TV On The Radio

There's an argument for saying that I saved the best for last here. However, there is a better argument for saying that I screwed up and forgot to include them when I posted the reviews from Saturday night at Reading. Which is a shock even to me, because they were definitely one of my finds of the festival.

You know you have seen a good band when the end of their set comes far too quickly, and so it was with TVOTR. 40 minutes just flew by and it can't just have been the shock of seeing four black New Yorkers (and one white guy) playing the sort of avant garde college swamp rock beloved of the likes of Pretty Girls Make Graves. Tunde Adimbimpe is one of the most compelling frontmen around, totally commanding the stage (although I never did work out why he was alternating between two microphones). Beside him, the massively afro'd Kyp Malone adds searing guitars to the mix, whilst bassist Gerard Smith plays almost the entire set with his back to the audience. Unfamiliar to most of the audience, songs like 'Wolf Like Me' and 'Staring At The Sun' soon have the tent moshing without even realising it.

If TVOTR don't become as huge as Malone's hair then there really is no justice in the world. How can a band whose stage manager is a tall black man with bleached white hair and an ankle length tartan kilt NOT be successful?