Look, we love the revelations and nice tries in TV on the Radio’s puzzling back catalog—as ‘music critics,’ we’re practically required to—but what the hell was up with their atonal appearances on Saturday Night Live over the weekend? While the band’s wiry renditions of “Dancing Choose” and “Golden Age” weren’t as godawful as some s/t associates claimed before our own Audio Perv-assisted viewing, both songs came off poorly-mixed, rushed and, well, irritating.
Maybe Dave and Tunde should have revisited their sample-happy suitcase roots for this one and left the horn section at home, eh? Either that, or the band should have dug a little deeper into Dear Science and highlighted one of the most chilling songs in the entire TVOTR canon: the death-defying “DLZ.”
Anyway, judge for yourself after the jump. We’ve also included TVOTR’s Letterman performance from a few years back to show you how striking they can be in an idiot box context sometimes …
“Golden Age”
“Dancing Choose”
“Wolf Like Me”
FURTHER READING: What TV on the Radio’s Learned After 7 Years, 4 Albums, and a Couple Lineup Changes
11 Responses to “‘LIVE’ TRANSMISSION: Was TV on the Radio’s ‘SNL’ Appearance THAT Awful? Um, Kinda.”
WTF are you talking about?!? I’m not even a TVOTR fan and these performances were really strong. Apparently, you’ve never experienced a live TV audio mix for a full band. They’re always bizarre, heavily compressed and awkward. Nearly every band that plays on SNL sounds “poorly mixed, rushed” and confounding. If it irritates you, perhaps you shouldn’t be watching (ahem) music on the TV. To call it “atonal” is perfectly a-holish.
Did you ever see The Clash, Nirvana and/or Neil Young on SNL? Those were equally atonal, poorly-mixed, rushed and annoying performances. And, they also left indelible marks on the minds of many.
No, it was terrible and not even on par with any of their previously great performances. Also they’ve been amazing on TV before–see their Letterman performance. This was not their best moment.
Just for comparison:
oops.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73qBnuzrjx0
Woah, that’s more like it. Gonna add this clip to the post now …
Does anyone remember when they were on Conan back in 2006, promoting Cookie Mountain, and they played this AMAZING version of “Wolf Like Me” where they kept stopping and starting the beat? Since NBC are assholes, the video is pretty impossible to find online, but I always loved that performance.
@ Matthew
Was it this one?
http://share.ovi.com/media/zippydoo.myblog/zippydoo.10014
This band was so god awful on snl and the colbert report (I’m watching it now) that I looked up this blog just to tell every one. I’ve seen good live shows before and these guys suck!!!! I know they are the “new hot thing” now but no thanks. They sounded like someone put a cat in a bag and lit it on fire…
Gotta say. They really sucked. Couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Seriously. My garage band in high school sounded better.
And we KNEW we sucked.