It was the end of the semester (as it is now) when Lauren
gave me that discs of songs, in 2007, and today’s song was the lead-off song on that disc, so I associate it with this
time of year. It was a hot tune, then, the Top 40 single off Return to Cookie Mountain (2006), and my
introduction to TV on the Radio. Brooklyn-based band makes good.
The song became for me kinda the song of the summer. It just
suited something in the air, I guess. What’s more, I gave the song to my goddaughter,
Anna, who was 17 that summer. The song, which is ostensibly about turning into a
werewolf, seemed to me to make that transformation analogous to what happens to
your hormones around about 16-18, or so. “My mind has changed / My body’s frame
/ But God I like it.” Which I used to hear as “My body’s strange”—which is one way
of expressing what happens on that trail from teens to adults. And even that
idea of “Baby doll, I recognize / You’re a hideous thing inside / If there ever
was a lucky kind / It’s you you you.” The “hideous thing” is the monster
within, I guess, but it’s also a way of allowing that, well, something makes you want it and something makes you get it.
The pace of the song races along like a pounding heart
experiencing blood-lust, or just plain lust-lust. “You’ll never know / Unless
we go / So let me show you.” This thing rocks and it’s got a killer groove that
just keeps coming at you and getting more emphatic, built of multi rhythm
tracks. As an expression of “the transformation” it all works hand in glove.
Sure, if you want, it’s about becoming a werewolf and
running naked and strange and fanged through the forests of the night. Why not?
But if so, I think of Michelle Pfeiffer at the end of Wolf (1994) when her eyes go glassy green and, yeah, that makes me think
of this part, which concludes the little slo-mo interlude in the middle of the
song, and when that drumming groove starts up again you feel like your chest
might explode:
Feeding on fever /
Down on all fours / Show you what all that / Howl is for
I have a feeling I might remember what he’s talking about.
And I’ve never been a wolf . . . I was going to say I’ve never been transformed
into an animal, but stopped myself.
Another great line (this song has a lot) is: “Hey hey, my
playmate / Let me lay waste to thee”—sounds good, doesn’t it? And just so you know the body is the basis of
all the surging power the song puts out there: “There's a cure comes with a
kiss / The bite that binds, the gift that gives.” Yeah, bro, the gift that keeps on giving. And
the curse/cure idea is sharp.
I don’t know that much about Tunde Adebimpe, the guy who
wrote and sings this song. I have this album and its follow up Dear Science, so I know they’re not
one-hit wonders. Still, I don’t profess knowing much else they’ve done, on “instant
recognition.” They’re a varied bunch and
it’s hard to say what they’re dominant “sound” is. Which keeps it interesting.
This song did it for me and still does, even though it’s six
years since I first heard it. “Writhing under your riding hood.” Oh baby.
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