REVIEWS:
Essentially, the music of They Might Be Giants is what it would sound like if those two dorky high school friends who always hang around with each other all the time without socializing with anybody else said "Hey! Why don't we form a band?" That's essentially what New Yorkers John Linnell and John Flansburgh (known collectively as "the Johns") did in the early '80s. Taking their name from a George C. Scott comedy about a man who thinks he's Sherlock Holmes, TMBG over the past decade-and-a-half have stretched the boundaries of nearly every popular musical genre, and in the process attracted both a sizeable cult following and the derision of a lot of the "hip" music press. For the record, the "hip" music press is dead wrong. Though the Johns' nasal voices and blatantly unconventional song topics have caused many to peg TMBG as a "novelty band," all of this is simply masking for some of the best melodies I've ever heard.
It's a bit hard for me to rate TMBG objectively, since they were the first band I ever really got into, and thus to me every one of their albums is worth a 10. Don't worry, though, I won't do that -- I'll attempt to rate each album on its own merits, as hard as it may be. See, when you're writing a review page meant to recommend albums to other people, it helps not to inject blatant amounts of subjectivity into each review. Unless it's Mark Prindle you're talking about, in which case it's funny as hell.
--Rich Bunnell
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(Rich Bunnell's review)
If you're a cool fan like me, you'd call this album "The Pink Album." That's right, the Beatles took the name "The White Album," Prince and Metallica have joint custody over "The Black Album," Primus has "The Brown Album," and those greedy bastards Weezer stole both "The Blue Album" and "The Green Album," but the pink album? Who on God's green earth would want that color? TMBG fans, that's freakin' who. Anyway, the color is pink because the color of the sky on the album's cartoon cover is pink. It's a bit of a stretch, but it works.
This is easily one of the weirdest albums that you or any other person will ever hear. There's some guitar on here courtesy of Mr. Flansburgh, but generally the songs are powered by the synths, which at this point are extremely primitive, making the songs sound almost like MIDI files with vocals. The album crams 19 songs into around 38 minutes, and if you're a math major at Harvard you'd be able to tell that that's about two minutes per song. Add to that the fact that nearly every other song on the album seems like a pithy throwaway on the surface, and it all adds up to one of the most seemingly excruciating first listens you'll ever go through. "What the hell is this crap?"
Eventually, however, the bizarre fact will come to light that most of these 19 things are actual songs. Good ones. The most obvious of the lot are the singles--both the hyperkinetic "Don't Let's Start" (featuring the line "Everybody dies frustrated and sad, and that is beautiful" sung cheerfully) and "Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head" (a chimey pop song with almost stream-of-consciousness lyrics) are wonderful little pop nuggets and actually received some minimal exposure on MTV. Linnell's fact-paced "Rhythm Section Want Ad" is a delight to behold with some of the most quickly-sung lyrics on a TMBG album, and the almost show tune-like "Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes" bounces along in a leisurely and delightful manner. Linnell also contributes "She's An Angel," a fan-favorite which is one of the most beautiful and melodically-twisted love songs that I've ever heard, throwing together simplistic three-beat verses with a melodic, almost Hawaiian chorus like they were meant to be together.
It's the weirder songs that really make the album what it is, though. "Boat Of Car" is a short, minimalist tune with a hilariously bizarre repeated Johnny Cash sample ("Daddy sang bass") and atrocious-sounding harmony vocals between Flanburgh and some chick - it sounds terrible at first, but for whatever reason is a real grower. "Hide Away Folk Family" begins like a gorgeous country ballad before going into an unexpected heavy bridge, and "(She Was A) Hotel Detective" is a strangely-appealing garage rocker with distorted vocals courtesy of Flansburgh. Lastly, "I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die" was a rather simple accordian song in its original demo incarnation, but the Johns seemingly decided to use it as a testing ground for all of the effects on their synthesizer, and somehow the song works.
Appealing as it is a lot of the time, the album by its very nature can't be perfect. First off, the production can get a bit grating if you're not in the right mood, and secondly, a few of the songs just blow. "Chess Piece Face" has a merely okay melody which it ruins with an incredibly annoying and ear-piercing descending synth that keeps repeating itself over the course of the song, and it's a real skipper. And "The Day" just might be the most pointless song either John has ever written, mixing a completely uninteresting half-melody with an annoying "anthemic" arrangement that makes the incredibly short song somehow seem excruciatingly long. It's still a very good album, however, even if its more grating qualities make it seem at times like the product of a couple of annoying jackoffs. I resent that -- they may be jackoffs (both Johns have been known to avoid their fans consciously after leaving a live show, which isn't very nice for a band that relies mainly on its fanbase to keep itself alive), but they're not annoying!!
HIGH POINTS: Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head, Don't Let's Start, Absolutely Bill's Mood, Hide Away Folk Family, She's An Angel, Everything Right Is Wrong Again, Youth Culture Killed My Dog. LOW POINTS: None.
Question: what happens if you take two geeks, teach them how to write pleasant and catchy pop melodies, let them spend all of their money on cheap MIDI/Casio keyboards and drum machines, give them some well-produced sound and make a strong point at the fact that any random song should not go over three minutes?
Answer: This Might Be Giants' debut album.
Yeah, I know these aren't the Earth-shattering news, but this record is fuckin' amazing. And, what's more, I find it really hard to explain why it is so good and why it grows on me even more every time I listen to it. At the first sight, none of these songs aren't really great, A+ level or something like that, but they ALL are good. All 19 of them. Well, actually, I kind of irritated by "Boat Of Car", but it's still a good song in the core. So, how many albums you can name where all 19 songs were good? Let's use my favourite cliche and say that over the course of less than 40 minutes, They Might Be Giants explode as many great melodies as some bands struggle to write in their entire careers.
I especially love John Linnell's songs on here. His "Don't Let's Start" was a minor hit back in the time of its' release and you know why - the song is catchy, with superb guitar lines and fantastic pre-chorus/chorus combination. Linnell also shines on tender "She's An Angel", an excellent ballad that is not like any ballad you've ever heard before. Carefully structured and arranged, it's nothing but a work of genius. "Everything Right Is Wrong Again" captivates on being a multi-part song, which isn't exactly multi-part: John changes the same vocal melody three times and puts it into three different moods. I guess the echoey, almost psychedelic middle section of it works amazingly well, as the keyboard exposition in the ending does. And I can't get enough of pop perfections like "Rhythm Section Wants Ad" this guy used to write.
