TV On The Radio “Halfway Home”

Road Trip, 27 Mar 2021

First off, that True Widow debut is a perfect response to Halfway Home—another album opener from 2008, also with a poetic three-line lyric form. Plus who can argue with a baritone guitar? Pinning that for a potential theme…

I was wondering if I’d be able to feel what I felt from this record when it was current. It’s been a while; my studio mates don’t dig Kyp Malone’s voice, and I do most of my music blasting—the type of listening I’m prone to give this—during work hours. Halfway Home happens to be Tunde Adebimpe’s, so that’s him singing, but it’s a record I don’t cherry pick from.

Last week I was talking about the Zeitgeist /spring 1981, and how sometimes a record assembles a collection of exciting vibes only recently available. Obvious ones from our lifetime: OK Computer, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, 3 Feet High and Rising... I'm sure before our time stuff like Fragile counted. I’m not constructing an argument here, just recognizing a certain TYPE of record, and a feeling I’m aware of when exposed to this sort of thing. As I get older, and have more experience picking up on the flavors of fashion, it becomes more obvious. This TV On the Radio record seemed a comic delivery of mainstream-ready hipness. By “mainstream” I meant something like midwestern state school frat houses + Rolling Stone end-of-year lists, etc. (This is my 2008 brain.) And by "hipness" I guess I meant it all seemed very Brooklandia. Still, I loved it in exactly the way I’m still making fun of: that “there’s something going on with this, I’m hearing it in weird places, and friends who only mention one record every few years are flipping out, etc” and it’s FUN when this happens—a total crossover moment. That Snail Mail record, for example: I had an incredible hot summer afternoon in an Urban Outfitters—so hot nobody was in there, a/c on the fritz—the listless army of Gen Z employees zombieing aimlessly around the place, practically bumping into each other. We weren’t fully aware how painful the Music To Buy Stuff To soundtrack was until some genius needle-scratched the thing. An awkward pause—collective relief—and then that weird guitar+voice (“Intro”) comes on and everything changes. It's amazing what music does. At first I kept it to myself—this is a public place—but as I wandered through the racks I kept catching eyes: every one of us was singing every word. They let the whole record run, and by the time the band enters mid-verse in Pristine—3 minutes later—it’s a party in there. Sabrina, Matu and Mercury (the only three “customers” in the whole place) were huddled in the dressing area like “what the hell is going on”? 

I didn’t live anywhere near an Urban Outfitters in 2008, though. No matter, I felt this TV On the Radio ‘thing’ bubbling up regardless. I always like singing along, but the literal _compulsion_ to do so is a key indicator that “something is up with this record” for me. 

And I guess I’m supposed to be writing about “Halfway Home”... 

Dig the lyric: Kay Ryan-like images in a strict AAB rhyme. Short words in long phrases, metaphor-heavy, taking a long time to construct any sense. Those loping pairs help; it's like listening to German: the reliability of the delivery allows you to stack the words in neat piles until the meaning finally hits. The cool, complex rhythm bed serves up both half-time and leaning-forward at once. The four go-arounds of no variation set up the change, which appears on all fronts: singer’s perspective, vocal rhythm, backbeat. 

Anyway, I love this song.