Jill and I hit up the HOB this past Sunday night to check out once again the great TV on the Radio. I never really managed to do a write up of their previous show we attended because our website was shut down around that time and in the effort to get it back up I never went back and wrote it up. Anyway, long story short, last time we saw them they played at the Lakewood Theater and the sound was mixed absolutely dreadfully. I had heard the new album so I could kind of make out which songs they were playing but Jill hadn’t and she couldn’t even tell what the new songs were like, though I assured her they were good. After they played SNL and had some bad sound on that one (even though everyone does, I know that), I wondered if it was just tough to mix the new, more varied sound of TVOTR and was very curious how this show would shake out and how the sound mix would be. Fortunately I can say that the sound was 1000x better for this show and they were able to rock out all of the songs, both old and new.

They played pretty much an extremely similar setlist to the previous show, and really had a pretty good mix of the new songs and the old songs. They were intertwined throughout and since the sound was mixed better this time the songs really came to life and shined. The stage energy and presence wasn’t really a problem for them last time I saw them but the sound was so bad it was distracting. Anyway, this time everything was clicking and they were able to get the crowd into it. This was certainly a very pumped up crowd and everyone went pretty nuts for most of the songs, especially for the older ones so there were certainly a few die hards in the crowd. Along the same lines as Franz Ferdinand (though not quite as crazy) they had a full vertical backdrop in place for the whole set of a bunch of quilts. I guess maybe this is a new trend at the HOB.

Anyway, TVOTR really put out one of the top albums of the year last year, and I’m just happy that I finally got to hear them deliver it live properly after the unfortunate sound problems of the last show. They have great energy on stage, and there is a great team effort going on with the whole band throughout the show so it really contributes to a great show. These guys are really worth checking out if you get a chance.

TV On The Radio – Shout Me Out – From Dear Science,

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