But however good Linnell may be, his partner, John Flansburgh, contributes my favourite song on here - the fascinating and nonsensical "Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head". Now, "Don't Let's Start" is the best song on here objectively, but this one actually impresses me more. I dunno why, still. It's like the song that goes perfectly, but doesn't say anything or it's not even something special. I love it: dumb keyboards, happy vocal melody and all that crap. Actually, all Flans' songs sound like they were written just for fun and nothing else, and that's why I like them. Catchy "Youth Culture Killed My Dog" and hilarious Rolling Stones mockery in "(She Was A) Hotel Detective)" are winners, and the country-western-synth-pop attack of "I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die" is really entertaining. And I must be really crazy, but "Hide Away Folk Family" is actually touching - in the dumbest way possible, of course, but touching, nevertheless. Guess its' because of these loveable harmonies. And have you ever heard "Absolutely Bill's Mood"? "I'M INSANE I'M INSANE I'M INSANE". Perfect
So what destiny Europe had left to us? Well, They Might Be Giants is very, very enjoyable, and it kicks ass. It's the ultimate geek-pop album for starters and certainly an unbelievably good debut. The fact that these guys didn't become superstars from the very beginning only shows how bad music sucked back in 1986.
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(Rich Bunnell's review)
Usually, TMBG's second album is thought to be their "quirky" unhailed masterpiece ("quirky" being the word that every fan hates to call the band mainly because the description is sadly all too true), and it's not too hard to understand why. What we have here is basically an expansion of the debut, with that album's more fillerish qualities filtered out and replaced by more fleshed-out songwriting and recording techniques. Where the debut album may have had a one-minute synth experiment, this album has a two-minute full-fledged song. So basically, it sounds like a mature version of the last album, and while "mature" is only a relative term (the nasal voices and bizarre lyrics are still here in their glorious entirety), this very fact still causes a distinct majority of fans to go bonkers over this particular collection.
I don't rate it that highly, but I'll give it one thing: it has the best freaking song ever written on it. Or at least the one that I certainly enjoy the most. The opener "Ana Ng" is an absolutely flat-out perfect rocker about an imaginary long-distance relationship, and its stomping guitars and free-flowing chorus make up the absolute most enjoyable sing-along-at-the-top-of-your-lungs experience that I've ever heard. It's just fantastic, and the album's obvious highlight. This song has went on every single mix tape I have ever made. Not really, but it probably should have.
The rest of the album can't possibly hope to measure up, but if the remaining seventeen songs are evaluated on their own merits, most of them are actually revealed to be incredibly strong. "Purple Toupee" is a distorted, surreal look at the civil rights movement ("Chinese people were fighting in the park, we tried to help them fight but no one appreciated that, Martin X was mad when they outlawed bellbottoms, ten years later they were sharing the same cell") set to impossibly catchy upbeat accordian-and-guitar music, "They'll Need A Crane" continues the "Don't Let's Start" formula by telling the story of a sad breakup over a bouncy, gorgeous melody, and "Where Your Eyes Don't Go" alternates between jumpy verses with spiraling synths and a slick, polished refrain ("You're free to come and go, or talk like Kurtis Blow, but there's a pair of eyes in back of your head").
As with any early-period TMBG album, the bizarrities are still set firmly in place by several brands of glue, possibly sniffed repeatedly by the Johns during the recording process. The strangest single moment on the album is during "Snowball In Hell," when the melody suddenly stops and a self-help tape on how to make money starts playing over the backing rhythm. "Oh, I see, back on that old 'time is money' kick?" "Not back on it, Joe. Still on it." Elsewhere, "Cowtown" mixes a good ol' seatime melody with crunching guitars and hilariously lame synths of cows mooing, and "You'll Miss Me" is probably the most intentionally awful song the band ever wrote, with off-key instrumentation and distorted rapping by Flansburgh. I like it, but don't ask me why.
I just realized that I've structured this review exactly like the previous one. So sue me, you try to review albums with 18 songs on them. It's really really hard. At any rate, here's where I go into which tunes on the album are weaker than the rest: "Stand On Your Own Head" is Linnell at his most generic and boring, "Santa's Beard" is a catchy rocker made annoyingly obnoxious by Flansburgh's snide vocal delivery, and "Cage And Aquarium" isn't so much a song as it is a half-written joke (the title is a parody of "The Age Of Aquarius" but the awkward-sounding music certainly isn't). That's it. Three weak songs, fourteen really good ones, and one absolutely amazing, stunning tune which is a better song than any other mortal man has ever written. I'd call that a good track record for any given album. As a whole, the album at first doesn't seem as lively or interesting as the band's earlier work, but over time it reveals itself as among their best. It's a grower, 'tis!
HIGH POINTS: Kiss Me Son Of God, Ana Ng, They'll Need A Crane, The World's Address, Where Your Eyes Don't Go, Piece Of Dirt, Cowtown, Purple Toupee, You'll Miss Me, Pencil Rain, I've Got A Match, Lie Still Little Bottle. LOW POINTS: None.
God damn, and you thought the first album was good. Lincoln craps over the first album, leaves it really, REALLY far away. Lincoln is simply one of the best albums of all time and definitely the most melodic one I've ever heard (well, it's on par with The Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society and Stone Roses' self-titled). The Johns improved the instrumentation over the debut - the guitar sounds more well-crafted, keyboard doesn't sound like your simple MIDI anymore, and they actually bring some horns and strings in the mix! Combined with marvelous, also improved songwriting, Lincoln is the best They Might Be Giants you can get. It's awesome.
The album opens with "Ana Ng", and, from the start, you are excited. Above, you can read Rich Bunnell's review of the album in which he describes this song as the best song ever written. And while I don't agree with him at that point, I still admit that it's a brilliant song. Go and tell me that it's crazy inventive guitar riff (which sounds more like a melodic collection of samples of a random guitar chords than an actual riff) isn't the best thing ever. John Linnell brings in a soft and memorable vocal melody that completely contrasts with synth-punk in the wild chorus. The song's last minute or so is insane too, with a whole series of fake endings. I'm also a big fan of the lyrics, because they are weird and random as possible.
