When TV on the Radio emerged out of the New York art-rock scene three years ago, they seemed fully formed: a brilliant, gnomic, and mildly confounding group of experimenters. Their debut EP, Young Liars, was a bracing collection of hip-hop, trip-hop, free-jazz, and doo-wop sounds that was hard to describe without resorting to wild hand gestures and comparisons to things of great size. Even without the deconstructed Pixies cover at the end it would’ve been enough to turn TV on the Radio into the biggest indie-boner It Band around. But on their newest, Return to Cookie Mountain (Interscope), the group digs deeper in every way. The vertiginous rhythms and off-kilter horn stabs on the opener, “I Was a Lover,” are as straight-up weird as the melody is catchy, and as was evident on last year’s Katrina-inspired download-only single, “Dry Drunk Emperor,” singer Tunde Adebimpe’s romanticized alienation has sharpened into a fiery, elegant outrage. Turns out the band’s still growing into its strengths–and the more it does, the more everyone else in the world lags behind. –Miles Raymer
