Seeds
Harvest
I'm going to start off with a bombshell. This is TV On The Radio's best work. Of course, there is the indelible mythos of Return to Cookie Mountain, and the utter perfection that is Dear Science, but Seeds has absolutely no low points.
Cookie Mountain was chock-full of amazing songs, but the track listing was a mess; nothing flowed (except for the career-making three-song suite of "Playhouses"-into-"Wolf Like Me"-into-"A Method"). And while Dear Science was, by a wide margin, the best album of 2008, there were a couple songs that seemed like Cookie Mountain leftovers that got shoved in there for the sake of "we can't transition from our old sound completely or fans will hate us." I'm not even going to bring up Nine Types of Light (except to say that "Caffeinated Consciousness" was beyond the best song of 2011).
Here, TVOTR not only eschew the old ways (wall-of-sound jangle guitars, wind chimes, and doo-wop a cappella phrasing), but they also build on the sounds that made Dear Science so amazing (prog-rock bass lines, turntablism, and Sondheim-esque layered vocals). Seeds is a band at it's absolute peak, shaped by years of crafting, loss, and an abhorrence for the "middle way."
This album is so good it has also changed it's predecessor. While I may never listen to Nine Types of Light again (except "Caffeinated Consciousness," I think we've established that), Seeds has shown that album to be an important stepping stone in TOVTR's catalog. One that allowed them to plod through all the different experiments necessary to achieve greatness beyond imagining.
