“Wolf Like Me” – TV on the Radio
(Words/music: Tunde Adebimpe, available on Return to Cookie Mountain, 4AD 2006) 

Not being the biggest TV on the Radio devotee (for no specific reason, I just never fell in love with any of their records), I’ll qualify the following as an over-generalization: the band’s most successful tracks create a very specific soundscape.  As much as the elastic vocals are exciting, my ears inevitably go back to listening to the instrumentation behind the singing.  This probably explains why my appreciation of the band stalls at the “admiration from afar” stage, but my emotional attachment to their music begins and ends with the mood the song crafts.

Taking a step back from that statement for a minute, it’s no wonder why “Wolf Like Me” stands out the most.  From the moment that first fuzzy chord joins the pounding drums, “Wolf Like Me” captures the anxiety of pursuit.  Whether it’s the tension in the chords, the relentless drums, or the way the vocals overlap at times, the song’s “A” section feels unrelenting and constantly in pursuit.  Even a few years later, I haven’t had figured out the slower “B” section – whether it’s a momentary relief from the predator, the part in the nature video where the prey is caught and the camera slips into slo-mo, or just a different hallucination – aside from the way it contrasts the beginning of the song in its intensity.  The vocals remain the same yet the rest of the song slows down around it.  When the song picks back up for the ending just as it catches its breath, the same anxiety resumes.  Appropriately, the lines that stand out to me are the ones that fit in with this sense of anxiety – “my mind’s aflame,” “bloodlust tanks,” “we’re howling forever.”  If music often serves to enhance the lyrics, these words feel like the natural extension of the music.

More on TV on the Radio: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm