How TV On The Radio learned to stop worrying and ascend Cookie Mountain

On a breezy, late-June evening in Brooklyn, TV On The Radio have entered Prospect Park's outdoor bandshell. Kyp Malone, the group's slender, lion-maned guitarist/singer beams at the crowd, while the group's towering frontman, Tunde Adebimpe, finesses his mic in a variety of unpretentious, contorted rock-star poses as he wails their frenetic songs of love and confusion. They're joined by guitarist David Sitek (who writhes in rhythm so much he must remove his glasses), as well as the rhythm section—bassist Gerard Smith and drummer Jaleel Bunton. Plus, members of the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra sputter trumpet lines in any leftover space.

Hipsters, moms, dads, children, rich, poor, black and white, all pack into the makeshift ampitheater. And as their borough's prodigal sons mix their repertoire with songs from their latest, Return To Cookie Mountain (Interscope), the crowd ascend the aisles to dance in frenzies. As much as the band connects with their city, they also share the evening with their families, who have come to see them. Most importantly, this is the first time Malone's daughter, Isabelle, who turns six this year, will witness what it is her father does when he disappears for most of the year. Near the end of the set, he dedicates "Province" (which, on the album, features David Bowie) to her, and, after finishing "A Method" later in the set, he lifts her from the front of the stage and shows her the audience. "She was more psyched than I've ever seen her about anything and more proud than I've ever seen her about anything," says Malone a few weeks later, dressed in a pastel-pink Grizzly Bear T-shirt, sitting with Adebimpe in the garden behind a Brooklyn bar. "And it was the best feeling I've ever had playing music, hands down.... She was like, you know, the teenage girls at the Beatles shows," says Malone, pausing to find the right words. "That's what she looked like. It was awesome."

More than anything, that concert taught TV On The Radio about their music's universality. After touring with Nine Inch Nails and Bauhaus for a couple of weeks prior to the show, they'd grown tired of fighting to impress dark-clothed adolescents. For Adebimpe in particular, the Brooklyn show was eye opening. "It's possibility," he says. "I'm psyched about the possibility. When I see a bunch of people who probably shouldn't be hanging out together hanging out together, something new is probably happening."

Malone remembers the first time he noticed TV On The Radio's potential, when he was still a band outsider. Working at a bookstore in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, he'd play the rough mixes of what would become the band's debut, the Young Liars EP, as frequently as possible ("When I first heard ['Staring At The Sun'], I played it at least 50 times in a row, and it's crack-cocaine. It's crack."), and he'd preach its virtues to whomever opened an ear. Those crude recordings captured Adebimpe and Sitek experimenting with doo-wop and barbershop as much as indie rock. And once, when a Midwesterner—"somebody's mom"—was browsing the bookshelves, Malone noticed the customer's foot tapping. After she bought some books and started to exit, she stopped and, as an afterthought, asked what he'd been playing. "I knew at that point," says Malone, "that this isn't something that just should be force-fed to white-belt-wearing kids, you know?"

Return To Cookie Mountain couldn't sound more different from Young Liars, with its stuttering rhythms and sturdy anthems, but in the three years between their releases, they haven't lost the mystique that captivates their fans. Their music shows the journey that has connected them to their current place. "I wasn't hitting up Dave for rent money when we were recording this one," says Malone of the difference. "That shit made my stomach hurt real bad." Having played together for as long as they have, Malone says writing a song is like making a commitment to a partner you're ambivalent about, because your opinion will sour after playing it for a long time. "I feel like there is pressure," says Malone about Cookie Mountain, "but it's all internal. The idea of raising a bar implies there's only one direction, or two directions."

When speaking, Malone and Adebimpe's almost painfully self-aware candor, teeming with irreverent self-deprecation, often overwhelms the moment. This is also true of their music, but instead of crippling it, it supports their glorious mess. No matter what Adebimpe sings about, his passion shines through. And although they never explicitly define their songs' meanings, their hints explain far more than words could. At one point in the conversation, Malone says album opener "I Was A Lover," which features his falsetto vocals singing about post-war bitterness, was "not really about romance. It's about some disillusionment or something romanticized... It's not like a dating romance at all. Although it can be if that's what you're hearing." Adebimpe listens and laughs knowingly at Malone's description. Malone takes another stab: "It happens a lot that a band's second LP is a reflection on their experience within the industry. And that song is about that a lot. And it's also just about, like, I can't believe that I'm talking about this bullshit when there's so much bigger fucking problems in the world.... AIDS in Africa. You think about the HIV rate growing amongst African-Americans, and you think about things... There's gotta be," Malone pauses again to find the right words, "some power in it that could be used for something more worthwhile than talking about my feelings. My hurt personal feelings or my excited personal feelings, which are so given to change from any number of factors..."

Adebimpe, on the other hand, says he's finished with writing songs about heartbreak—or at least for the moment. He sees tragic love songs as a sort of heroin for hopeless romantics who go into relationships looking for disappointment. Malone agrees by saying when artists start treating their friends as song fodder, you start to "doubt your motives." As long as Adebimpe's musical inspirations appear in a natural way, he won't question them. "I have an imagination, and I want to use it," he says. "And if my imagination is not popular with people, I will use it with something else... I don't want to use my life, for the world, in that way."

There is a muralist, who lives on New York's Lower East Side named Antonio Garcia, but goes by 'Chico.' In the early '80s, he tagged and spray painted the city's redbird subway cars and dirty streets and, over time, started canvassing the neighborhood with memorials to 9/11, Selena, Mother Theresa, Celia Cruz and the Pope. After years of seeing Chico's portraits rotate, Adebimpe started to get the feeling that the painter was morbidly waiting for people to "drop off" so he could make another mural. "[But] I guess you go with whatever comes naturally." This cues a story about Malone's daughter.

"Three years ago, Isabelle was pissed off about something, and we had a fight or a disagreement," says Malone. "She wanted something she couldn't have, and a lot of time passed and she was still just, like, pouting and walking around like a little baby girl... 'You're just gonna stay sad, little girl? The day's almost over, and you're still sad?'... She said, 'But sadness is delicious.'"

"She said, 'Sadness is delicious'?" asks Adebimpe, laughing. "She's really smart. Yeah, it is kind of delicious. I guess I can think of it that way."

"I've wallowed," says Malone. "I'll wallow again."

"That's true," says Adebimpe. "You can definitely wallow and wallow... There are a lot of people that are generally melancholic... And that doesn't mean they're gonna off themselves if it goes the wrong way."

"It doesn't mean that the cheerful people aren't going to, either," says Malone. "I have some dead friends that killed themselves that were sunshine."

In a sense, it is their ability to discuss life in a way that other musicians cannot that separates TV On The Radio most from other bands, and explains why so many different kinds of people would come to see them at Prospect Park. For TV On The Radio, it's something that comes from within. It's who they are. "I hope that I still like Nina Simone, and I know I will, when I'm like 60 years old," says Adebimpe. "That being said, I'm baffled and amazed, not that anyone likes our music, but just that you can play concerts... and there are little kids dancing. That doesn't make any sense to me at all... That's really encouraging, actually, though. Yeah, the show in Prospect Park... It made me wanna play even more."

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