Latest news with #TVontheRadio
Boston Globe
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Once part of the millennial indie rock boom, TV on the Radio is back on the road
That time is now. After having carved a swath through ten years of the post-9/11 musical landscape with a quintet of dense, fiery art-rock records that litter best-of-the-year and best-of-the-decade album polls, TV on the Radio has returned to the fray, hitting the road on a tour that brings them to Roadrunner on July 30. Given that the band had plenty to say about the Republican in the White House when it first appeared on the scene in 2001, the decision to regroup might seem like it was inspired by its thoughts about the current occupant. But Bunton suggests that the timing simply seemed right for the band to resume operations. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'It seems temporally appropriate for whatever reason, but I can't say that was the impetus. I don't think any of us have that much of an inflated sense of self-worth, [of] being like 'The world needs us now!,'' Bunton says. Instead, he sees TV on the Radio as paying inspiration forward, just as he was inspired by other artists. 'I'm a firm believer in [our] music and its authenticity and its sincerity, and I think it adds something to the global conversation.' Advertisement Despite the protestations, it seems in some regards as though TV on the Radio's work isn't done, that the heady swirl of agitation that the band explored so well speaks as much if not more to the Trump era as the Bush era. In fact, it can be overwhelming to revisit the band's albums — all thick guitar churns, unsoothing electronic enhancement and the unrelenting (if charismatic) intensity of Tunde Adebimpe's vocals — at length in the current day, when a constant buzz of agitation seems to exist perpetually as foreground noise. Taking in the entirety of the band's catalogue is enough to mess with someone's head. Bunton doesn't see that discomfort as a bad thing. 'Sometimes being challenged or being asked difficult questions is great. Sometimes it's just annoying. I can't tell you, and we could definitely be both,' he says with a laugh. At the heart of it, he sees the post-9/11 world as being rife with internal conflicts and contradictions, many of which are still being reckoned with. 'I would feel remiss if I didn't include those conflicts and that contradiction into music. It is accurate to the mirror that I see, so I'm not surprised that it feels agitated.' Advertisement It's always uncertain whether music with such a level of unease baked in will find its audience — 'It's like being seen,' offers Bunton, 'that's what 'misery loves company' is' — but TV on the Radio pulled it off. Possibly too well. 'Once you have that level of success, I've realized it just doesn't belong to us anymore,' says Bunton. 'I remember I saw myself on a poster on the subway, and I was like, 'Oh, you're a commodity now. You're like a potato chip.'' It may have helped that TV on the Radio didn't have to navigate the wilds of acclaim and success alone as it headed out of Brooklyn into the larger world two decades ago. It was one of a wave of buzzed-about New York City bands making their names at the time; Bunton — who began as TV on the Radio's drummer, stepped in for bassist Gerard Smith after his death of lung cancer in 2011 and currently plays guitar on stage — talks about living in the same loft as members of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Metric and Liars, with the Secret Machines as their neighbors as they rehearsed next door to 'This stuff only happens in retrospect, but we never saw it as a scene. We never saw it as a global takeover,' Bunton says. 'I didn't feel like any of those bands were trying to sound like anything but themselves. I think that was part of the ethos of the neighborhood, for sure.' Advertisement And as TV on the Radio returns to active duty more than a decade after its last album, there's the matter of the most obvious, most boring question hanging in the air. Bunton insists that he must give the most boring answer and remain mum on whether new music is forthcoming. 'I have to have no comment on that question,' he says. 'For now, we're really happy doing what we're doing. We're really happy we made this decision. It's been a great joy to everyone. We kind of suspected it might be, and when it actually started happening, started playing shows, it just felt very, very right. I hope people come out. I'm very proud of what we're doing right now.' TV ON THE RADIO At Roadrunner on Wednesday, July 30. 8 p.m. Marc Hirsh can be reached at officialmarc@ or on Bluesky @