"Cowtown" is probably isn't as good as "Ana Ng" in the songwriting quality, but it sounds as interesting. It combines a country melody with sea and adds some tricky guitar and synths effects all over. And it's a wonderful sing-along too! "Lie Still, Little Bottle" shows a beginning of Flansburgh fascination of pre-50's American music, being a good old vocal jazz-pop song with a typical instrumentation of that time. It brings pictures of some old smoky cafe of late 30's. "Purple Toupee" gets together guitar, keyboards, and accordion to create a weird atmosphere set to superb, catchy vocal melody, which sounds especially fine in the chorus. The bridge is great as well.
Flansburgh contributes short "Cage And Aquarium", which isn't very noticeable melodically, but memorable due to its' dark atmosphere. On the other hand, "Where Your Eyes Don't Go" is another in series of Linnell's pop perfections - the song's verses show gentle synth-pop in its' best possible way, while the chorus is soft, acoustic, and: hopeless. Yeah, it sounds really hopeless ("Where your eyes don't go the part of you is hovering/ It's a nightmare that you'll never be discovering/ You free to come and go or talk like Kurtis Blow/ But there's a pair of eyes in back of your head") - for some reason, all Linnell's songs on here sound hopeless and sad, but I'll get that later: Anyway, back to "Where Your Eyes Don't Go", the song, in spite of its' relatively short running time, has enough space for introduction, ordinary chorus/verse part and a great instrumental coda with John Flansburgh's evil guitar.
"Piece Of Dirt", though it was written by Flans, is equally sad as any Linnell song on here - in particular, these little guitar lines hidden in between percussion/synth sound simply ache. "Mr. Me" is probably as closest to children's music as Giants came before the release of No! - don't you deny that nursery rhythm and almost maniacally infectious "He ended up sad! He ended up sad! He ended up REALLY REALLY REALLY SAD!" chorus is childish. "Pencil Rain" is lyrically bizarre to extreme, being a song about: ah, whatever it is about, it is bizarre. Musically, it is like a synth-pop march, and that rhythm always makes me take my pencils in hands and drum along.
"The World's Address" is jazzy cha-cha-cha: Or Latin jazz? Damn, I don't know how classify it, but it's great. There's no better Flansburgh vocal melody on the whole album and there's probably no better (in terms of sing-along power) chorus. And the song has some clever wordplay in its' lyrics: "The world's address/ A place that's worn/ A sad pun that reflects a sadness". "I've Got A Match" is a fine example of those hopeless Linnell's songs I was talking about. That chorus surely sounds extremely sad and the line "You think it always sensitive and good/ You think that I want to be understood" is sad beyond all imagination. Anyway, musically, it's also quite an impressive tune.
"Santa's Beard" is a completely straightforward rocker that doesn't actually rock at the first place, but it's still a catchy enough song. "You'll Miss Me" is a huge Captain Beefheart pastiche: you get Trout Mask Replica kind of rhythm section, some free jazz horns, off-tune half-rapping (Flans even imitates good ol' Don Van Vliet on here) and lyrics about genius. Damn, I love it! I also love "They'll Need A Crane", which is, without a doubt, THE saddest song on here - Linnell tells a story of a breakup over the music, which, however cheerful it may sound, leave no way out. The bridge, where Linnell sets everything only on acoustic guitar is truly heartbreaking: "Don 't call me at work again, no no/ The boss still hates me/ I'm just tired and I don't love you anymore". Complete with John's broken nasal voice, the song is surprisingly much more depressive than you think They Might Be Giants song can be.
"Shoehorn With Teeth" is a hilarious one minute of Johns singing about shoehorn with teeth over some horns, while "Stand On Your Own Head" is Linnell's another great pop song, quite entertaining, but a little bit underwritten, in my opinion. "Snowball In Hell" is a nice sing-along that sets some atmosphere before a great, grandiose closing number - "Kiss Me, Son of God". Yeah, I know this song is less than two minutes long, but it's a perfect song anyway. With a very simple instrumentation (a violin and a piano), it manages to create a fantastic atmosphere. Add to this a brilliant vocal melody and Linnell's absolutely incredible lyrics, which are, honestly, some of the best lyrics I've ever heard. In two verses and one bridge, he tells you the essence of particularly every totalitarian regime. "I built a little empire/ Out of some crazy garbage/ Called the blood of the exploited working class/ But they've overcome their shyness/ Now they're calling me "Your Highness"/And the world screams: "Kiss me, Son OF God!"/ I destroyed the bond of respect/ In between the only people left/ Who'd even looked me in the eye/ Now I laugh and make a fortune/ Of the same ones that I torture/ And the world screams: "Kiss me, Son of God!" And the bridge is killer: "I look like Jesus/ So they say/ But mister Jesus/ Is very far away/ Now you're the only one here who can tell me if it's true/ That you love me/ And I love me". Damn, I just realized I quoted the entire song, but it's worth it, anyway! Oh, the album itself is worth of your attention. Get it now - it's a classic.
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(Rich Bunnell's review)
"Why is the world in love again? Why are we marching hand in hand? Why are the ocean levels rising up? It's a brand new record for 1990! They Might Be Giants' brand new album.... Flooooooood!" These words open the album, sung by a choir, and it's immediately apparent that the Johns somehow got their hands on a little extra green for their recording sessions this time around. Flood is undeniably TMBG's most commercially-successful album, as it's their only release to hit or even approach platinum status. You hear that? Platinum!! At least a million people own this album!! A million! And a lot of them probably hate it!!
