TV On The Radio's Nine Types of Light is 10 good songs

 TV On The Radio

Funk has always been a musical ghetto.

It's an interesting intersection of good (rhythm section, especially) musicians and really bad lyrics. It has its feverish fans and many, many  And I suspect that even the most feverish funk aficionados never really take the music seriously.

I've listened to a good deal of funk. I own Bootsy Collins Rubber Band records and have a pile of Parliament and Funkadelic, too. James Brown? Check. Isley Brothers? Check. Tower of Power? Actually saw them play at warehouse in Waterbury, Conn. (True story!) I've spent time with newer stuff, too: Fishbone and Chili Peppers (almost funk, right?).

Foo Fighters: Don't Waste Your Time With Wasting Light

I like Dave Grohl. I really do. I also think it's neat that the goofy drummer of Nirvana is now the front man of the biggest standard bearer of mid-'90s modern rock. Who would have thunk it?

Grohl showed early promise with the Foo Fighters' self-titled debut: a fun, if generic, upbeat blast of nitty gritty power punk. But since then, it's been a long slide into dull, arena rock that sounds like it has a lot more in common with late '70s bands like Foghat and Thin Lizzy than the indie bona fides of Grohl's early '90s work. He hasn't managed to record more than half a decent album (as a front man) since, including, as far as I'm concerned, The Colour and the Shape (which has the best Foo Fighter Song: "Everlong").

Press reports leading up to Wasting Light's release offered a bit of promise. Grohl, apparently, eschewed his big, private studio to record the album in his garage... After listening to Wasting Light a few times, it's pretty clear Grohl has a really expensive garage.

Several Shades of Why I Can Get Into an Acoustic Record by J. Mascis

The indie rock guitar god J Mascis is pretty good unplugged, too.

When I saw the Dinosaur Jr. reunion show a couple years ago -- this was just before the band released the second record with the reunited lineup,  2010's Farm --  frontman J. Mascis had half the tiny Lancaster stage  filled with four towering full Marshall stacks.

Even more remarkable than the site of half a (albeit small club) sound stage filled with that much firepower was the fact that all four amps were not aimed out at the crowd. they wrapped around the right side of the stage so that will were pointing directly at Mascis.

You see, for anyone unfamiliar with Dinosaur Jr., J. Mascis has consistently set the bar for volume. On the band's early records the level was set so high, that the guitar sound just absolutely bleeds. That's how Mascis wanted it to sound. And this was in the late '80s. If Kurt Cobain was the "father" of what would be called grunge, Masics is the form's grandfather. It was Mascis, really, who first nailed a formula that merged sloppy shoe-gaze with '60s psychedelia and loud-as-hell guitars.