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?).

At its best, funk is just really strange. Funkadelic has got to be the best funk band ever. And they were a strange band (if you've seen George Clinton, Bootsy Collins or Bernie Worrell recently, you know what I mean). I'm not sure TV On The Radio is a funk band. There's a lot going on with any TVOTR album -- from electro to post punk -- but some of the strangeness of funk is definitely there.



They are definitely not as weird as Funkadelic, but the mashed-up rock and rhythm sound of the band and the off-kilter vocals of singer Tunde Adibempe have a lot more in common with the funk tradition started by George Clinton than anything else in indie rock, despite the fact that the band's fan base seems to come largely from the later.

The band's new record Nine Types of Light, it's fifth full length, is not just funk, or just experimental or just indie rock. It's a solid album of 10 songs that manage to serve up provocative lyrics and song structures over a musical mix of electronics, guitars and beats that are just as captivating. What TVOTR manages to do is create a music that is strange, but not strange for the sake of being different. The band's songs are about everything from lust and love to consciousness and spirit. Musically, it's shooting for a sound that is universal -- one that can be daring and experimental but without sacrificing the essential bedrock of a killer groove.

Nine Types of Light begins with "Second Song," a hushed and slow talker that builds into a full-blast horn-accompanied chorus: "Every lover on a mission shift your known position into the light. Every diamond elemental, you are instrumental into the light." It's a perfect thesis statement for the rest of the record, outlining the sound and introducing the themes of what is about to follow. From there the album builds and builds, seeming to up the ante on every successive song.

Having listened for a few weeks, the album sounded a bit disjointed at first, but I've grown really fond of the whole set. From the low, groaning yearning of "Keep Your Heart" to the breakbeat dance of "No Future Shock," from the '80s inspired (and very funky) "New Cannonball Run" to the final track, the closest to an all-out rocker, "Caffeinated Consciousness," TVOTR have successfully built on their own sound. It might be a mashup of a lot that has come before it, but it's definitely a sound you won't hear  anywhere else. No it's not funk. And it doesn't belong in a musical ghetto of any kind.