Los Angeles Times
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Rilo Kiley's reunion is right on time at Just Like Heaven
'Can you believe,' Jenny Lewis asked, 'this is our third show in 17 years?' Wearing the same outfit she'd worn at the first two — polka-dot mini-dress, white ruffle socks, a glittering tiara perched atop her head — Lewis was onstage Saturday night with her band Rilo Kiley at the Just Like Heaven festival in Pasadena. 'It's truly amazing to be here with you all,' she told the crowd of thousands spread across the leafy grounds surrounding the Rose Bowl. 'But mostly,' she added, turning to her bandmates, 'it's amazing to be here with you all.' One of the defining Los Angeles rock bands of the last quarter-century, Rilo Kiley formed in 1998 — both Lewis and the group's other singer and songwriter, Blake Sennett, had been child actors — then spent the next decade steadily approaching the big time with clever if jaundiced songs about sex, bad decisions and the Hollywood dream machine. Yet just as the band was poised to blow up, Rilo Kiley split amid creative and personal tensions between Lewis and Sennett, who'd also been romantically involved. Now, for the first time since 2008, the group — rounded out by Pierre De Reeder and Jason Boesel — is on the road playing shows again; its reunion tour launched last week with gigs in San Luis Obispo and Ojai and is scheduled to run through the fall. The timing makes sense, given that Lewis over the intervening years has become something of an older-sister figure for a subsequent generation or two of smart young musicians writing about all the ways the world can disappoint a woman in her 20s. (Think Phoebe Bridgers, think Haim, think Olivia Rodrigo.) Then again, nostalgia is rarely required to justify itself, as Just Like Heaven made clear. A fixture of the Southern California festival landscape since 2019, this annual show brings together veterans of early-2000s indie rock to relive memories of an era before streaming and social media remade pop music; other acts high on the bill this year included Vampire Weekend, TV on the Radio, Bloc Party, the Drums and Toro y Moi. Near the end of its headlining set on Saturday, Vampire Weekend offered up what frontman Ezra Koenig called 'a salute to indie' — strung-together covers of period hits by Phoenix, Tame Impala, Beach House, Grizzly Bear and TV on the Radio — in a slot the band typically dedicates to audience requests for oldies like 'Don't Stop Believin' ' or 'Dancing in the Dark.' That Grizzly Bear's 'Two Weeks' now qualifies as a classic was a fact nobody seemed to need convincing. Indeed, Lewis has said that part of what led her to reconvene Rilo Kiley was the huge success of a recent reunion tour by the Postal Service, the electro-pop side project that she and Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard introduced in 2003 and which last year headlined Just Like Heaven after earlier selling out three nights at the Hollywood Bowl. Yet if all that eagerness to reminisce made easy pickings of folks in Pasadena, Rilo Kiley played with more muscle and panache than it needed to on Saturday in an hour-long set that showcased the band's impressive versatility. 'The Execution of All Things' and 'With Arms Outstretched' were crisp and strummy, while 'The Moneymaker' rode a raunchy soul-rock groove and 'Dreamworld' evoked the glossy menace of mid-'70s Fleetwood Mac. Now as during the group's heyday, what elevated the performance was Lewis' skill as a storyteller: the torch-song melancholy she found in 'I Never,' about a woman betting too much on a relationship, and the perfectly soapy romantic drama of 'Does He Love You?' in which she plays two of the three parts in a doomed love triangle. For the latter, she grabbed a video camera and roamed the stage, sending footage of her bandmates to the giant screen behind her — not just the star of the Rilo Kiley show but its director too. On Spotify, the band's biggest song is the coolly self-assured 'Silver Lining,' from its darkly funny final LP, 'Under the Blacklight,' and here Lewis delivered it with a swaggy nonchalance. But the true heads know that Rilo Kiley's real should've-been-a-hit was 2004's sly yet ebullient 'Portions for Foxes' — 'The talking leads to touching / And the touching leads to sex,' goes one key line — which is why the group finished with the song at Just Like Heaven. As she sauntered offstage, Lewis blew a kiss to the crowd, then jumped back to her microphone, grabbed a Modelo she'd left behind and took a sip through a straw.
