TV on the Radio
Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes [20th Anniversary Edition]
TOUCH AND GO
Brooklyn 2004 was a magical place and a magical moment—one of the last singular, attitudinal rock scenes in America for four years running by the time its experimental post-punk/pre-ambient R&B favorites TV on the Radio released their debut album, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes. Bad Brains and The Isley Brothers having a baby with Low-era Bowie as their doula, and discontent as their natal lyrical axis, was the abstract, dynamics-rich cry that Tunde Adebimpe, Kyp Malone, Dave Sitek, and Jaleel Bunton made (RIP to Gerard Smith, TVotR’s utility member from 2005 until his 2011 passing) through to their 2013 hiatus—and seemingly will again as they hit the road supporting the 20-year anniversary of this debut.
From its opening "The Wrong Way”—Adebimpe’s powerfully emotive, cut-and-paste rant about Black masculinity weighed against the whole of Afroculturism: “Teaching folks the score / About patience, understanding, agape babe / And sweet, sweet amour”—to its hopelessly romantic closing bonus track “You Could Be Love,” Desperate Youth is perfection, a handsomely sculpted album eloquently balanced between the symmetry of contagious songcraft and the utter confounding of its angular, explosive musicality and obtuse wordiness. In its maelstrom’s center is Adebimpe’s big voice and tiny, intricately wound sentiments and thesis statements. Rare is the opportunity for a singer to be a poet-proclaimer without looking like a douchebag, yet here is Adebimpe hollering, “Hey, desperate youth / Oh, blood-thirsty babes / Oh, your guns are pointed the wrong way” like a multi-tracked, 21st century Frederick Douglass against a mass of steel, flutes, and fuzzed-out rhythms.
And you don’t get Adebimpe’s vocals without the band’s equally urgent instrumentation and wildly insistent grooves as overheatedly produced by Sitek. Working as one testy, churning combine tied to Sitek’s incendiary sonic vibe, the lyrical desolation that fills “Dreams” and “King Eternal” with the still-fresh horror of post-9/11 NYC informs its moody arrangements. The crushing blight of “Don’t Love You” is as heaving in its forceful instrumentation as it is Adebimpe’s lyrics. Even the raw cuts acting as extras on this 20th anniversary two-LP set—“Final Fantasy,” an early take of what would become the psychedelicized anti-war screed “Bomb Yourself,” a heightened demo version of their ardently anthemic “Staring at the Sun,” and the New Health Rock EP, featuring a cover of Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Modern Romance”—rip through your speakers, and tug on whatever connects your heart to your soul, then down into your stomach.
Weirder still, I don’t think Touch and Go touched this modern-day classic one bit: Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes sounded this good then, as it does now.
