Radio, Rye Rye, Video

TV on the Radio - "Caffeinated Consciousness"



Judging from this track and "Will Do", the new TV on the Radio album seems like it's shaping up to the band's most conventional release yet. That's not meant as a knock, but both tracks have a decidedly non-experimental meat-and-potatoes straightforwardness to them - Sitek's atmospherics aside, "Will Do" is a modest little ballad that's sweet-leaning-towards-gooey . I like "Caffeinated Consciousness" quite a bit as well, probably because it basically is a Pixies song (specifically, "U-Mass" - there's also a hint of the Tame Impala song "Solitude is Bliss", which has a fantastic music video). It does seem like there's kind of a conscious effort to rein back on some of their more outre musical tendencies - we'll see how that pans out on a full album scale.

Rye Rye - "Hardcore Girls" (dir. by Liza Minou Morberg)



Rye Rye is basically a blank as a vocalist. Her voice is so slight and her flow so fast that she doesn't really leave any major impression in terms or personality or lyrical content. She is, however, smart enough to hop on productions that are busy enough to not demand more than a minor rhythmic element from the lead singer, and The Count and Sinden provide a banger here for her to work with. It's also kind of adorable how Rye Rye seems to be putting on a M.I.A-cockney accent for the hook here - this being her first single where M.I.A. (who signed Rye Rye to her label) hasn't actually shown up herself. The song itself is apparently a few years old, but the video has just surfaced now - Rye Rye's from Baltimore, but this pretty entertaining survey of street fashion and weightlifting chicks has something about it that strikes me as quintessentially LA.

Foo Fighters - "White Limo" (dir. by Dave Grohl)



I haven't actually listened to a Foo Fighters album since the 90s, but I have always had a soft spot for the full on goofiness found in the music videos of Dave Grohl and company. "White Limo" basically sounds like a hair metal track, and Grohl has put together a video that's best described as a Twisted Sister homage by way of Public Access TV, which is just overtly incompetent enough to be kind of endearing. And yes, that is Lemmy from Motorhead driving the limo.