A 'Mountain' of rock hits on this new disc

Let's not beat around the bush: TV on the Radio's "Return to Cookie Mountain" is one of this year's best rock albums. We're not talking "top-10" -- we're talking "top-3" or better. And I say this as a person who is not especially a fan of TVOTR (not that I dislike them), nor really into avant garde music, nor a person who tosses out A's like parade candy. Only time will tell, but "Cookie Mountain" might well be the band's masterpiece -- and if you fancy yourself a devotee of daring and sophisticated rock, you have to get this album.\nNot that "Cookie Mountain" will please everyone. Its pace is often slow, heavy and deliberate, its production chilly and unsettling, and some people will simply not get past the dissonant, simultaneous high-low vocals of Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone (and their various collaborators including, if you haven't heard already, David Bowie). All that said, "Cookie Mountain" is much more accessible than TVOTR's first album, 2004's "Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes." While "Desperate Youth" was generally lauded by critics, (it won the 2004 Shorlist Music Prize and garnered attention thanks to single "Staring at the Sun") it was an album to be admired rather than loved. For all its technical skill and artistic ambition, track after track of hook-free droning made it less a collection of interesting songs than a roughly 45-minute meditation session -- interesting for a couple of plays, but doomed to gather dust on the shelf afterward.\nWith "Cookie Mountain," on the other hand, TVOTR do what made legends out of their idols Sonic Youth -- they pull their high-art music down from its pedestal, just close enough for us mere mortals to reach. While TVOTR hardly sound like anything else out there at the moment, the songs now have momentum and hooks, even sing-along choruses (albeit not in a "pump-your-fist" sort of way). The result is nothing short of stunning.\nFrom track to track, the band carries the listener through the sadness, fury, redemption and chaos of a post-apocalyptic world; they are clearly still pissed about the government's handling of Hurricane Katrina. Most surprising, perhaps, is first single, "Wolf Like Me," a bona fide rock song whose classic 4/4 beat (dum-dum-da-da-dum) will get your head bobbing while the closing chorus moves your lips ("we're howling forever, oo-oo!"). And, amaz ingly, in their abstract but poignant lyrics, TVOTR pull off the "Bono thing": simultaneously romantic, political and spiritual -- and if you think that's easy, ask Coldplay's Chris Martin.\nCritics often use the cliché "primal" to describe raw garage-rock acts such as Iggy Pop and the Stooges. TVOTR, however, show us what "primal" really sounds like. As complex as "Cookie Mountain" is, its simple, powerful, constant percussion; off-kilter multi-singer vocals; eerie guitar washes; and use of chants, flutes and other elements, make TVOTR sound less like a 21st century band than the unworldly music of ancient tribal ghosts dancing around an eternal bonfire.\nDare to join them?