Before Return to Cookie Mountain‘s release, TV on the Radio shared “Dry Drunk Emperor”, a scathing critique of then-President George W. Bush’s lack of response to Hurricane Katrina as an MP3 on their website. Unlike these days, where few artists directly criticize our sitting/sleeping President, TV on the Radio, Ted Leo, and many others aired their grievances with Bush the Second during his reign. Even future Republican and Trump supporter Kanye West declared that Bush doesn’t care about Black people on a Katrina telethon.
Still, it was a little surprising that most of the political commentary came from artists who didn’t call New York home. TV on the Radio were one of the bands who most consistently engaged with politics at a personal level during the 2000s, with their track “Golden Age” from their Cookie Mountain follow-up, Dear Science, seemingly calling the 2008 election for Barack Obama a couple of months in advance. At that moment, playing this record on election night and watching the results pile up for Obama felt like waking up from a nightmare. More on that in 2028, when I return to Dear Science and hopefully feel optimistic about that upcoming election.
Before recording Return to Cookie Mountain, TV on the Radio expanded from the core three of Dave Sitek, Kyp Malone, and Tunde Adibempe to a five-piece, adding Jaleel Bunton and the late Gerard Smith. It is on this record that they blossomed into a full-fledged rock band. Not that their debut, Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes, was a minor affair. It sounded fresher than anything in its midst, blending post-punk, hip-hop, soul, and funk in ways that left critics breathlessly grasping for superlatives.
Twenty years on, and the band seemingly not making new music, Return to Cookie Mountain now stands as the most restlessly creative TV on the Radio record; not to take anything away from the others, which are uniformly excellent, but from track to track, it’s a surprise. Dear Science is the band in complete control of their vision, focused on creating a cohesive sound that might invite new listeners.
Back to 2006. In the shadow of September 11 and the middle of another war with Iraq came Return to Cookie Mountain. It was released in the rest of the world in July 2006, but didn’t arrive in the United States until a few days before the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Nearly every review read Return to Cookie Mountain as a post-9/11 record, concerned with the state of the world at that time, and rightfully so. TV on the Radio was one of the hottest bands in Brooklyn at the time, and they signed with Interscope and 4AD to reach for an even bigger audience.
In true early 2000s fashion, Return to Cookie Mountain leaked onto file-sharing sites months earlier with a slightly different track sequence. The original version opened with “Wolf Like Me”, an indisputable ripper that eventually became the band’s calling card, despite next to no support from MTV at the time. They never sounded this ferocious again. Only “New Health Rock” from that EP and “Mercy”, a single released in 2013, attempted to challenge it, but still, no contest. Where Desperate Youth’s opener “The Wrong Way” presents a thesis for the group, “Wolf Like Me” shreds everything in its path, with Adibempe shouting taunts over buzzsaw guitars. It took away my breath on first listen, delivering everything I hoped for from the new TV on the Radio in just under four minutes.
Aside from that switch, the track list is the same, so the official version opens with “I Was a Lover”, a majestic, mournful track that probably sets the tone more appropriately. Still, why on earth would it make sense to make “Wolf Like Me” track four? More on that later, too.
I will admit I couldn’t wait for an official release, so I listened to Return to Cookie Mountain incessantly for months, with “Wolf Like Me” first, before I had the official version. When “Wolf Like Me” leads into “I Was a Lover”, it does give that track a different feeling, more like a morning-after track than a declaration of purpose. As the opener, “I Was a Lover” sets a tone for the rest of Cookie Mountain to be an account of survival more than a primal scream. I’ve made my peace with this update, although it took some adjusting.
Return to Cookie Mountain’s characters are all reeling from the fallout of 9/11, and many of the songs tell those stories. The remaining tracks feature Malone and Adibempe in the chorus, commenting on the nation’s overall mood and, more specifically, the people who surrounded them in Brooklyn. It is equal parts a funeral for innocence, a slide into hopelessness, and a call to keep on going. Sitek stitches it all together seamlessly—the guitar screeches, the synthesizer’s wail, and the pounding percussion. Few records of this era sounded like the product of such a cohesive vision.
