“Thank you, guys, for showing up,” says TV on the Radio’s lead singer, Tunde Adebimpe, as if, despite this being an intimate date, his dedicated following might not. He’s being arch, but the band have been away since 2011, when their bassist, Gerard Smith, died of lung cancer. They’ve since bailed on the Brooklyn scene they started along with indie-popsters like Dirty Projectors, Gang Gang Dance and Grizzly Bear, relocated to LA, and taken their whirling noise in a more upbeat, hookier, brighter direction. Perhaps they weren’t sure who’d still want to hear it.
Quite a few, it turns out. Tonight, brilliantly, has the energy of a proper punk rock gig, and the audience pogos at touching distance. There’s plenty of older material, such as The Wrong Way, with Dave Sitek’s power chords and a backing of joyous horns, and the gleefully unhinged calypso post-punk of Golden Age, with its falsetto-scat about “blowing up like a ghetto blaster” sung by stoic beard wearer Kyp Malone. Despite the fact that there’s six of them crammed on stage, hemmed in by more pedals than the Tour de France, they manage to balance a complex fuzz that would make other bands sound as if they were playing inside a crisp packet.
You do wonder, after over a decade of critically acclaimed music, why TVOTR aren’t playing arenas. It could be because, while their peers appear on tween film soundtracks, TVOTR have continued to push against current trends. Their newest material goes back to their skittering dance-punk roots (notably Happy Idiot), while Careful You traces over the Knife’s propulsive electro with a wash of synth. Perhaps their most reflective moment comes with Trouble, although not even Adebimpe’s Stretch Armstrong-like movements and the layers of electronic wizardry can distract from its sugary, more straightforward rock anthemia (“Everything’s gonna be all right”). But they level the sentimentality with Staring at the Sun’s intensity, the feverish sound of thousands of mid-00s student indie nights. Long may they continue to blow up those ghetto blasters.
