The passion’s returned for TV on the Radio

Twenty seconds into “Return to Cookie Mountain,” TV on the Radio’s 2006 album, frontman Tunde Adebimpe announced that “I was a lover before this war.” It’s a statement that guides the remainder of the CD, an art-rock stunner on which the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based quintet sketches out a gripping portrait of a post-9/11 New York blanketed with paranoia and regret.

Yet on Saturday night, during the second of the band’s two sold-out shows at the Music Box at Henry Fonda Theater, it appeared that Adebimpe had rediscovered his mojo. Before an adoring crowd, TV on the Radio transformed “Cookie Mountain’s” sorrow into celebration, pushing its thrillingly sensual music to cathartic extremes.

When Adebimpe and guitarist Dave Sitek formed the group in 2001, both men were working as painters, and at the Music Box the band members handled their instruments as though they were brushes, drawing forth great swaths of texture and color. Sitek used jingle bells to whack at the strings of his guitar, which had a set of wind chimes dangling from its neck; bassist-keyboardist Gerard Smith and drummer Jaleel Bunton tinkered methodically, motoring the music with low, sustained grooves.

Adebimpe and guitarist Kyp Malone have developed a bewitching vocal chemistry that gives TVOTR’s material the humid throb of old soul stuff; while Adebimpe testified like Marvin Gaye, Malone floated cool falsetto harmonies over his and Sitek’s carefully sculpted noise.

Near the end of its 14-song set, the band invited a group of friends onstage to clang cymbals and cowbells during “Method,” one of the album’s loneliest, most haunting numbers. As the music charged toward a dizzy dance-rock climax, it was clear that though war is still raging, some kind of battle had been won.