TV on the Radio: Seeds

This, the band's fifth record, and first since the untimely passing of bassist Gerard Smith, feels like a subtle sea-change, but then TV on the Radio have always marched to their own beat. Seeds is a more lo-fi response to 2008's Dear Science, channelling what David Sitek has called "anti-goals", though there are still familiar signposts (doo-wop and gospel, for example). And there is a looking to the past to make sense of the present: Happy Idiot filters New Order, and there are a clutch of songs that meditate on post- punk, which sit alongside the Ramones-baiting Lazerray. Some songs have a strange energy. Right Now and Winter have interesting ideas, but are infused with a lethargy, perhaps lacking the focus that Sitek's production usually harnesses. But when it works, as on Test Pilot, it is clever, immersive, and something they do so well. tvontheradioband.com