Tom Vek :: "A Chore"

It isn't worth putting Tom Vek's debut album We Have Sound in a cultural context. You were either paying attention in 2005 or you weren't. And, frankly, if you weren't and someone didn't make specific mention of the multi-instrumentalist between then and now, you would have missed it entirely. After all, the indie rock world moved on. But if you waited around for Tom Vek these last six years through two Strokes and Radiohead records and Arcade Fire winning a Grammy, he returns this June with a new album and a first single entitled, "A Chore". The video centers on an a easy but good gender-bending joke. If you were wondering where to find the modern record that TV On The Radio suddenly lost the ambition to make this year, it is here. It is still undeniably a solo show. Suitably, by the end, oscillating between televised black-and-white and real life color, Tom Vernon-Kell is left standing alone on stage like he'd been waiting there the whole time or it was us who left him, not the other way around.