TV on the Radio: Return to Cookie Mountain

Label: Interscope

If there’s anyone in New York who doesn’t already know about TV on the Radio, they’re about to find out, and what a fine album they’ll be learning from. The Brooklyn band’s first major-label release finds its musical and lyric visions uncompromised but further refined, drawing on such a wide range of genres as to be uncategorizable. Conceptually, it’s reminiscent of David Bowie (who is one of the vocalists on “Province”) if his career were condensed into a single album, in the sense that pop and experimental music, bits of prog-rock and R&B, are fuzzily interwoven in a sum greater than the parts. This is a real live band, but the operating aesthetic is akin to laptop electronica, as though the goal with each track is to create a sonic sculpture through the accumulation of interesting, seductive, and evocative sounds, with the vocals given equality rather than primacy in the mix. The new American version of the album includes three more tracks, an El-P remix of “Hours” and two new songs.