The year is 2003. George W. Bush is seated firmly on the American throne, his armies of conquest carving out an empire in far away lands. The great Chinese panda lurks behind the Great Wall, handing out communism, oppression, and cheap consumer goods, and Afghanistan is a war-blighted hole. On the home front, Britney Spears is piling on the kilograms, there's nothing decent on TV, Eddie McGuire is still a smug git that most of Australia hates, and many people are anticipating TV on the Radio's next album after their incredibly popular "Young Liars" debut EP.

Come mid-2006, and pretty much all of those things are still true, except for the anticipation of TV on the Radio's next album. It's not like "Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes", their first full-length, was a poor album, but the blend of accessibility and art that characterised their first release was gone, replaced by a rather sterile, self-conscious effort that tried too hard to be revolutionary. Predictably enough, it garnered some minor acclaim from the music press, before sinking like a stone in a sea of public apathy. It seems that even the promise of bloodthirsty babes can't sell too many units when you've got to compete with Radiohead.

You see, to be revolutionary, in any artform, you have to be not only original and creative, but you also have to be accessible and easy to listen to. There's no use in writing an innovative new novel if it's torture to read, and there's no point in coming up with some very original music if it's no fun to listen to. TV on the Radio are original, nobody can deny that, but they're often had trouble making their music approachable to the average listener. When they do get the balance right, as they did on Satellite from the debut EP, the results are stunning. When they don't, as they usually do though, the result is a very frustrating listening experience.

"Return to Cookie Mountain", is, unfortunately, a frustrating experience to listen to, although perhaps not as much so as the previous album was. The jumble of ideas that dragged the band down last time is still present, but this time they're a little more focused, the disparate ideas channelled together in order to reach a goal, rather than just create racket. Well, usually.

Take Dirtywhirl, for instance, with its cartwheeling vocals and melody. It rattles, bangs, and clicks its way over its four minutes, the band perhaps throwing more noises into the song than were necessary, but at least they're focused towards something this time. Province is the much-anticipated track featuring David Bowie, and it's a melodic piece that cuts down a lot of the excess in favour of making it accessible for any casual fans of the Thin White Duke that might be listening. I Was A Lover is a monster of an opening track, with menacing white noise providing a bedrock to the beautiful vocals.

Speaking of which, Tunde Adebimpe's vocals have a much greater presence throughout the whole album. This is a good thing, because despite all of the interesting sounds that the band are able to conjure in the studio, Adebimpe's wonderful singing voice is often what can make or break these songs. His vocals are mixed a lot higher on this album, which is a logical step to take, and something that I'm pleased to see.

On the other hand, despite this newfound focus on song structure and vocals, the album doesn't consistently take care to make sure that the songs are actually listenable. Playhouses, for instance, slips into bad habits of throwing as many sounds and styles at the listener as possible and hoping that one of them will stick. I'm sure that in a technical and artistic sense, it's brilliant, but it's not actually enjoyable to listen to, which makes it worthless. It's but one of the multiple songs here that stray too far towards experimental inaccessibility, and it only takes a couple to destroy the entire flow of the album.

Sadly, the cacophony and racket on this album outnumbers the more enjoyable numbers. It's all very well to push boundaries and experiment with new sounds, but while doing so you've got to consider whether or not your songs actually sound good. Otherwise, you'll just do what TV on the Radio have done here, and produce an album that will be beloved by music critics and art students everywhere, and be completely ignored by everyone else. I wouldn't recommend this album to casual music listeners, or anyone not prepared to obsessively deconstruct it at all.