Cougar Microbes Top Albums of 2011: TV On The Radio – Nine Types Of Light

Tv On The Radio didn’t take too long to follow up 2009’s brilliant ‘Dear Science,‘ and as usual didn’t disappoint. This time the Brooklyn outfit set up camp on the West Coast and the sunnier climate appears to have seeped through to these tracks.

With another mild change of direction the tracks on ‘Nine Types Of Light‘ have borrowed some of the horns from its predecessor but definitely comes across as a more laid back affair.

Lyrically frontman Tunde Adebimpe and singer-guitarist Kyp Malone seem less preoccupied with tales of apocalypse and the end of the world and more focussed on making sure you tell the ones you love exactly how you feel for them. That this would be the last album Gerard Smith would appear on before his untimely death makes this all the more poignant.

Meanwhile, special praise should go to guitarist and producer extraordinaire Dave Sitek for realizing that the band’s sound needed a tweak and for incorporating some of the ideas he has been involved with in his “other” projects recently. TVOTR haven’t lost the electricity that initially made us fall in love with them, they have just refined the way they administer it to us.

TRACKS:

TV On The Radio – “Will Do”

Nine Types of Light - TV On the Radio