Seeds
EMI
TV On The Radio simply don’t make bad albums. With an eclectic, genre-hopping style that can be difficult to pin down, they’ve been making excellent records since 2004’s Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes.
Seeds starts strong as the raw earnestness of opener, Quartz, is followed by Careful You, a gentle, multi-lingual plea that explodes into an electro freak-out in its latter stages. Could You is about as straightforward as TV On The Radio get and yet still manages to be catchy as hell, and is followed by the deliriously infectious pop of Happy Idiot at track four.
After this, it’s no surprise the album takes it down a notch through its middle section, as a string of slower tracks brings the mood back down a bit. The only real misstep of the album is the saccharine Right Now, which is reminiscent of early Phoenix and contains none of TV On The Radio’s distinctive off-kilter energy. But thankfully this lull is immediately wiped out by Winter, a thumping album highlight that finds the band at its heaviest.
While it may not be quite at the level of 2008’s brilliant Dear Science, Seeds is a seriously good effort that extends the band’s unblemished streak to five albums long.
4 stars
KEIRON COSTELLO
