TV on the Radio‘s Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, Twenty Years On

Original release date: 9 March, 2004
Label: Touch and Go Records/4AD

TV on the Radio’s cryptic art rock sounded like nothing else when it was released in 2004 – and was proof that, even in an era of indie sleaze hedonism, there were still bands turning out understated, cerebral classics.

TV on the Radio always seemed most comfortable existing between the cracks. Forming in 2001, the Brooklynites didn’t fit into the messy, hedonistic, fashion-oriented downtown Manhattan scene that had been blowing up around bands like the Strokes during that period. “It wasn’t like we were a party band,” David Sitek said in Lizzy Goodman’s oral history of the New York scene, Meet Me in the Bathroom. But nor did they have much in common with the sombre Americana that was coming out of the city via the likes of the National or Grizzly Bear. Twenty years on from their debut album, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, their singular place in that storied era is more obvious than ever.

While the bands with whom they shared stages, spaces and friendships leaned into old rock star poses, TVOTR pursued something else: the opening strains of curtain raiser The Wrong Way – electronic drones, grumbling bass, muffled yet lively drums, and rising blasts of horn – sounded fresh, and still do. From the jump, Tunde Adebimpe, Kyp Malone and Sitek seemed to be drawing on a more expansive pool of influences than many of their contemporaries; slightly older, with a multiracial line-up and a shared history of being in various bands – from Sitek’s teenage hardcore outfit to Malone’s experimental rock group, Iran – they brought the weight of maturity and experience to bear. But they also made distinct and often strange music. Their album’s immediate precursor, the Young Liars EP, oscillated between a cold, metallic and vacant sensibility, and something almost intimate; vocals shifting in space against a backdrop of sci-fi synths, avant-gospel and even a sprinkling of industrial dance punk. 

As a result, expectations for their debut were high. Pitchfork called it “one of the most eagerly awaited records of the year”. Even now, two decades on from its release, the first impression of Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes is of a complex record. Gospel is blended with drones, post-punk with touches of jazz, electronics with avant-rock, while layered harmonies glide over slick grooves that meld into agitated rhythms. The beautiful a capella of Ambulance is effectively a contemporary stab at doo-wop. By rights, an album that moves in so many directions at once should sound messy, but Desperate Youth… sounds anything but. Instead, there’s a deliberative, cryptic quality that characterises the record and sits at odds with its moment in time. Art rock in 2004 was giddy, accessible – all sticky floorfillers, mountains of Red Stripe and regrettable outfits. But it was clear that TVOTR, who had a combined average age of 30, were confident enough to let their album adhere to its own dense, internal logic. 

Even the album’s sole, ostensible hit, Staring at the Sun, is more of a slow-burn groover than dancefloor magnet. Featuring the wiry guitar of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner, the track winds up the tension while swerving a cheap payoff – no drop or soaring chorus is forthcoming. Instead, the song does the total opposite, its steady chug collapsing into an almost minimal-techno outro. Oh, and lyrically? It’s based on a 13th-century Sufi poem about transcendence, death and love. 

Which brings us to today. One of the shortcomings of the current indie sleaze discourse – its borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered 2000s – is that it fails to acknowledge some of the more subtle, cerebral and enduring music of the era. The appeal of dumb, empty hedonism from a time when you could more easily avoid a camera lens and smoke indoors is understandable in today’s broken world, sure, but widen your gaze and there are treasures to be found. 2004 was also the year of Liars’ follow-up, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned – an album that rivals Desperate Youth… in both its experimentalism and daring. 

It’s precisely these qualities that made it almost impossible to guess what direction TVOTR would take after their debut. Return to Cookie Mountain, the critically lauded follow-up, included – plot twist – its own indie-disco anthem-in-waiting: the propulsively charged, yet still weird and smart single, Wolf Like Me. As a producer in his own right, Sitek would go on to help shape the sound of the ensuing decade with his work for Foals, Kelis, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and CSS. But most significantly, the band would see the musical landscape evolve in their own image. Through advances in technology and the explosion of downloading, then streaming, the experimentalism and eclecticism that made the band so bracing in 2004 became, in the space of a few years, the norm. Somehow the New York band who never really went to parties would be the ones waiting for the world to catch up.