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It's about humanity documenting its experiences together and historically recording our relationship as human beings. That's ultimately what art is. Craft is something different, but we hopefully stay on the art side of things.
-David Sitek |
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Mountain Climbing
Return To Cookie Mountain is a huge growth spurt in several respects for the band.
"We added two new members that play drums and bass, which made a humongous difference, but we also included a lot more guests (including TVOTR cheerleader David Bowie) and spent a lot more time putting it together, five to six months," offers Sitek. "You're not going to get to the essence of what you're doing if you don't spend more time. With this band, it's so complicated. We were in a situation where our music was being called all kinds of preposterous shit that we didn't think was accurate. We definitely didn't want to be misunderstood, so we took as much time as necessary to make the record the way we wanted to [slight pause] at this moment."
"If I had an outward intention for this music, it was to try and make a record like real life. And real life isn't static. We don't want to make songs just about girls, though that's an aspect of our lives. We don't want to make songs that are just about politics, which is also an aspect of our lives."
He continues, "My favorite aspect of what I do is I'm able to conceal a lot of things. I love reading articles where they talk about the synthesizer on 'Dreams' (from debut album Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes). I love the fact that there were NO synthesizers used on that song at all. It just makes me laugh. In my mind, I love the idea that someone thinks I'm just like Kajagoogoo. That's really neat. It gets people's imaginations going."
TV on the Radio by Sgoralnick |
"I don't play guitar solos. I don't want people to know, 'This is the part the guitarist wants as much attention as the singer so he's gonna solo.' 90-percent of my guitar playing is trying to emulate a synthesizer, but I don't have time to go through all the menus [laughs]."
Despite the gargantuan scale of many cuts, Cookie Mountain throbs with unguarded intimacy that feels like we're eavesdropping on their thoughts. Part of that comes from where the record came together.
"My home studio is my studio," says Sitek. "The way that Staygold Studio is designed is like a living room-sandbox hybrid. It doesn't have the intimidating feel of a massive SSL room. Most of the time it was one or two of us recording at a time."
He explains his studio's name, "It's from the movie The Outsiders when Ralph Macchio's character is dying and C. Thomas Howell is holding him in his arms. Macchio says, 'Stay gold, Pony Boy. Stay gold.'"
Examining The Infrastructure
TV on the Radio by Neil Gavin |
The first lyric on the new album is "I was a lover, before this war." Many have interpreted this and other tunes as being a commentary on current events. But it's the kind of statement Hector might have made as soldiers stormed the walls of Troy or an Israeli youth might have muttered at being conscripted into mandatory service. It's a state of mind that transcends one war. In a few words it reminds us how love falters in times of conflict. If TVOTR is political at all, it's in oblique, poetic ways that actively avoid getting up on a soapbox.
"We've learned from previous bands, that doesn't work," remarks Sitek. "How much can you possibly tolerate if someone is pounding something into you? You're left no room for interpretation. In this instance, with politics, a little ambiguity is called for because we want it to be longer lasting. It's more powerful or important to say, 'Your belief that a bozo is going to override your own intuition or personal power is erroneous.' To say, 'This guy is fucking up in this particular way,' would require us to make another record every time some bozo did something stupid. We'd be making a lot of records."
"Doing political music in the absence of an Abbie Hoffman or Allen Ginsberg or Raoul Vaneigem or Saul Alinsky is hard. These messages need to come out, but if Bob Dylan and Bob Marley couldn't do it, then we're not going to!"
Mixing in counterculture heroes like Hoffman and Alinsky is integral to TVOTR's art, which crosses over into multiple genres, drawing freely from far more than just the music world.
"I think we're no different than anyone outside the industry," responds Sitek. "You're influenced by coffee. How could you not be? This band is just more willing to admit that it's all the same thing. I know that caffeine and literature affects my music just as much, and probably more, than any band."
Another major influence these days Sitek points out is the advent of powerful, portable MP3 players.
"The iPod is to music what the remote control is to TV programming. I think it's made peoples' attention spans really short, but it's also given them the ability to culturally span a hundred years of music in an afternoon," he comments. "It's killing the album as a format, which is fine. The industry created the album format to cut down on manufacturing costs, and it's very rare that a band has a vision that should take 11 songs to realize. You know what I mean?"
"We make albums, but I'm never going to be able to separate myself from being a recording addict. I've made albums with other bands. I've made albums by myself. I sit there and do the whole process, and I'm really into it. This band does have five completely different personalities that meet on very specific common ground (which, appropriately, he never elaborates on in our conversation). We want to punch through that whole relationship to each other, and that takes a whole album. In fact, I'm surprised we didn't make a double album. We recorded 26 songs during these sessions."
For all Sitek's big thinking, there's also an earthy, good time-seeking fellow who's looking forward to a hypothetical VH1 Behind The Music special on TV On The Radio "where we're talking about how we can't stand to watch each other drink water, while background music plays and somebody talks about what a dick I am."
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