In the U.S., the main reason for this album's success was because a couple of album tracks, the catchy cover "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)"(which, though it wasn't written by TMBG, certainly sounds like it was) and the dopey and annoying-as-hell repetitive kiddie tune "Particle Man" were turned into animated music videos for the popular cartoon "Tiny Toon Adventures" featuring Plucky Duck and Hamton the Pig. The videos were pretty funny, but they kind of pegged TMBG as a novelty band, something which has really plagued them ever since. In the UK, the album became popular for more traditional reasons - Linnell's insanely-catchy "Birdhouse In Your Soul," produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley and written from the perspective of a nightlight, went Top 10 and scored the band their only British radio hit. So instead of novelty artists in Great Britain, they're one-hit wonders. It's hard to tell which is worse, but I guess that if I were a musical artist I'd certainly rather be like Weird Al instead of Kajagoogoo.
So how does the album itself hold up, says you, the reader jaded and disgusted that the reviewer is referring to popularity and record sales? Well, a lot of people hail this as TMBG's best album, but I don't think that most of the people who say that have even heard (or heard of, in some cases) their other ones. The album is good, but a bit inconsistent and weakly-written in comparison to what the Johns have proven themselves capable of. Actually, in all truth, for the first 3/4 of the album, the songs are about as great as those on the last couple, with the exception of the aforementioned "Particle Man" and Flansburgh's so-so "Lucky Ball And Chain." "Your Racist Friend" and "Twisting" show Flansburgh adept at writing stomping semi-social commentary and uptempo surf pop respectively (the latter in particular is fantastic in concert), and "We Want A Rock" and "Someone Keeps Moving My Chair" are typical but well-written and enjoyable Linnell tunes. Even Flansburgh's bizarre pseudo-reggae tune "Hearing Aid" is completely fascinating in spite of its musical shortcomings.
It's really the end of the album (after Linnell's "Whistling In The Dark," a hilariously witty medieval stomp that brings to mind "Pencil Rain," only much more melodic) that totally drags down the proceedings. "Hot Cha" is a grating and totally ordinary mechanical singalong, "Women & Men" is an ultra-melodic but ultimately uninteresting sea shanty, "Sapphire Bullets Of Pure Love" is bland midtempo synth-pop, and "Road Movie To Berlin" has almost nothing musically-interesting going on in it at all, despite the cool mid-section.
The bizarre, band-titled "They Might Be Giants" is better than any of these songs, but it's mostly interesting as a musical oddity as opposed to an actual song. If the album had ended at track 14 it would be about as strong as Lincoln -- then again, at such a short length it wouldn't really feel like a TMBG album. As the Johns said in the video promo for this album, "Most albums that come out today only have ten songs, or less! This makes us angry. But instead of cursing the darkness, we've decided to do something about it! We've put out an album with nineteen songs. And that's why our album's better." Well, it's certainly better than a lot of albums that came out in 1990, but as far as TMBG albums go it's one of their weaker ones. For the record, Flansburgh's "Minimum Wage" is one of the funniest songs I've ever heard.
HIGH POINTS: Birdhouse In Your Soul, Dead, Istanbul (Not Constantinople), Your Racist Friend, Road Movie To Berlin, Particle Man, Lucky Ball And Chain, Letterbox, They Might Be Giants. LOW POINTS: Whistling In The Dark, Women & Men.
I once read a very interesting story of how Flood is actually a Christian album, with all these songs relating to Bible to some extent. I must say that I'm completely sure that whoever wrote that article perhaps was very, very drunk or really high on drugs or was just listening to The Twenty Greatest Novelty Hits Of All Time while writing that thing, because the whole idea of They Might Be Giants, two geeks from the working class of New York City (I dunno if they are really from the working class, by the way - I just think that phrase "working class of New York City" sounds cool) talking about religion, let alone Christianity makes my daja go aljo. Okay, so there 's a thing about "Triangle Man" (got it?) in "Particle Man", but otherwise? I mean, it's the fucking They Might Be Giants, the band who had written songs about pencil rains, eye-covering hair and dirt bikes, do you seriously consider they could write an album full of Christianity one day? I don't even know if they are Christian, probably not, because all these weird guys always seem to be atheists. I dunno about John Flansburgh, but John Linnell is a goddamn FRANK ZAPPA fan, how can he dig Christianity? How he can dig any religion at all?
Speaking of music of Flood, it's pretty much the same bouncy keyboard pop that dominated first two Giants' albums, only worse. It doesn't mean that this album it's bad - not at all, it's awesome, but: I really dunno, but these songs sound forced and mechanical for the most part. I simply can't explain where did all these weird ideas of the first two albums gone, but Flood doesn't have too many real genius songs, like "Don't Let's Start" or "Ana Ng". Granted, at least two songs on here are absolutely yummy as far as the song goes, but many songs on the record simply bore me. "Hot Cha"? "Someone Keeps Moving My Chair"? "Sapphire Bullets Of Pure Love"? Finally, the band puts on here two completely uninteresting tracks - 100% childish and 100% boring "Whistling In The Dark" and extremely obvious "Women & Men", which has probably the lamest lyrics John Linnell had ever written: "Women and men have crossed the ocean/ They now begin to pour/ Out from the boat and up from the shore/ Two by two they enter the jungle/ And soon they number more/ Three by three as well as four by four/ Soon the stream of people gets wider/ Then it becomes a river/ River becomes an ocean/ Carrying ships that bear". Wow, I'm impressed - that's a deep philosophical statement, if there was one. I mean, the line "Two by two they enter the jungle/ And soon they number more" is so completely dumb that it leaves me breathless. Yeah, we have heard David Byrne talking to us that he "saw the sex" and he thinks it's allright, but Linnell beat even THAT. Awesome.
However, They Might Be Giants were still a great band, and the first seven songs on this album prove it, because they all are awesome. Allright, the idea of opening the album with twenty-seven seconds of choir singing an ode to the new TMBG album doesn't look really good on paper, but it's kind of fun, at least for me. But next six songs simply blow me away. The best of them all is, of course, a big hit "Birdhouse In Your Soul", which is probably the best synth-pop song I have ever heard in my life. The amount of hooks in this song is beyond any count, and the tone in which Linnell sings completely rubbish lyrics is incredibly friendly. But what impresses me most is the synth sound here. HOW DID THEY GET SUCH A GREAT SYNTH SOUND? Those large "BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM" keyboards going through all of the song is the best thing ever, I tell ya. The following "Lucky Ball And Chain" may not seem great at all after such a mind-blowing number, but it's still a really good song, catchy and with enough of great Flans naive charm.
