TV On The Radio Play New Song

The Phoenix Concert Theatre

Toronto, ON

on Jul 3 2008

Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

07/04/2008 11:00am

There are good opening acts and there are bad opening acts, and Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Vivian Girls (not to be confused with the defunct Australian band of the same name), who kicked off Wednesday's show, were bad. Their mostly three-chord punk with an ethereal multi-vocal approach made them sound like a less talented version of The Breeders. They couldn't play their instruments very well — halfway through their set, their drummer was playing on the wrong beat, which meant the guitarist gave her a bit of a glare — and they couldn't really sing, either. There's a big difference between not being able to sing and still sounding alright and not being able to sing and sounding horrible, and the Vivian Girls' set unfortunately showcased the latter. There was some amusing mid-set Yiddish banter about schvitzing (sweating — which everyone already seemed to be doing by that point), which I appreciated, but I was still glad when they finished. The Vivian Girls are generating a buzz, but I just didn't seem to get it. Maybe they're better on record or just had an off night.

There seemed to be some kind of weird tension in the air when TV On The Radio came out, which culminated in a fight between two teenagers in front of the stage at the end of "Dreams." TV On The Radio seemed amused about it at first. "I swear to God, what is this? Football?" guitarist/vocalist Kyp Malone asked, before vocalist Tunde Adebimpe told the two to cut it out. They didn't, and a loud scream of "You sack of shit!" rang out in front of the stage. After more chastising from Adebimpe, security intervened and one of the brawlers was ejected from the show.

Once the negativity had been quelled, the vibe completely changed and th crowd turned into one of the most active and enthusiastic Toronto audiences I've seen in a while. TV On The Radio's set was mostly drawn from 2006's Return To Cookie Mountain, but they also played a few tracks from their 2004 Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes debut. Cookie tracks "I Was A Lover," "Province" and "Wolf Like Me" were greeted with huge cheers and — surprisingly — about three-quarters of the crowd was moving around and dancing to them. But Desperate Youth songs "Staring At The Sun" (which they closed with) and "The Wrong Way" got just as much applause as anything they played from Cookie.

It also helped that the band were just as into it. Adebimpe ran around the stage, pogoing up and down as he sang, while guitarist David Andrew Sitek roamed around with a set of wind chimes attached to the headstock of his guitar. Malone cut a completely manic figure. He wailed in falsetto while he tremoloed his guitar faster than anyone I've seen in a while, and created a massive My Bloody Valentine-esque wall of reverb and noise while he swayed back and forth.

The set highlight was a new song from TV On The Radio's as-yet-untitled third album, which Adebimpe said should be out sometime in the fall. The track is fast with free jazz saxophone parts spliced throughout, and it features more whistling than anything they've done to date, with the exception of their barbershop quartet cover of the Pixies' "Mr. Grieves." It also might be the most straight-ahead rock number they've ever written. If the other new songs sound anything like this, the new album should be excellent.