TV on the Radio frontman Tunde Adebimpe’s recent work with side project Higgins Waterproof Black Magic Band has been engagingly varied. His main band appears to be headed in a similar direction. Almost a month after TV on the Radio released “Mercy,” all propulsive new wave, the Brooklyn quartet’s gently stirring new “Million Miles” features a much softer tone. They’ve previously played the song live, but the studio version can now be heard above via NPR, set to a mesmerizing, nature-loving video directed by Natalia Leite. “It’s fun to take the idea of a song outside of the world of sound, give it fuller expression, expand its dimensions,” Malone told NPR.
Still, fans might have to wait a bit for a fresh full-length. TV on the Radio have yet to announce a proper follow-up to 2011’s album Nine Types of Light, their last with late bassist Gerard Smith, and Adebimpe has said they’re taking a much slower approach to the next LP. “We’re sort of collecting material for a record, but right now we’re only thinking in terms of songs, smaller things we can put out regularly until an album seems possible. Which I love,” he told SPIN in April. “It’s not that you’re less precious about the process, but I like coming in and saying, ‘Let’s make a couple songs,’ not feeling any sort of pressure to lock ourselves in a room.” Far from being locked in a room, the “Million Miles” video treks outdoors, and almost out-of-body.
