TV On The Radio

Brooklyn's TV on the Radio are indebted to everything from late-Eighties indie rock to
classic soul music - on last year's stunning Young Liars EP they did a doo-wop cover of a
Pixies song. The band's debut full-length, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, is an
immaculate album about disappointment in all its forms: romantic, civic, psychological.
TVOTR know how to treat painful topics with an elegant touch. "I will be your sc... More >

Intelligent, honest, and original ought to be enough. But in fact there are acres, tons, and years of bad art that share these virtues, especially if "original" is interpreted generously, which it better be with the world's hundredth or thousandth guitars-and-loops outfit. Really. Take-him-or-leave-him singer. No great shakes melodically or rhythmically. Approximately as insightful in re the exigencies of male-and-female as 50 years of male chauvinists before them. Always humorless, sometimes sententious. All told, pretty dull--unless you're so desperate that you'll sing hosanna for every piece of intelligent-honest-original that comes down the circuit. (Grade: B)