Tv On The Radio

An exceptional confirmation, “Return To Cookie Mountain“. Twenty years ago, Tv On The Radio were expected to rise to the challenge of a second album born with the burden of following the already very interesting “Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes” (2004). That debut boasts a compelling, immediate single like “Staring At The Sun”: sensual, emotional, certainly rock but also undeniably contemporary. After an album that draws on very broad inspirations, from soul to noise-rock, by way of new wave and electronica and occasionally circling back to gospel, the risk was seeing them retreat to repeat the indie-rock hit and capitalize on the attention of audiences and critics. For once, though, the courage to take risks won out.

The courage to love, in spite of everything

The opening line of “Return To Cookie Mountain”, the one that kicks off “I Was A Lover”, immediately highlights the interplay of light and shadow: “I was a lover before this war”, before the band's New York knew the horror of 9/11, 2001. The beat, electronic and 80s-inflected, and the loops that seem to mimic the deafening sounds of the metropolis at times slide into devastating cacophonies, but they can also soar into touching soul melodies entrusted to Tunde Adebimpe.

There's no single reading of what the album title means, what the “return” of the title refers to, and above all what the mountain in question actually is. Paired with the cover art, which depicts an empty nest, however, it's easy to imagine a search for one's own past, a place of memory that is both nostalgic and painful. In this sense, the anxiety that comes through in “Hours” recalls the anguish of early adolescence, when the judgment of others is a suffocating weight:

You walked around, thought yourself beautiful

Just too bad they stared, just too bad they stared

Broke up your crown, called you “unusable”

“Try to breathe, as the world disintegrates”, suggests the splendid “Province”, the track that twenty years later some press office would have called the album's focus track. While the loops sketch out an unstable arrangement, the song magnificently surges in its chorus, poised between noise-rock and soul, sung as a duet:

Hold your heart courageously

As we walk into this dark place

Stand steadfast, erect and see

That love is the province of the brave

Loving is an act of courage, a choice to see through to the end no matter what. In the fragility of a world without solid reference points, it seems like the only place from which to start over. It's a track that sums up the band's ability to sway between fairly intricate compositional ideas and powerful emotional gut-punches. David Bowie's guest vocal turn, an admirer of the band, is just the icing on the cake.

Lovestruck, dreaming werewolves

The drone that kicks off “Playhouses” opens an apparently more straightforward track. In reality, it's an exercise in tension fueled by Jaleel Bunton's drums and Dave Sitek's guitar: a crescendo that never explodes. It sets the stage, in a way, for the album's most direct song, “Wolf Like Me”, which portrays desire and passion as an inner transformation. The courage to love has become the vitalistic force that transforms the self and, in turn, subjective reality. It's a triumph torn open by a bridge that rediscovers fragility: you're only loved back if you're loved in return, at least in a dream.

Dream me, oh, dreamer, down to the floor

Open my hands and let them weave onto yours

Feel me, completer, down to my core

Open my heart and let it bleed onto yours

Feeding on fever, down on all fours

Show you what all the howling is for

The interplay of vocal harmonies and a slyly noisy lo-fi is the backbone of “A Method”, an almost psychedelic little scene that splits the album in two. In contrast there's the racket of “Let The Devil In”, a tense, menacing blues placed with more than a little audacity right in the middle of the tracklist. With “Dirtywhirl” the album returns to its track of unstable balances, floating between vocal interweaving and layered arrangement, before charging forward again with the shadowy “Blues From Down Here”.

It's time to reach the grand finale. “Tonight”, clocking in at almost seven minutes, drifts over distorted guitars left in the background and galactic whistles, slow and aching, until it becomes hypnotic and surreal. “Wash The Day”, which runs past 8 minutes, is the most noise-rock track, wrapped in clattering guitar. It's a sonic magma that recalls Velvet Underground and that reveals more pronounced psychedelic undercurrents, until it explodes after five minutes and dissolves into a dreamlike coda, amid galactic drones and tambourine.

Returning once more to Cookie Mountain.

Twenty years after its release, listening back to “Return To Cookie Mountain” is like visiting a beloved place with a touch of nostalgia. An album that captures a moment of fusion between indie and other sounds and cultures, it has never been replicated by Tv On The Radio themselves, nor by any other band before or since. One is tempted to theorize that it holds a fragment of the zeitgeist, and perhaps that's exactly what makes it less accessible to those who didn't live through that period firsthand. The endpoint of decades of globalization of consumption and culture, seen from the megalopolis of New York, is a boundless postmodern melting pot, held together by feeling. The new wave past, electronic memories, rock tradition and soul warmth come together to convey the unease running through critical events like the still-painful September 11th and the looming financial crisis. If it's true that millennials, like the writer of this piece, grew up amid a constant scenario of upheaval, then “Return To Cookie Mountain” is the soundtrack to this unstable way of living. Deep down, we all just want to return to our nest.

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14/06/2026