Irish Independent
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Summer in Co Wicklow: From air shows, to regattas and music festivals
No matter what your personal tastes are, or regardless of your age, you are bound to find a Wicklow event over the summer months which will be right up your alley. Wicklow 200 Cycling Challenge Established in 1982, the Wicklow 200 is one of Ireland's premier cycling sportives, with the 41st edition taking place on Sunday, June 8. The Wicklow 200 starts and finishes at Russborough House in Blessington and takes in many of the most iconic climbs the Garden County has to offer. It's considered among the most arduous and most revered annual cycling events on the Irish calendar. As the name suggests, the event covers over 200 kilometres around Co Wicklow, a major international cycling destination. The shorter Wicklow 100km takes place on the same day, and shares most of the route with the Wicklow 200. Sign up at Beyond the Pale The fourth edition of Beyond the Pale Festival takes place over three days at the Glendalough Estate, running from June 13 to 15. Arklow disco queen Róisín Murphy will be playing her first ever gg in her home county of Wicklow. Jon Hopkins, Berlioz and Broken Social Scene will all be performing at Beyond the Pale, which will be their first Irish show of the summer, while Boney M will be playing their first Irish show in nearly a decade. Brooklyn-based rockers, TV on the Radio, will perform their first show in Ireland in 17 years, with festival-favourite Marc Rebillet, BadBadNotGood, and recent Brit Award winners Ezra Collective joining a bumper line-up of acts. The jam-packed weekend will culminate with another high-energy performance by Marc Rebillet, along with TV on the Radio, Death in Vegas, Samantha Mumba, And So I Watch You from Afar and Wicklow native Fionn Regan. Buy tickets at Kaleidoscope Festival Kaleidoscope Festival celebrates its fifth anniversary when it returns to Russborough in Blessington from July 4 to July 6. Its known as one of Ireland's most family-friendly music festivals with entertainment and facilities suitable for all ages groups. ADVERTISEMENT Learn more As a birthday celebration one of its stages will be transformed into a house party featuring Abbaesque and their smash-hit ABBA tribute show, a Daft Punk tribute, alt rock scene-loving The Year Grunge Broke, disco-loving DJ queen Kelly-Anne Byrne, a floor-filler live show from Love Sensation, and These Charming Men and their tribute to indie rock favourites The Smiths and Morrissey. Other headliners and main stage music acts already confirmed consist of legendary Scottish band Texas, homegrown favourites The Coronas, Ocean Colour Scene, acclaimed Limerick's Hermitage Green and one of Ireland's brightest young music stars, Allie Sherlock. Tickets at Kilmacanogue Show The Kilmacanogue Show is one of the most popular events in the county and returns for its 53rd renewal on July 26 to Enniskerry Horse Farm, with all the usual fun and activities for all the family. At the heart of the show are the horse and pony classes, with everything from rein to in-hand to showjumping and working hunter opening the event up to every kind of equestrian. But it's not just about horses; there's a dog show, classes for sheep and a host of entertainment away from the rings. Last year K2 Alpacas came, and a famous goose-herding collie dog, as well as a woolspinning expert and a wood sculptor. Expect free pony rides, a kids games zone, and face painting, with the full schedule to be released soon at Wicklow Regatta Festival The Wicklow Regatta Festival is now in its 147th year, making it the oldest maritime-themed festival in the land, and will take place this year in Wicklow town from July 25 to August 4. You can expect all the fan favourites the regatta is renowned for, including golly fishing, 'Young at Heart' and the opportunity to crow the Regatta Queen. The Singing Pubs competition takes place each year and gives members of the public the opportunity to showcase their considerable talents. You can also enjoy heritage walks, street busking and