Two years ago, this Brooklyn quintet released their second album, Return To Cookie Mountain and we all pretended to be surprised. Granted, Cookie Mountain was a piece of raw techno-genius, the kind we rarely see; but can anyone who heard their happily imperfect debut Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes really be all that shocked that with a little more maturity and practice they had been able to put that piece of funky grunge-fizzle together? I approached Dear Science the same way, I expected this young band to continue its upwards evolution to bigger and better things. I was expecting more or less, a masterpiece. And I was still surprised.

We’re aware from Cookie Mountain that few bands are better at creating cohesive tapestries of musical fusion, which holds true here. But TVOTR has also become able to create some of the purely greatest musical moments I’ve ever heard: the haunting, vampiristic organ that accompanies a verse of DLZ, the blasts of exhausted horns near the end of Dancing Choose, the acid tipped guitar that shocks into Shout Me Out and the syncopated, heavenly chorus that backs up the beginning of Lover’s Day to name a few. These moments come and go so fleetingly you think you’ll miss them, but before long they’re replaced with others, just as breathtaking. This, like any other TVOTR album, feels gloriously overstuffed, as if each song had been the subject of constant one-ups-manship among songwriters.

Another TVOTR trademark is their habit of writing songs that are one-half Armageddon and another-half disco implosion; a doomsday dance party, as it were. This is evident in the opener Halfway Home, with its half-cocked, chaotic immediacy; or the jazz rock judgment day of Red Dress, which features Tunde Adebimpe yelping about bombs and salvation against freeform guitars and bone-chilling blasts of horn.

But it isn’t all fire and brimstone here, there’s also a tenderness that was perhaps lacking from their earlier efforts. For instance, the closer Lover’s Day, guitarist Kyp Malone takes center stage with an achingly beautiful near-ballad. You’ll think you’re listening to a different band when Kyp croons over vibrant, military drums “yes, here of course there are miracles/a lover that loves, that’s one.” That “here” implies a sense of complacency and optimism rarely seen from this band.

And even on sadder songs, this proves to be one of the most affecting discs of the year. On the Lewis Carroll-esque faux-fable Stork And Owl, Tunde displays his wonderfully strained falsetto when he rhetorically implores with simple, savage depression “what’s this dying for?” But the album’s true downer is Family Tree, a slow, sad meditation on racism past and present. It opens with a titanic piano, moves into a orchestral, operatic no man’s land and ends with the saddest disco breakdown you’ve ever heard.

The albums best song and most lingering impression, though, is the angry pseudo-rocker DLZ, in which an unnamed person is congratulated for their mess amid strange, whining horns and spewing, gutter guitar. And against the gloriously syncopated choruses and rigorous drums Tunde chimes despairingly “this is beginning to feel like the longwinded blues of the never.” But if it sounds this good, can it be that bad?

This is only TVOTR’s third record, so I realize that this might feel a little premature, but due to the quality and innovative nature of those albums I think it’s fair to say that any list of the greatest indie rock bands of the last ten years has to include them. I have no idea what the next album has in store, but I’m sure that no matter what, I’ll be surprised once again.

Release date: 22/09/08
Artist website: www.tvontheradio.com
Label: 4AD

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