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This Bostonist can still recall a time, years ago, when he grabbed a couple of tickets to a taping of the Last Call with Carson Daly (don't judge) just to see TV On The Radio. The two-song set by the fiery and still-blooming Brooklyn quintet was forever burned into Bostonist's memory and made the embarrassment of having to watch Daly blather on for half an hour more than worth it. Since that day in April 2004, this Bostonist saw nothing but a bright future for TV On The Radio; meanwhile he pushed songs from Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes onto his friends for a solid year, hoping that one day the band would get its proper due. Thankfully, that day came, and those at the House of Blues last evening were all a part of it.
Though TV On The Radio has attained some success in recent years—receiving accolades for their brilliant sophomore disc, Return To Cookie Mountain, and even more honors for their tremendous third effort, Dear Science,—they never seemed to quite hit it big. Bostonist has seen the resistance the group has faced in this city, be it at a free FNX concert in 2006 where the band was greeted by confused Yeah Yeah Yeahs fans, or last fall when the band's set at the Wilbur Theatre was met with head scratches and people who dropped $20 just to hear "Wolf Like Me." Now that the tunes in Dear Science, have gotten a chance to sink in to the collective consciousness, it appears as though people are finally able to let TV On The Radio into their heads, and all the better for it.
Before TV On The Radio was welcomed to Boston, openers The Dirty Projectors brought a caustic take on indie rock to the stage. Once David Longstreth's side project while a student at Yale, Dirty Projectors has blossomed into a fully-fledged indie rock six-piece, featuring with vocal harmonies by a few gifted female singers and plenty of critical acclaim to boot. The group performed a short-but-sweet set completely comprised of songs off the soon-to-be-released album Bitte Orca, wrapping textured melodies around some mathy and downright heavy live instrumentation. At the center of the stage was Longstreth, but while he bobbed his head back and forth like a rooster as his fingers flew up and down his guitar's frets, the real center of attention was on one of the band's other vocalists.
Amber Coffman stole Dirty Projectors' set, first with a dual singing attack on "Remade Horizon," where she and Haley Dekle managed to modulate their voices into high-frequency, high-speed chirping sounds, and then on the closing number and the band's most pop-friendly tune "Stillness is the Move." Taking lead vocal duties on the new single, Coffman displayed a voice as assured and powerful as any of Billboard's most popular divas, and yet managed to perform the song's grandiose vocal parts with a down-to-earth sensibility.
At quarter past nine, the House of Blues' speakers began to rattle with the feedback-blanket of TV On The Radio's "Wash The Day," an eight-minute track that's as unconventional a choice for an opening number as the band playing it. Though other acts might falter in the face of the non-stop touring TVOTR has endured in recent years, this group merely takes it in stride, taking the opportunity to rotate through a growing discography while fiddling around with musical compositions in a live setting. Songs such as "The Wrong Way" were transformed from sludgy art-punk into stomping, powerful anthems, while "Staring At The Sun" became a club-worthy banger and "Dirtywhirl" took on a minimalist quality, adding instrument after instrument to frontman Tunde Adebimpe's faint whistling.
Though TVOTR faced some of the well-documented problems that come with performing at the House of Blues, as well as some unusually shoddy sound work at the beginning of their set, the band managed to captivate the capacity crowd with ease. It could be due to the fact that the band has amassed its fare share of pop-friendly "hits" that have made it onto mainstream radio. Or perhaps it's the group's stage presence, which seems to evoke a child-like eagerness in being able to perform in front of people mixed with a sense of well-learned musical maestros. Most likely, it's a combination of both reasons. The sight of Adebimpe's gyroscopic flailing body juxtaposed against Kyp Malone's serene and stoic stance while sweetly serenading the audience with "Province" or "Golden Age" would make anyone with feet and a love of pop music move their body. And the crowd certainly did, clapping in time to "Dancing Choose," belting out the lyrics to "Shout Me Out," and dancing along to the jangly, ska-inspired guitar work of "Red Dress."
In the middle of a stirring rendition of Dear Science, standout "Family Tree" during the band's encore, Bostonist realized TV On The Radio had "made it" to a certain level of acceptance and adoration in the eyes of the general public. The emotionally arresting song caused a silence to come over the crowd—an impressive feat considering the number of inebriated individuals who could be heard evoking such brilliant banter such as "he said Boston!" —and this Bostonist was able to take in the song alongside the audience. The packed venue housed the most diverse group of individuals at any show Bostonist has attended in this fair city in years: people of all races, ages, shapes, and sizes seemed to stare at the stage entranced in the warm vocal melodies and passionate instrumentation lead by guitarist/programmer David Sitek, keyboardist/bassist Gerard Smith, and drummer Jaleel Bunton. Though many of the audience members would perhaps never speak to one another in their day-to-day lives, here they all were connected by the sounds of a handful of Brooklyn buddies who managed to bring their weird little tunes to the masses. And that's all Bostonist could have wanted for TV On The Radio.
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This show was fantastic, no doubt about it - disagree about the show at the Wilbur last fall, though. I thought that one rocked face as well (although not quite as much as last night). Definitely missed the Benedictine Horns last night...
BTW, it's David Sitek, not Andrew.
Sitek mistake fixed - funny, I thought I wrote David - 'twas a late night!
For the record, I didn't say the TV On The Radio show in the fall was bad - I said they met resistance from the crowd. For anyone sitting in the nosebleeds like myself could probably tell you that barely anyone above the crowd left their seats and aside from a small contingent in the front of the stage, hardly any person seemed to move their bodies whatsoever. Which would explain why, during their encore at the Wilbur, TVOTR made a comment along the lines of "is it easy to dance in your seat" (not a direct quote), urging people to move and react to their songs. It was a brilliant set and the addition of the Benedictine Horns was fantastic, but the crowd was mostly apathetic from where I was sitting.
I've seen the band seven times in three cities on two different continents and they put their heart in every performance, but this was the first time in Boston that a genuinely diverse mix of individuals responded to an excellent set with great enthusiasm. The crowd's adoration may not have matched that of the audience at the Paradise in 2006 where people literally could not sit still and bodies seemed to swarm and move about as if it were a feeding frenzy - but that crowd tended to be made up of college-age kids. At the show last night I saw kids as young (or young looking) as nine and folks with all colors of hair and shades of skin. In a city where nearly every rock show's audience is made up of well-to-moderately well off white kids of college age, the show's audience makeup and their reaction to an excellent set only added to the fantastic performance on the stage and made for a great atmosphere that I hadn't been able to pick up from those in the seats around me at the Wilbur show in the fall.
PS his full name is David Andrew Sitek, so I wasn't completely off originally... I'd just somehow misplaced his first name!
Oh yeah, I definitely agree with you on those points about the crowd. This was my 5th time catching TVOTR, and aside from the first time in the First Unitarian Church basement in Philly, it was the most energetic I've seen the crowd. Like you said, it was a great cross section of the population - everyone from families to bros to hipsters to old folks!