live music, art trails, a dog show, a teddy bears picnic, a barman's race, a kids treasure hunt, along with art workshops. The schedule will be at Bray Air Display Wicklow's biggest event of the year by far is the Bray Air Display, which will bring tens of thousands of visitors to the seaside town on Saturday, August 2. This year's show promises to be a spectacular event, featuring the awe-inspiring skills of world-class pilots who will fill the skies over Bray with thrilling aerobatics and breathtaking formations. Marvel at the stunning flying skills of talented pilots as they paint the skies with mesmerising aerobatics. But the excitement isn't just in the sky. On the ground, visitors can revel in the thrills of the Seafront Funfair, explore the static display by the Irish Defence Forces, and indulge in delicious offerings at the food and craft village. It's free to view the Bray Air Display, with viewing points along the beach, in the harbour and even up Bray Head, but be sure to go early to get the best spot. Details at Tinahely Agricultural Show Dating back to 1935, the historic Tinahely Agricultural Show takes place on August bank holiday Monday at Fairwood Park. The popular event always attracts thousands of visitors, featuring a series of competitions, covering categories including equestrian, cattle, goats, sheep, dogs, poultry and many others, providing children and families with a unique opportunity to get up close and personal with the animals. Alongside the competitions are acres of trade stands, a funfair, live music, food, machinery displays, dog and baby shows, sheep shearing, sheaf tossing, machinery displays and plenty more. Tickets available at
Irish Independent
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
TV on the Radio frontman and Star Wars actor Tunde Adebimpe delivers a slice of slanted and enchanted indie
TV on the Radio are no longer a going concern but frontman Tunde Adebimpe has just released his debut solo album. Thee Black Boltz retains much of the eclecticism that made his old band so appealing to those who like their indie slanted and enchanted. Even at a mere 35 minutes long, there's a cornucopia of ideas and genres. Adebimpe, whose varied career includes stop-motion animation and acting (his latest TV gig is Star Wars: Skeleton Crew) is a compelling presence on these 11 songs. The urgent Magnetic, all fuzzy guitars and synths, finds him 'thinking about the human race in the age of tenderness and rage' while the stark, arresting Drop is a beatbox masterclass. A jaunty giddiness characterises many of the songs, but it is clear that pain is being exorcised. The playful, upbeat stylings of God Knows cannot disguise the fact that he's singing about a relationship that's gone badly awry. 'God knows you're the worst thing I've ever loved/ You're bad news but we've still got to have our fun.' And, on the tender ballad ILY, he sings about his younger sister who died during the pandemic. It's heartbreaking: 'Tell me that the end is not the end.' Co-written with the album's producer Wilder Zoby — who is probably best known for his collaborations with hip-hop duo Run the Jewels — it's the album's most conventionally structured song, but once heard, difficult to forget. Unlike TV on the Radio, Beirut are still going, but then that act was all about the talents of Zach Condon rather than a grouping of like-minded subversives. Condon's first couple of (Balkans-inspired) albums coincided with Adebimpe's band's much heralded early run and, despite the odd wobble, he's kept the quality high. His latest, A Study of Losses, is typically unconventional. Commissioned by a Swedish acrobatic troupe — of all things — it features 11 songs and seven instrumentals. Sophisticated, textured arrangements elevate the likes of Forest Encyclopaedia, which features Condon's sombre, sorrowful singing. A highlight, Caspian Tiger, has a hymnal quality, a wonderful vocal delivery, and a confluence of strings, artfully arranged by Clarice Jensen, artistic director of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble. It's an album to get lost in.