The band's cover of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" goes next, and it's awesome. They use a lot of strings on here, probably to recreate the atmosphere of Constantinople, but, in fact, these strings sound more like Gypsian ones. Or Jewish. Or Alaskian. I don't know, honestly, but the song is incredible. "Dead" is incredible too. When I first listened to it, I thought: "Heh? Who NEEDS a three-minute They Might Be Giants piano ballad?" But damn, is this a great piano ballad! Slow, spooky, with completely weird but smart lyrics ("Now it's over I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want/ Or, I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do") and a catchy vocal melody. It's probably the most underarranged song the band had ever done, too, but, here, I mean "underarranged" in a good way - the piano-only sound really works.
"Your Racist Friend" was penned by Flans, but it sounds like an ordinary Linnell song. It is catchy anyway and fantastically danceable as well (thanks to that cool rhythm all over the song). Finally, you get your "Particle man", the song that divides all They Might Be Giants fans completely. Many of them think it's awesome (a fine example is Chris Willie Williams - I once caught the guy talking about "eight or so" different versions of that song he has heard), but many think it's completely awful (a really fine example is Rich Bunnell, even though he seems to hate the song just because it has appeared in Tiny Toons, of all things). I think it's great and amazingly hilarious song. "Triangle Man hates Particle Man, they often fight, Triangle wins!" These lyrics are so DUMB and the way Linnell sings them is DUMB and the arrangement is DUMB, but this song is fantastic anyway. The most incredible thing about it is how fans try to interpret it - some fan site has a HUGE, 9-page attempt in trying to discoverer what this song actually means. This is crazy, if you ask me.
From "Particle Man", the album kind of loses everything, with only one track in the middle ("Letterbox") being a truly great song. And I, for one, don't really understand what's the point in "Minimum Wage". Fortunately, Flans contribute two ending tracks, which are great as me. "They Might Be Giants" has one the weirdest rhythm patterns out there and an ultra-catchy vocal melody, while "Road Movie To Berlin" is such a slow, moody and fantastically well-crafted song that I even wonder why did they include that strange, completely out of condition middle section, which also rules anyway. At least, it's a nice attempt to close the whole album with a song that has some really epic feel in it. It's surely not "Kiss Me, Son Of God", still, but, then, what song actually is?
Oh, and you know what? It was their first major-label album ever. It's not like they wasted all the money they got on the improving of production and instrumentation, though, spending them all (it seems) on hiring that choir in the introduction track. However, their new label actually helped them to promote the album and singles off it, so they actually gained some more money that they used to. Oh, and you know WHAT album that was? Elektra! I must admit, these guys are strange. The reason why did they sign bands like They Might Be Giants, Phish and Ween isn't really clear to me. OK, so all these three bands actually have huge cult followings and plenty of ear-pleasing melodies, but can you imagine them actually having some large success? Ok, so TMBG and Phish HAD Platinum albums, but Ween? Do you think kids really need them?
It's not as weird as WARNER FUCKING BROTHERS releasing these Mr. Bungle albums! *Insert some NES noises, Mike Patton's scream and a distorted saxophone solo in the middle of 10-minute funky avant-garde death pop composition*
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COMMENTS
[in response to the second review:]
Actually, I love the Tiny Toons music videos - Plucky Duck can father my web-footed children any day of the week. I don't hate "Particle Man" like I used to, but they've definitely done a bundle of much more interesting songs, so it's kind of irritating that people primarily associate the band with that song.
(reviewed by Rich Bunnell)
I saw a 1990 interview on MTV's "120 Minutes" between the Johns and Dave Kendall where they were discussing Flood, it of course being the album being promoted at the time. During the interview (which has caused many a TMBG fan to hate Dave Kendall's guts because he suggested that Flood was a sellout album) the subject of TMBG's putting loads of tracks on their albums came up, and Linnell said "19 on our first one, 18 on our second, 19 on our third. The only question is...how many will the fourth have?" I guess they decided on the answer to that question rather quickly, because their fourth album contains THIRTY-EIGHT tracks. This isn't to say that it's a self-indulgent double album or anything - I'll explain later.
First, I have to get to the fact that this is easily the best album that the hardest-working geeks in show business have ever turned out. The album establishes a mix of wonderful, poppy, somewhat dark music set to some of the best hooks and lyrics that both Johns have come up with, and nearly every single song ranges from great to excellent. Flansburgh in particular goes absolutely nuts on this album, churning out speedy punk (the opener "Dig My Grave"), lounge-jazz ("She's Actual Size"), the only songs in the TMBG catalogue that sound like the Beatles ("My Evil Twin" and the stunning "Narrow Your Eyes"), and funk ("Hall Of Heads"), amongst other styles. The shiny Monkees-style surf rocker "See The Constellation" is his only really normal contribution to the album, and even that one has a totally whacked-out psychedelic fade-out.
Linnell remains in more normal, straightforward territory as usual, cranking out the album's two highlights in the bouncy single "The Statue Got Me High" (which is about a statue that invites someone over for dinner and then kills him...don't ask) and the deceptively cheerful and lyrically clever-as-hell "I Palindrome I" (which opens with Linnell happily singing "Someday mother will die and I'll get the money!", perhaps the funniest single moment in TMBG's entire catalogue). He also contributes highlights in the bubbly-yet-infectious "Mammal," the impossible-to-memorize "Dinner Bell," and the demented barbershop anthem "Turn Around," and they're all floggin' ace, like what would happen if Kiss's guitarist chewed gum in Singapore. Okay, that was bad. Sorry.
Anyway, the reason that the album contains thirty-eight tracks, like I mentioned earlier, is because of the album's out-of-control magnum opus "Fingertips," a five-minute medley of refrains sequenced together into twenty audio tracks. The medley was designed this way so that listeners could finally take advantage of the "shuffle" function on their CD players and receive a new demented, random and bizarre album every time they felt like throwing it on. If you ask me, the medley is more funny and interesting if you listen to it in its entirety - they cover a ton of genres, even ones that they really shouldn't be ("I Heard A Sound" and "Something Grabbed Ahold Of My Hand" sound like TMBG's takes on Prince and Cyndi Lauper, respectively) and somehow it all hangs together in a way that only the Johns could fashion. I read an interpretation of the medley that linked the sequence of tracks to the lifecycle of a human man, and rather well, I might add ("Everything Is Catching On Fire" is creation, "Fingertips" is being pulled out of the womb, etc.), though I seriously doubt that the Johns intended it that way.
