Tracks
TV On The Radio: "Wolf Like Me"
(2006)
By Dom Sinacola | 28 January 2008
I’m not one for research, and one even less for geography, so I approach Mt. Cookie as a delicious state of mind; scaling to the summit, I see night reign in the last vestiges of sun, and set to work forging for shelter. As I hurriedly eat into the face of the cliff, I taste a vein of chocolate, chip my tooth on biscotti, reach into and pull out crumbling handfuls of snickerdoodle. It’s warm inside my tasty enclosure, aromatic and soft, but with a broken tooth, I’m relegated to enduring sugar as craving only, as painful as that may seem, what with my nest a veritable treat of Titan-sized proportions.
Obvious and belabored extended metaphors aside, TOTR’s major label jump is a wicked and enticing monster. Suitable as both progenitor of full, fuck-happy band and progeny of “New Health Rock” or the rapidly dilating capillaries between Desperate Youth’s stark, paced noise, “Wolf Like Me” is the desperate flute of post-youth slipping backwards into an orbit of swiveling teenage hips. It’s true that the guys have never needed an expanded band to sound sultry, never needed Jaleel Bunton to rip a terse beat or Gerard Smith to screw knobs into weirder territory, but all speedy riffage, squelching synth, and a dose of sax, “Wolf Like Me” is primal fury and angry, groping coitus. Adebimpe howls, which is how his voice should be described, “When the moon is round and full, gonna teach you tricks that’ll blow your mind.” Which implies how disorienting things could get, how maybe the band’s just milking your trust with simple squall and wall.
The killer is in the vocals, drowned behind noise but in glorious step with the shuddering intensity of the snare beat. Each line, staggered, breaks off with bite. Verses chew between legato and half-words, are never swallowed, and what happens when you chew before you bite? You get a mired bridge with sticky chimes, some now characteristic woo-ing, and the itch to launch back into the flood. Yes, the flood is good, so hard to top; the sputtering saxophone in the song’s last seconds attest to the broken pride, the regret, the exhausted organs going limp. A trite sonic metaphor maybe, but then so is howling about how dude’s “gonna bust that box, gonna gut that…” Oh, I get it. Cookie… gross.
Obvious and belabored extended metaphors aside, TOTR’s major label jump is a wicked and enticing monster. Suitable as both progenitor of full, fuck-happy band and progeny of “New Health Rock” or the rapidly dilating capillaries between Desperate Youth’s stark, paced noise, “Wolf Like Me” is the desperate flute of post-youth slipping backwards into an orbit of swiveling teenage hips. It’s true that the guys have never needed an expanded band to sound sultry, never needed Jaleel Bunton to rip a terse beat or Gerard Smith to screw knobs into weirder territory, but all speedy riffage, squelching synth, and a dose of sax, “Wolf Like Me” is primal fury and angry, groping coitus. Adebimpe howls, which is how his voice should be described, “When the moon is round and full, gonna teach you tricks that’ll blow your mind.” Which implies how disorienting things could get, how maybe the band’s just milking your trust with simple squall and wall.
The killer is in the vocals, drowned behind noise but in glorious step with the shuddering intensity of the snare beat. Each line, staggered, breaks off with bite. Verses chew between legato and half-words, are never swallowed, and what happens when you chew before you bite? You get a mired bridge with sticky chimes, some now characteristic woo-ing, and the itch to launch back into the flood. Yes, the flood is good, so hard to top; the sputtering saxophone in the song’s last seconds attest to the broken pride, the regret, the exhausted organs going limp. A trite sonic metaphor maybe, but then so is howling about how dude’s “gonna bust that box, gonna gut that…” Oh, I get it. Cookie… gross.