Los Angeles Times
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Tunde Adebimpe explores ‘tenderness and rage' on debut solo album
Nearly 25 years ago, Brooklyn band TV on the Radio took over the airwaves and MTV with their haunting, near-operatic synth-rock. Tracks like 'Staring at the Sun' and 'Wolf Like Me' seduced listeners with melodic hooks upon hooks, and an urgent, insistent percussive drive. Leading man, Missouri-born, L.A.-based Tunde Adebimpe's restless creative spirit never lost momentum, but the intensity and demands of band life lost its lustre until a 20th anniversary re-release and tour for album 'Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes' in 2024 reunited TV on the Radio. Such was their renewed chemistry that the band are now in the throes of a new, sixth album. It will ride on the heels of Adebimpe's debut solo album, 'Thee Black Boltz,' which reinforces the fact that Adebimpe is one of the most adventurous, incisive singer-songwriters of the last few decades, at least. The references to 'boltz' are scattered throughout tracks, brief glimmers of gratitude and joy which emerge from clouds of gloom. Adebimpe tells The Times that the album mirrored his own experiences of being in, and coming through, a series of traumatic events and grief that intensified during the pandemic. '[In 2019], I was doing a lot of free writing to get ideas, to put messy thoughts into a place, and I was visualizing a way out of a pretty heavy period of grief that I was in. I was writing about what had happened, making my way through it, and committing myself to documenting every way to get through it. In the middle of all that writing about grief, there were moments of remembering things that happened before the tragic events, and the gratitude for those little breaks, shots of inspiration, that wouldn't have otherwise come to you without those clouds of depression. Boltz are a metaphor for shocking you out of a bad situation.' Many of these songs were written during the onset and thick of the pandemic, when there was a feeling of panic and something encroaching that nobody with the power to stop it was actually acting on, he said. 'American events, world events, felt intense and still do … It's the feeling of elemental forces versus human beings, and that will never go out of fashion.' A series of studio robberies — first Adebimpe's home garage-studio, then the complex of studios he was working in — could have hobbled his momentum. So, too, could the round of rejections he got after trying to shop around six demos to no avail, but despite the elements putting up a fierce battle, Adebimpe prevailed. 'When TV on the Radio took a break in 2019, it was indefinite, and I was not in a place where I thought I'd be making music for a long time. A couple of things happened,' he said. 'Somebody broke into my garage, which is my studio, and stole 15 years' worth of archives, and my laptop. They unplugged the hard drive in my computer and left that there — a weird act of charity, or something? They took drum machines, my weed — the icing on the cake — but I found my old 4-track recorder and a box of tapes that went from 1998 to 2008.' The singer went through, listened to those tapes, and found half-finished songs that he brought out and re-demoed. 'Since I had only the 4-track to record with, I started playing around with it and writing demos on it.' His solo album hadn't been anticipated by most, since the versatile Adebimpe had been thriving on a busy combination of acting ('Twisters' last year, 'Spider-Man: Homecoming' and TV series 'Star Wars: Skeleton Crew'), directing and collaborating across genres as both a guest vocalist or supergroup member. He's also been busy with touring TV on the Radio's first album in celebration of its 20th anniversary. After their 2014 album 'Seeds,' the band had toured on and off and released singles here and there. Outside the band confines, there's been numerous shared projects since 2010 when Adebimpe featured on Dave Sitek's album 'Maximum Balloon.' He's lent his signature urgent, momentous vocals to tracks by Massive Attack, Leftfield and Run the Jewels, and even found time to hook up with Faith No More and Mr. Bungle mastermind Mike Patton and Doseone in the supergroup Nevermen. It seems surprising that it has taken so long for him to set out to make a solo album. 'I thought about it before,' he concedes. 'The thing about being in TV on the Radio is that whenever we've all decided to get together to record a new thing, everyone comes with a bunch of new ideas and a lot of demos, and we always have a surplus of songs.' There have been times over the course of the band being together that they've had a little break, and Adebimpe thought about taking these songs that nobody else — for lack of time or interest — wanted to do anything with. 'I wrote the demos; I don't want to abandon them,' he said. The TV on the Radio DNA is there, undeniably. 'Sometime after 2008, I had a moment where I was like, what does a TV on the Radio song sound like? And that went through the band like a stomach bug, and we all realized we don't really know because we'd never thought about that before. I can't plan something out in that way. I write what sounds good to me and what works to me. I certainly don't mind if people hear similarities, and I am never trying to get away from writing the way that I write.' 