And my hastily-written overall take on the album? I love it. It's a bit dark and awkward and doesn't contain a complete knockout like "Birdhouse In Your Soul" (though "The Guitar," a downright-bizarre rewrite of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," certainly comes close), but to me this is the best example of everything that ever made (and still makes) TMBG a great band in spite of the fervent objections of all of the purist nay-sayers out there. Even if you don't like the songs on this album, you'll at least find it to be really, really interesting.
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(reviewed by Rich Bunnell)
This album is where a lot of fans jump ship. Up to this point, TMBG had operated entirely as a duo backed by synths, guitar and accordian, with any other instruments provided by session musicians if necessary. The Johns began touring with a full band in 1993, however, and for their next full-length album they decided to abandon their synth roots and record with the band in the studio. (The names of the bandmembers aren't important - over the past seven years, TMBG's backing band has shown itself to be almost as big of a revolving door as King Crimson.) The album title is meant to be symbolic - i.e. just like John Henry in the classic fable defeated the tunnel-building machine via his own strength, here the Johns defeat "the machine" (synthesizers) through pure organic "muscle" (real instruments). They must have realized the riskiness of this change, though, as evidenced by the pictures of sad-looking children holding up "We Hate They Might Be Giants" banners in the liner notes.
The results of this gamble are kind of mixed. On one hand, the new full band sound allows the Johns to branch out musically, and it's nice to finally hear a bass guitar on a TMBG album. On the other hand, the band often adds a lot of pointless and awkward-sounding heavy guitar riffage, particularly on the verses to the sludgy "Sleeping In The Flowers" and the intro to "Out Of Jail." Also, the band enlisted a horn section for this go-around, and while they sound great on Linnell's uptempo "No One Knows My Plan," they tend to detract energy from already-draggy songs like "Extra Savoir-Faire" and the boring-beyond-words muzak-with-lyrics "Dirt Bike." Add to that the fact that the Johns' songwriting isn't exactly at its best this time around ("O Do Not Forsake Me" and "Unrelated Thing" are downright awful) and the album comes up a bit short in comparison to their previous recordings.
That said, more than half of this album is classic TMBG, and when there are -twenty- songs on the album that's still a pretty good number. The fantastic opener "Subliminal" introduces the new band to the world instrument-by-instrument, starting with the familiar sound of a rumbling accordian and then letting the rhythm section and lead guitar join in. "Snail Shell" was the single, an offbeat and catchy industrial-tinged tune with a strangely '70s-esque synth-washed chorus. Flansburgh throws out a hypnotic and repetitive driving anthem in "AKA Driver" (literally "NyQuil Driver," but were that song printed on the album cover they would've stood a chance of getting sued by the evil and oppressive cough syrup industry), and Linnell fires off two of his best poppers ever with "I Should Be Allowed To Think" (which quotes from Allen Ginsburg's "Howl") and "Destination Moon." Finally, the closer "The End Of The Tour" is downright beautiful, managing to be both uplifting and depressing without once making it clear what its lyrics are even about. I'm sure that in 1994, the out-of-place closing lines "No we're never gonna tour again" scared the crap out of most of TMBG's fanbase, but seeing that they've played about sixty billion shows at the Bowery Ballroom since then, I doubt that they're scared anymore
Basically, the album has more than its share of awesome material. This album has eleven or twelve great songs, and Dark Side Of The Moon only has nine!! Ha, that's what you get for slacking off, Roger Waters! It's even funny hearing Linnell impersonate Crash Test Dummies' Brad Roberts on the one-minute "Window." The major downside is that it's probably the most inconsistent album TMBG have ever released (and one of the most inconsistent that I've ever heard). I personally have gotten used to pretty much every track on here, but to the novice this has the potential to sound like one of the worst albums ever. Don't get this one until you're familiar with their other material; it's good, but it sure doesn't sound like it.
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(reviewed by Rich Bunnell)
Either Elektra was pissed that John Henry didn't sell or the Johns were just tired; whatever the case, the album's full-band followup is a considerably more normal and restrained affair than its predecessor. Length-wise, the album is certainly an anomaly in TMBG's catalogue -- it's about as long as all of the previous ones, but only contains thirteen tracks, many of which pass over the dreaded four-minute mark which was seen as a sign of incomparable evil in the good old days of Lincoln. To top it off, most of the songs themselves are fairly conventional, based on standard verse-chorus progressions with barely any of the weird quirks that had come to be associated with the consistently-wacky Linnell and Flansburgh.
This isn't to say that the album is flat-out normal, with none of the weird qualities of yore anywhere in sight. The lyrics are still really bizarre, especially on Linnell's part ("There were 87 Advil in the bottle, now there's 30 left, I ate 47 so what happened to the other 10"), and both the funky single "S-E-X-X-Y" and the minimalistic "Exquisite Dead Guy" have that left-of-center touch so abundant in the glory days of Apollo 18 and the like. However, songs like "Till My Head Falls Off," "Metal Detector" and the cover "New York City" are pretty much based on your average guitar melodies - average catchy guitar melodies, no doubt, but definitely missing that extra spark of melodic bizarrity that characterized songs like "The Statue Got Me High" and "Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head." Plus, the album's production is probably the flattest seen on a TMBG album up to this point (the debut album, which doesn't really -have- any production, doesn't count), and makes it so that if you try to crank it up it sounds muddy and fuzzy, which isn't good for an album that's supposed to rock.
