Listen, no is looking forward to the new TV on the Radio album more than me. Well, okay, perhaps that's not true, but judging from the band's sales, I'm in the top 100,000. However, the video for lead single, "Golden Age", is pretty shit. It's cheesy '80s video effects, dancing cops, and people turning into hunky half-animal, half-men (or manimals, if you prefer). Idolator had this to say:
Sure, it has references to Joy Division and the Care Bears, to the Village People and to Voltron, all of which are played out on a blue-sky background that's seemingly within reach at any moment. But what I can't stop seeing is a clip that feels like the only culmination of a long life spent inhaling the culture (and "culture") of the cable-TV era, from the time of those clicky plastic boxes that could descramble the Playboy Channel if you hit the right buttons all the way through to the HD-ed out present.Granted, perhaps I am either not old enough to know from this "clicky plastic boxes" era of TV, though I do get the references to Voltron (huge fan back in the day), Joy Division (ditto, though not to the point where I automatically associate dudes in robes w/ the "Atmosphere" video), and the Village People. Yet this seems like excusatory boosterism to me: the "this-video-would-suck-but-for-the-grace-of-TV-on-the-Radio" approach. Let's face it, folks: DIY can and has sucked in the past. Goofy charm is not a quality conferred automatically by a low budget and gumption. Compared to the awesome clip for "Wolf Like Me", it fairly reeks of we're-not-trying-itis.