Let me return to the album most listeners are familiar with, the one that begins with the mournful “I Was a Lover”. It announces Return to Cookie Mountain’s mission in a different way. Rather than beginning with a burst of invincible, raw power, the record begins with a mournful-sounding state of the union, filled with grief and hedonism as a response to post-9/11 New York: “Running on empty, bourbon, and god / It’s been a while though, since we knew the way.” The beat thumps along while a sound that recalls a sad elephant stomps over it.
At first glance, the lyrics to “Hours” suggest a rallying cry for the Others, those who are marginalized, but it might also be a critique of the wave of lies the media peddled to a shaken nation. The song locks into a groove and stays there, feeling like a kind of preparation for the call to action of “Province” featuring David Bowie, an urging to keep going, to maintain boldness and love in the face of destruction. Beginning with the line, “Suddenly, all your history’s ablaze / Try to breathe, as the world disintegrates”, the crescendos of the chorus urge to “Stand steadfast erect and see / That love is the province of the brave.”
“Playhouses” begins with a wall of noise before Jaleel Bunton’s drums take the spotlight, driving the track forward toward the impending heartbreak of seeing a former lover at the club, spiked with observations like “What your coy smile exposes / A recent memory of when we shit our bed of roses.” Haunted memories of the good times before “the weather changed” take the form of splintered recollections and an admission that he’s not over this yet. It’s a powerful flipside to the hedonic responses of the scenesters of early 2000s Brooklyn.
As a short story within the larger narrative, “Wolf Like Me” seems like a perfect counterweight to the grief of “Playhouses”, with its sexual bravado and driving, relentless pulse. This has become the band’s calling card, but it took a while to get play in television shows from Vampire Diaries to Criminal Minds to Castle Rock and even the video game The Crew. As an introduction to the next chapter of TV on the Radio, it delivers on every aspect of the band’s power in a thrilling track that is somewhat of an outlier, but arguably their best song.
“A Method” is a drum circle anchored by the haunting layered vocals of Adibempe and Malone. Continuing in a similar sonic tone is “Let the Devil In”, another pointed, explicit critique of Bush II: “They let the devil in, he brought his pirate friends / They brought a hunger for blood, and flesh and bone and skin.” It’s also a primal scream of hopelessness and anger at what is being done in the name of American justice: “When the chariot arrives, you’d best enjoy the ride / Cause when we get to heaven’s gate, we’re not getting inside,” while scraping, screeching guitars drive home the outrage.
“Dirty Whirl” is perhaps a recall to the lost lover in “Playhouses” after the bloom is off. This track gives Adibempe a moment to show off his range as a singer, far from the shouting urgency of “Wolf Like Me”. Its lineage can be traced back to the doo-wop version of the Pixies‘ “Mr. Grieves” on their first EP, Young Liars. That moment of relative lightness gives way to the insistent “Blues from Down Here”, another haunted track of agonized feelings and frustration: “Never inquire how to be free / Just stay on your knees.”
The ominous “Tonight” speaks of needles and dirty spoons and busted telltale hearts with an eerie synth thump and tambourine. It feels like rock bottom before “Wash the Day Away” comes crashing in, with its Nine Inch Nails-inflected guitars and apocalyptic images of diamond-encrusted guns and make-out sessions in the back seats of cars rigged with bombs under carcinogenic suns. It is an account of what’s been lost and a desire to wipe the slate clean by catastrophe or love. It is an unsettling end to a journey through hell without redemption or uplift.
Three bonus tracks were included on the original release–two new songs and a remix of “Hours” by El-P, who was in the middle of his own moment, only to blow up more fully a few years later as half of Run the Jewels. It is easy to hear why “Snakes and Martyrs” and “Things You Can Do” didn’t make the initial cut. They sound like milestones on the level-up between Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes and the tracks that make up Return to Cookie Mountain.
Despite the unrelenting heaviness of Return to Cookie Mountain, there is something in the resignation that we are going to walk our way out of hell eventually. One has to hope this could also apply 20 years later. The timelessness of the record’s themes rings louder today, so much so that it’s hard not to wish for an album this fiery, this angry, to address our current world. Even though it wasn’t a blockbuster, its power endures. For a record so tied to the times, TV on the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain is an enduring statement and a sobering document of how far we have regressed.
Brian Stout
Source link