These complaints are only relative, though, and the album as a whole is a huge bounce back from the alienating eclecticism of John Henry and contains a number of great tunes. The undeniable album highlight is "Spiraling Shape," which begins as a basic loungeish tune played on a vibraphone but eventually builds up to a shattering, anthemic climax set to a completely irresistable vocal melody. Yeah, I know that that was the most banal, textbook description ever, but trust me, the song is awesome. "Your Own Worst Enemy" is charmingly simple and sounds like it came right off of Lincoln (another textbook description...sorry, I'll stop!), and the rocking closer "The Bells Are Ringing," with one of the busiest vocal arrangements I've ever heard, ends the album with a fantastic drum solo (Fantastic....drum solo? Weeeeeird.). Flansburgh's "XTC vs. Adam Ant" isn't very strong musically, but has interesting lyrics about the symbolic musical battle of "content versus form." It was certainly nice of Flansburgh to make XTC the "content" side of the war, even though he claims that "there is no right or wrong." XTC = RIGHT. ADAM ANT = WRONG. Isn't that simple enough for you, Flansy?
This isn't the most enjoyable or musically-accomplished album the Johns have thrown out, but it's certainly one of their most immediately-likeable, even though the accessibility was viewed by many critics and their record label as an exhaustion of inspiration and as a result TMBG haven't released any official studio albums in the five years since its release. You have to take the good with the bad, I guess.
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(reviewed by Rich Bunnell)
With the band split from Elektra Records and their tradition of releasing an album every two years in danger of being broken, TMBG's original label Restless came to their rescue and issued an all-purposes stopgap live album. To the fans, this seemed at the time like a godsend, since TMBG have been legendary for putting on incredibly fun and innovative live performances filled with hilarious improvisation and random stage banter by the Johns. Yeah, I know, that's what all fans say about the live performances by their favorite bands (I bet the Backstreet Boys make "cute and intelligent comments" to one another between songs that are entirely scripted by people before the show), but as of this writing, I've seen them three times in concert, and can confidently state that this is completely true. The actual product turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment, unfortunately.
The album's major problem is that, like many half-assed live albums released over the course of the rock era, it doesn't cover just one single performance, instead being pieced together from various different performances (and from completely different tours, at that). In fact, several of the songs had already been released on a ripoff EP called Live In NYC! which came packaged with expensive limited pressings of John Henry. Furthermore, for absolutely no reason at all the Johns plastered a few new studio tracks onto the tracklisting, which aren't that bad, per se, but they're not that special either and really interrupt the flow of the album. Of these, the one spectacular song is the fanbait single "Doctor Worm," a bouncy horn-pop ditty which embodies all of the good qualities of TMBG's full-band style, and has a fantastic midsection to boot. What was Flansburgh's point with "About Me," though? Why did they feel that their live album needed to include a dinky song fragment, and why did they waste their studio time recording it?
The live performances themselves are kind of mixed. "Istanbul" and "S-E-X-X-Y" are infused with a pure energy that their studio counterparts didn't quite have, the band's educational 1993 novelty single "Why Does The Sun Shine?" is revitalized and turned into a catchy speed-rocker, and the piano rocker "They Got Lost," which tells the story of the Johns getting lost on the way to a show, is a bit stupid but has a really neat and infectious melody (wah-wah guitars and all). On the other hand, they absolutely slaughter "Ana Ng" and "Birdhouse In Your Soul," giving them messy, sloppy treatments which don't do justice to the perfection of the studio versions, and I don't think that anybody really needs to hear "Particle Man" for the zillionth time (though, for the song's credit, the version here doesn't sound as obnoxious as the one on Flood).
Several hidden tracks are tacked onto the end of the album of the band performing a set of improvisational "Planet Of The Apes" songs, and all I can say is that you had to be there. The crackly, tape-recorder sound quality of the tracks doesn't exactly help matters much - it's hard to understand what's going on. That said, I've met several people who claimed that this album utterly turned them on to TMBG, so as far as first albums go, this isn't really a bad starter. Compared to what could've been, though, this album really comes up short, even if in itself it really isn't that bad..
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(reviewed by Rich Bunnell)
After spending five years dicking around with live albums, online music distribution, completely random concert tours, side projects and television collaborations (specifically "Boss Of Me," the repetitive and uptempo theme song to Fox's "Malcolm In The Middle"), the Johns took a look around, saw the expressions of pained anguish on their diehard fans' faces, and realized "....You know, we really need to record another album." They certainly had enough material -- though they'd been conspicuously absent from the recording studio for five years, the pens of the lyrical muses known as Finnelligan's Wake and Angela Lansburghy had been writing just as furiously as ever, and when the time came to assemble a full-length album it was just a matter of picking 17 songs and arranging them in any random-ass order they wanted. Basically, the album consists of a bunch of second takes and remakes of songs they've been pumping out to their internet fanbase for years, which really ticked a lot of them off until they realized that not every single TMBG fan monitors it on the internet every time one of the Johns takes a piss.
Not only was the album cobbled together from five years of rampant songwriting, the actual album itself was recorded under several sets of producers, most notably Brit popster producer duo extraordinaire Clive Langer & Alan Winstanley and that dude from Fountains Of Wayne who wrote "That Thing You Do" with the long last name that's hard to spell so I won't try. The prevalence of cooks in the kitchen gives the album kind of a random and uneven feel, but really, that's never been a concern with any TMBG project, so I don't know why I should suddenly start docking the Johns points for it now. Besides, every single producer coats the album with a warm, glossy feel which is certainly welcome after the flat fuzziness which marred the otherwise-good tunes on Factory Showroom. It's especially evident on the first single "Man, It's So Loud In Here," a surreal Eurodisco groove apparently intended as a parody of the late-'90s dance revival (Linnell's vocals are even filtered through a vocoder ala Cher in the intro) but a perfectly fine and crazy-catchy single in its own right, especially to these Pet-Shop-Boys-loving ears.