'Thee Black Boltz' is Adebimpe with nothing to prove. He's not determined to differentiate his solo voice from his work with TV on the Radio, but there's a definite shift in the mood here. Where there was an urgency and climactic intensity to TV on the Radio tracks, 'Thee Black Boltz' revels in more space for introspection in the instrumentation and lyrics, whimsy and emotional candour. Over a concise 11 tracks, Adebimpe traverses heartbreak, drama, frustration and space exploration. Rewind just over 20 years to Adebimpe crooning about the transience of material possessions, the inevitable human transcendence into light and air on 'Staring at the Sun,' and 'Thee Black Boltz' is merely the extension of Adebimpe's long-running fixation on existence and our relative meaninglessness. New track 'Drop' features Adebimpe's own plea in the face of imminent death: 'We're gonna feel it when we drop / Send no flowers / The visions never stop / Of this life / And a time / We can all come together / Burn so bright / And rise into the night.' 'Drop' opens up with bare-bones looped beatboxing before threading in dramatic melody upon layers of synth and howled refrains. This is not Adebimpe's rebellion against TV on the Radio, but the evidence that in that band, and solo, he only knows how to be fully authentic. ''Drop' came at the time when it felt apocalyptic during the pandemic,' he says. 'I was thinking about people I'd lost, and thinking, what exactly do you feel when you die, when you drop this body that you live in? Is there nothing, not even a consciousness? We don't know. It could be wonderful, or we could all be doomed, but we can think about that because we're here now. What's the best use of our very limited time on our planet?' Adebimpe's ephemeral musings on death became very real when his only relative in the U.S., his younger sister, died in 2021. A week after signing to Sub Pop with a handful of demos, he had to pause everything to react. 'I'd started writing the record, and I didn't know that I was writing a record. It was after all my stuff got stolen … so that was the minor, material stuff that happened. Then in 2021, out of nowhere, my younger sister passed away very suddenly. I don't feel weird talking about this because everyone is going to experience some sort of massive upheaval and tragedy and it's possible to get through it by focusing on the moment in front of you. She passed away very suddenly. I have no other family in the country, so I had to travel to Florida, organize the funeral, deal with her house, in a very short period of time.' When he returned to L.A., 'I didn't want to do anything at all for a long time,' he says. 'But making things is a great way to process. I took the messy feelings, joyous feelings, and downloaded them into free writing, making demos for what eventually became the record as a way to get through it. I'd had losses throughout the years that I hadn't taken the time to think about or make any kind of peace with, not that you ever can. The pandemic gave me a second.' His sister is the focus of the song 'ILY,' or 'I Love You,' on the record. 'That song is entirely for her,' says Adebimpe. 'It's a simple, clear song and it's multipurpose. It's not a Valentine's Day card, but you can use it to love yourself, someone else, as the very simple expression of gratitude for this person you're lucky to land with on the universe. You can't choose your family, but she was the absolute best, and I'm so grateful I got to be … get to be … her brother.' The beauty and liberated spirit of 'Thee Black Boltz' is exemplified in how diverse the musicality and lyrical themes are. It is, exactly as Adebimpe suggested, akin to a mixtape that acts as a time capsule for a portentous period for an individual as much as the collective. Where should listeners begin? Adebimpe says, 'All the songs are so different, but if you were to make your way in, I really like 'Somebody New.' It was a mash-up of two different things we were working on individually — me and [producer Wilder Zoby]. I came into the studio while we were working on a job — writing a soundtrack for a kids' TV show ['City Island' on PBS] — and he was working on this synth thing and I said, 'We should keep that for us.' Then, on a whim, we sewed it together with something I'd been messing with, and while it's changed melodically, it's a good dance track. It's a power-up; you can take it with you.' Now that it's out there, he says, 'I feel great about it. There were a lot of breaks in between working to finish it, but now it's done, I am really glad people are going to get to hear it. I feel like both [Zoby], I and Jahphet [Landis] have just been with it so long that any sort of nervousness or anxiety or uncertainty about what it is has kind of faded away. It feels like being in high school and a friend giving you a mixtape and saying, 'This has a whole bunch of weird s— on it, I made it for you, and I hope that you're into it!' That's exactly how I feel about this record.'
