the songs seem more obtainable than earlier output. It’s their first album since the 2011 passing of bassist and brother Gerard Smith. Themes of love run throughout. “Could You” drives and peels off with horns, 12-string (Beatles) Rickenbacker, and the tandem vermillion tenors of Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone. Guitarist/producer Dave Sitek yields sounds on Seeds that work together like cogs—spatial, yet wrapped tight. On “Careful You,” Jaleel Bunton’s scuzzy, pulsating bass tones climb up a scaffold of beats 50 stories high. For the outro, Adebimpe’s voice becomes a staggered and muted refrain, descending through a progression eight times. He’s either saying “don’t know,” or just repeating the word “now.” It’s difficult to make out through the gelatinous sheen of the filter…
TV on the Radio play Tues Dec 9 at the Deck the Hall Ball at KeyArena.
