Dear Science

TV On The Radio- Halfway Home (Link 2)

If this album were a scientific equation, it would be Michael Jackson + Prince+Talking Heads+David Bowie = brilliance. I’ve liked them for a while, but what stuns me about this is just how much variety they’ve got in there. Funky romps? Red Dress and Crying tick the boxes. Drum and Bass? Please put on your Dancing Shoes sir. Art-rock with shoegaze guitars? Halfway Home. Ballads? Family Tree. Michael Jackson and David Bowie’s audio love-child? We shall call him Golden Age (which is a better name than Blanket anyway).

Coupled with the terrific choonage is some fairly serious post-Bush lyrical content – they’re clearly counting down the days till they can refer to W. in the past tense, and Golden Age’s optimism clearly has one eye on Barack Obama’s rush for the White House (fingers crossed for November 4th boys and girls). This album is an angry, grief-sticken, poppy, hopeful and horny (oh yes) elegy to the very public decline of a great nation in recent years that you will play to your kids. File alongside “Stay Positive” in the “Album of the year 2008” section of your record collection.