by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

TV on the Radio have their hipster cred locked down, what with their Brooklyn address, recent media buzz and ties to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (TVOTR soundscaper David Sitek produced Fever To Tell, singer Tunde Adebimpe directed the animated video for "Pin"). Not that it means much to these devout homebodies, visual artists who stumbled unintentionally into the musical spotlight. Moreover, the music on their new full-length Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes soars above any temporary trend or flavour of the week. It's a unique and unexpected collision of shoegazer guitar wash, lo-fi electro-noise and pseudo-doo-wop vocal acrobatics (check their a cappella cover of the Pixies' "Mr. Grieves," off TVOTR's debut EP Young Liars), straining between misanthropic murk and philanthropic freedom, elation and desolation.

It's Adebimpe's powerful vocals (often doubled into an auto-duet) that take TVOTR's tunes over the top - imagine Peter Gabriel and the archangel Gabriel trading verses on a windswept street corner. Adebimpe confesses that his a cappella angle comes largely from his inability to play any instrument - music for him was, initially, a creative break from his animation and visual-arts career. "I was sick to death of it and I needed some other surface to throw stuff on to. It became another way to doodle, a sketchbook - and now it's turned into this. Okay, whatever!

"It's not that I'm not confident about the things that I do, but I have no idea whether they're coming across as right to anyone else. A big frustration with drawing, painting and even animation is, you get to a point where you've told yourself that there are certain rules that you can't bend or break, whereas with music and singing, I don't have so many of those. It's an open field. If it doesn't grate my soul, then it's probably fine," he laughs.

Grate the soul? Quite the opposite. To a degree, one can fit TVOTR in with the growing sensibility of acts like Polyphonic Spree or Flaming Lips, bands who hijack the spirit of religious gatherings (minus any mention of the J-man, per se) and achieve this collective ecstatic or transcendental state.

"I hadn't previously thought too much about the effect the songs would have on other people. But after live shows, we've been getting people coming up and saying, 'That was religious!' We're like, 'Nuh, yeah, yeah,' and they're like, "No, no - really religious!" We're worried, are we going to be like Stryper or something?"

This quasi-religious wave, arcing after 9/11, could be a reaction to the political rise of the Christian right in the States. Of course, it could be a reaction to the glum, cranky, no-fun-allowed indie-rock scene, all crossed arms and eyes on the floor. Adebimpe sees it as a bit of both.

"It's a weird sentiment, living in a place where you don't want to leave your house, so when you do, you don't want to go somewhere that's kicking you back into the house. See, I told you, there's no reason for me to leave! I feel like a lot of people are making an effort to stay interested themselves. I think the act of staying interested and actively not being bored can be classified as a religious exercise, or some sort of devotion."

With the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Les Angles Morts at Metropolis tonight, Thursday, Feb. 26, 8pm, $20, all ages

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