Happy 20th Anniversary to TV On The Radio’s second studio album Return To Cookie Mountain, originally released worldwide July 3, 2006 and in the US September 12, 2006.
It’s Winter, 2018. I’m in the back of Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton, Massachusetts, to see Jarrod Dickenson, a country-folk songwriter, play an opening set. I stick around for Lera Lynn, the headliner, and enjoy her music despite my unfamiliarity with her work.
Near the end of the night, someone near the front of the crowd calls out a request for “Wolf Like Me.” I don’t know the song and assume it’s a beloved original. A hush falls over the room. Lynn adjusts her guitar and says, “Let’s hope I can remember the words.”
Her cover is a mysterious, bouncing thing. The macabre werewolf sex narrative draws me in completely. This, I say, to myself, is exactly what I want out of my folk music on a dark, snowy night. When I get home, I search up “Wolf Like Me.” Instead of Lera Lynn’s brooding strumming, I find this.
Who the hell are these guys? It’s rowdy, tight, propulsive, perfect. Vocalist Tunde Adebimpe is a man possessed. Jaleel Bunton’s open hi-hat is the sound against which all rock drumming should be measured. Gerard Smith’s driving bass line electrifies the band. Dave Sitek’s lead guitar in the outro is incendiary. Gone was my foggy New England monster ballad—we were dealing with punk rock of the highest order.
Smitten, I find that “Wolf Like Me” comes from TV On The Radio’s second record, Return To Cookie Mountain. I queue it up and brace for fifty-six minutes of ass-whooping rock and roll. Instead, I get “I Was A Lover,” a synth-laden, calculated, icy opening track.
It’s quickly obvious that the song is meticulous; synths and guitars swap in and out surgically; Adebimpe’s vocal floats ambivalently on top of the instrumentation, waiting to see how the band will punctuate his ideas. What I thought had been a band of reckless abandon turned out to be a group of poets and scientists, combining instrumental and recording virtuosity with original voices and ideas. There are very few bands like TV On The Radio, who can floor it for four minutes on “Wolf Like Me” and then turn around with Radiohead-level studio wizardry. While the virtuosity is impressive, the real achievement is how those talents elevate the band’s songwriting.
Listen to the Album:
“Province” is a prime example of this alchemy. Over a midtempo groove, Adebimpe leads the song with a wordless, falsetto melody, doubled on piano. When transitioning to the verse, the groove stays intact but the emotion behind the vocals becomes desperate as Kyp Malone’s vocal describes the fear of stepping into the unknown.
After the lyric “shaking loose these souls from their sacred hiding space,” the track drops into the chorus. Malone, with an assist from David Bowie, supports Adebimpe’s dizzying head voice, while Bunton’s drumming gets chaotic. Meanwhile, guitars and bass wash out into a deep, fuzzy sound, resting on one chord throughout the chorus, as the lyrics transition to a sense of sturdiness: “Stand steadfast, erect and see / That love is the province of the brave.” Guitar, bass, and lyrics represent that stability, but drums and vocal timbre represent the frenzy against which that courage must gird itself.
Magic abounds elsewhere. “Tonight,” an invocation for a friend to give up substances, is awash in mysterious, spectral instrumentation. The vocal melody would sound clumsy in the hands of a lesser singer, but Adebimpe finds a way to make it light, fluttering. In a dark, hazy moment, he brings some hope. On “Tonight,” and “Province,” Return to Cookie Mountain finds a way to marry form and content to deliver messages of hope or, at least, resolution.
But there is another side to this record, in which we give in to dark temptations. “Wolf Like Me” is an obvious entry on this side of the ledger, as is “Let The Devil In,” whose hypnotic bassline, ramshackle drumming, and howling melody brings a lyric about being barred from heaven to life. “Blues From Down Here” is a direct plea for an instruction manual on how to live in a corrupt world full of ambiguity. On each of these tracks, the musical powerhouse of TV On The Radio surrounds our pleading narrator, wielding the same skill from “Province” and “Tonight” toward feelings of claustrophobia and fear.
Return To Cookie Mountain is electrifying musically, but perplexing spiritually. It offers both hope and fear, wielding Adebimpe’s buttery tenor and Malone’s angular baritone to conjure a landscape that the listener must navigate on their own. It is a rich, rewarding album that will find you when you’re not ready, so come back when you are.
Listen: