TV on the Radio on the TV

Last week, TV on the Radio made several TV appearances to promote their album "Dear Science;" which was by far one of the best (if not the best) albums of 2008. Now, having seen TVotR live a number of times as well as an owner of all their albums, I had high hopes for their performances.

Unfortunately, not all of their performances delivered. On the Colbert Report (below), the vocals seemed to race ahead of the drumming, causing the beat to accelerate to the point where Tunde Adebimpe, lead vocals, was more concerned with spitting out all the words in time before the song ended. The band's SNL appearance (not available due to NBCs copyright) was no more satisfying, either. Performing their song "Golden Age," TVotR seemed to be plagued by a combination of bad acoustics and terrible soundboard management. Either way, these two live performances fell well short of what I had hoped to be a great opportunity for TVotR.



That isn't to say all of their TV spots were bad, though. Their appearance on Letterman playing Dancing Choose" was pretty awesome on its own merits, not to mention the very cool stage location of a fire escape outside the studio building.



Whatever. At least nothing this band could ever do will ever be as painful as watching the Ting Tings perform live.