Most of the other sixteen songs show the two Johns veering off into widely-diverging musical directions, which is a bit of a departure from any previous formulae since each John normally manages to maintain the same level of whacked-out bizarrity as the other one. Linnell on here tends to stick to more conventional drum-and-guitar arrangements, which might sound disappointing on paper but songs like "Hovering Sombrero" and "Hopeless Bleak Despair"(whose last verse has to be one of the funniest things Linnell has ever written) manage to chime along in a simple yet unique manner, and the swirling, poppy opener "Bangs" is the most charming ode to eye-covering hair that I've personally ever heard (also the only one I've heard, but you can't let factors like that get in the way of praising a song). Flansburgh, on the other hand, goes off on all sorts of weird genre-defying shizznat, whether he's covering Georgie Fame on the brassy "Yeh Yeh," nailing the patented Burt Bacharach lounge-pop style on the laid-back title track or rocking the friggin' house down on the relentless concert favorite "Cyclops Rock." Every one of these songs is absolutely fantastic, and better than any song Starflyer 59 will ever write. Actually, I haven't heard them, but I just wanted to catch Robert Grazer's eye somehow. Ah, snide, esoteric self-referentiality, where would the online reviewing world be without thee?
The album's only real problem is that it unfortunately follows the heralded Flood tradition of falling apart at the end -- the last four tracks only seem to be there for the purpose of satisfying the rabid fans who were way ticked that Factory Showroom only had a mere thirteen tracks. Poor babies, I wonder what they'd think of Thick As A Brick. "Wicked Little Critta" is a pretty funny parody of New England accents, but it just screams out "B-SIDE!!", and the Johns don't seem to know how to end the song, letting it fade out on a half-assed tinkling rhythm augmented by an unnecessarily-loud drum fill. "Finished With Lies" mars an okay poppy melody by completely ripping off the guitar tone from that lame cover of "Getting Better" used in those flat-screen TV commercials and winds up sounding more pathetic than catchy, and both "She Thinks She's Edith Head" and "Working Undercover For The Man" have been lying around in the TMBG vaults for years, mostly because they're not particularly strong songs. Still, the album has significantly more hits than misses, and as a whole it nicely captures the band's spirit of old while trying out a few as-yet-unexplored styles. Cheers to the band for another job well done, even though they'll probably take another five years to make another album, the bastards.
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(reviewed by Rich Bunnell)
I was kind of annoyed and irritated when I found out that the Johns and their trusty Band of Dans were holed up in the recording studio busting out, of all things, a children's album. This is mostly because they held the recording sessions during that five-year period of nothingness before Mink Car came out of nowhere and satisfied the cravings of their ravenous fanbase, but also because the whole idea just kinda sounded like a weak pisstake, an excuse for the Johns to toss out a bunch of Raffi covers and songs about toy cars and clowns for the limited sake of appealing to a demographic besides the one that hadn't been making them money for the last decade and a half. Y'know, like an entire album of "Particle Man," that boring dippy thing that does very little to please the human being who is me. I thought it was sort of telling when they couldn't seem to find a label willing to release the completed album, with Mink Car beating it to store shelves by a good nine months (and incidentally ending up with a September 11, 2001 release, but let's gloss over that detail for now).
When I ended up buying the album anyway -- what can I say, I'm a hopeless, crazed fan -- I realized that the reason the record company bigwigs were so wary towards it wasn't because it was weak. It's because, disguised as it may be under the veil of a "children's album," it's honestly just another weird gift to the fans. There is no reason for any child to buy this album. The cover consists of several children with scary, scary bug-like eyes dancing side by side with a robot with similarly scary bug-like eyes and the possible intent of vaporizing said children. The lyrics are kid-friendly in title only -- there's a song called "Violin," which is an innocuous enough title, but one of the verses surreally constructs George Washington's head quarter-by-quarter. Add to that the fact that the duo hasn't stopped being as rampantly liberal with which words they choose to use during banter with the audience at live performances, and it becomes clear that this is only a kid's album on the most superficial level. The record company's promoting it as one, and apparently it worked because it managed to top the Billboard children's sales charts, but I'm not sure exactly how much of that is due to their fanbase.
I didn't really go into the album with high expectations, but I have to say that I'm pleasantly surprised - the kiddie slant does sort of give the album an offsetting novelty twist that makes the whole affair seem slight and undemanding, but song-for-song it's a lot better than the last three albums (those two 8's I gave were (I)really(I) low ones, mind you -- late-period TMBG is certainly an inconsistent entity). Both Johns are fulfilling their usual musical roles -- Linnell is still mass-producing wonderful pop songs with weird, elliptical lyrics like "Four Of Two," an uptempo accordian-driven tale about a guy who's waiting for a date which is supposed to happen at 2PM, but doesn't seem to notice that the clock on the clock tower above him has stopped. Flansburgh is still concerning himself with bursts of weirdness and It's Fun To Steal-esque dippy funk-rock tracks like "John Lee Supertaster," with a hilarious spoken-word intro ("When I was 39 years old, I heard a story - I learned that there were people among us who had super powers!") and the simplistic "Clap Your Hands," an audience chant-along which they've been using to open their recent live performances.
It's all a big gooey mix of the satisfyingly full and the hilariously slight, and it's hard to pick out specific songs as highlights because pretty much every song is at least pretty good. I personally really love "In The Middle, In The Middle, In The Middle," a cover of an old kiddie song called "Don't Cross The Street" sung with gleeful bubbliness by Flansburgh's wife, Robin Goldwasser, but there's just as much pure glee to be found in tunes like "The House At The Top Of The Tree," sort of a "The Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly" for people who like the sensation that comes with their brain spontaneously exploding. Bassist Dan Weinkauf sings the cheery "Where Do They Make Balloons," incidentally probably the most normal and conventionally-catchy song on the album, while Flansburgh tops him by singing the cyborg anthem "Robot Parade" through a robotic harmonizer. The end of the album is allegedly meant to induce sleep, according to the liner notes, but it's apparently just another cruel joke on the part of the Johns' smart-ass sense of humor, since even though it begins with "Lazyhead and Sleepybones," one of Flansburgh's prettier and more relaxing songs, it's immediately followed up with Linnell's "Bed Bed Bed," a stomper which is easily the most raucous song on the entire album -- "I'm going to bed...... BED BED BED BED BED!!!!!!!!"
I'm almost glad that this, probably their best album in ten years despite being close to a toss-off, isn't an actual children's album on anything but the most obvious level, since it means that I don't have to explain to people why I own it. Let me put it this way if an album contains songs like "I Am A Grocery Bag" and "Wake Up Call" which can spur no other logical reaction besides "What the fuck?", it's not a children's album.
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