TVOTR surprise performance at Music Hall of Williamsburg in April, two days before their big Radio City Music Hall appearance. (Tunde Adebimpe taking center stage, with Kyp Malone, left, and Jaleel Bunton.) PHOTOS BY BENJAMIN LOZOVSKY
On the evening of August 17, TV On The Radio performed to their seemingly loftiest height. With buzz steadily growing around blogs and social networks about a special event in the works, a large crowd had already formed by the time the Williamsburg based band climbed to the top of a billboard in Soho. Rising up the scaffolding stairs slowly and methodically, the band paused for a group huddle, before hurtling through a searing yet poised four-song set. It was just the latest act of a well-oiled machine set on permanent steamroll.
After a tumultuous time stuck in Los Angeles recording their latest effort Nine Types of Light, a long, world-spanning tour that began in April in support of the record, and above all, the tragic loss of their friend and band mate Gerard Smith to lung cancer several gigs into the tour, the remaining four members of the group continue to staunchly power forward. By the time this is published, they will have performed a giant homecoming show on the Williamsburg Waterfront, one of many dates they have planned for a tour that resumed in late August and seems to be endlessly extending, with new gigs added almost weekly. If delving this acutely into the distractions of work during a personal tragedy is TV On The Radio’s form of therapy, the band might as well have written the clinical guidelines for such treatment.
Illustration by Carri Skoczek
