They Might Be Giants - C/D, S/D, OPO etc

I'm more interested in an overview of their ouevre/"schtick", their songwriting, and the issue of their "dorkiness" (particularly how that has limited their appeal and why that is). Also how, at least on their first three albums, they fit into that 80s tendency of nerdy white guys appropriating and using explicitly non-nerdy white guy idioms - folk, reggae, world music, dance music (see also David Byrne, Paul Simon - I wanna throw Pere Ubu's 80s records in here too for some reason).

I think they've written a lot of great songs, but have a tendency to retreat behind a wall of schtick that makes any kind of emotional connection with their music problematic. But some stuff, if you peel away the levels of forced irony and wordiness, is really quite bleak and despairing, genuinely moving even. (see "They'll Need a Crane", for ex.)

x-post um have you seen the movie about them? 100% "serious critical evaluation".

Look at cast list in link provided! Jon Stewart! Dave Eggers! Paul Simon! Sarah Vowell! Etc!

They Might Be Giants [Bar/None, 1986]
Two catchy weirdos, eighteen songs, and the hits just keep on coming in an exuberantly annoying show of creative superabundance. Their secret is that as unmediated pop postmodernists they can be themselves stealing from anywhere, modulating without strain or personal commitment from hick to nut to nerd. Like the cross-eyed bear in the regretful but not altogether kind "Hide Away Folk Family," their "shoes are laced with irony," but that doesn't doom them to art-school cleverness or never meaning what they say. Their great subject is the information overload that lends these songs their form. They live in a world where "Everything Right Is Wrong Again" and "Youth Culture Killed My Dog." A

Lincoln [Restless/Bar/None, 1988]
XTC as computer nerds rather than studio wimps--change for chord change and beat for irrelevant beat, they're actively annoying even if intelligence is all you ask of your art-pop. Except maybe on the antiboomer "Purple Toupee," side one's hooks begin and end with "Ana Ng," a beyond-perfect tour de force about a Vietnamese woman they never got to meet; until "Kiss Me, Son of God," which closes the album and could be anti-Castro if they let it, side two's are cleverness for cleverness's sake. And damned clever they are. B+

Flood [Elektra, 1990]
tunes, aarghh, tunes--please not more tunes ("Dead," "Your Racist Friend") **

Classic.

Lincoln
Flood
Apollo 18

OPO:

Tough call. I'll go with "Ana Ng" for now.

"I'm gonna die / if you touch me one more time
Well I guess that I'm / gonna die no matter what"

So these days, as a grown-up non-wacky non-fanboy, my picks would be:

Spiralling Shape. A very OTM song about novelty fixation and the race to hip, and the fact those things don't bring any happiness. "Nobody knows what it's really like, but everyone says it's great".

I Can Hear You. Recorded on an old wax cylider, it's just a small handful of two-line vignettes about different forms of communications technology, and the lengths people will go to to find new ways of just talking to each other. It can move me to tears. First time I heard it, I immediately ripped it to mp3 and emailled it to somebody, because that just made sense.

Four of Two. From the first kids' album, a little nonsense song which is in fact a sneaky allegory about how easy it is to think you'll one day meet your ideal partner, but then wake up one morning to realise that you're old and your life's flown by and it's too late...and yet to still think you're bound to meet them, soon.

She's An Angel. A very sweet and simple first love song, which is amazed and shocked by the way it feels, and is too shy to say "I really like you", so hides behind random tangents and adolescent surrealism...but doesn't manage to hide its real message very well, in the end.

Till My Head Falls Off. Drug addled suicide note. Which rocks.

Dr. Worm. Possibly their most archetypically TMBG sounding chorus ever, and the words are about a nice old man who's always wanted to be a famous jazz drummer and thinks he still can be, one day, if he just practices a bit more. Beautiful.

I could probably go on for a while, but I won't.

Nowadays, their childrens albums are about fifty billion times better than their "real" ones.

oy

"road movie to berlin," from "flood," was the first song my wife ever saw me sing in public...we've been married over 13 years now. I totally credit John and John of TMBG. Thanks, nerds!

-chadly con Queso

I wish no particular harm on TMBG. Flood is a nice album.

I'm conflicted about "Shoehorn with Teeth": either it's meaningless and infuriating or it's wonderfully oblique. I can't make up my mind.

Wonder if anyone's heard their newer records? The Else was surprisingly good. Very straightforward but just a good rock record. I actually kind of enjoy the kids stuff. I'm a dork.

I mostly bumped this to say that "Narrow Your Eyes" may be their best song ever. The lyrics on that one kill me - "I get off the bus/ride past our stop/and though I'm late/I can't get off/I just can't bear/to tell you some lies/so narrow your eyes" **shudder**

i've heard most of their later albums and while there are definitely some good songs here and there, the children's albums are by and large better than the 'regular' albums. also the bonus disc for The Else is more fun than the proper album.

but yeah "Narrow Your Eyes" is great, they can kill you with occasional sincere moments.

I'm a dork.

also this sentence is just kind of assumed when you're posting on a TMBG thread, no need to type it

Yeah I was surprised by the amount of effort they put into those kids albums. They remind me of the earlier stuff but with somewhat dumber lyrics. I don't know if they're better than The Else but some of it is very good. "Can You Find It?" and "C is For Conifers" are just oddly touching, I guess

the kids stuff is fun. for the most part, not all that diff (musically at least) from their regular stuff. and kids do indeed love it.

the bonus disc for The Else is more fun than the proper album

Oh, fer sher! "Why the Christ, why the Devil, Why did you grow a beard?!?"

Of the later stuff, "Mink Car" is brilliant but "The Spine" is their absolute nadir, just completely unredeemable.

Oh, and Tyler I wanna party with you, always find you on my fave threads. :-)

Really really liked "Brain Problem Situation", "We Live in a Dump", "Yeah, the Deranged Millionaire" and "Cast Your Pod to the Wind". I don't think it's better than the main disc but it's a great bonus. TMBG were really a band built for these types of podcasts.

Agree that "The Spine" is the worst. I mean it is fairly decent in spots but I really hate how every song on the first half sounds like every other song on the first half. I really liked "Broke in Two"

haaa right back atcha, gerald. and i agree about the spine -- i remember listening to that a bunch and deciding it really was *bad*. or just completely lifeless.

So these guys are releasing a new album this year and will be touring the US in September. Which is when I was thinking of visiting. They've already announced a few cities and SF and ATL are among them so now I am really really wondering I cant only get over but get to see the beloves Johns live again woo!

Here was my review:

"John Flansburgh, attempting to describe why "Sensurround" was left off of Factory Showroom: "For me, I think of every song as its own thing. I think it's interesting to see the shape of an album after it's put together; you can create a different listening experience depending on how you stack up the songs. The most discipline that we ever apply to an album sequence is avoiding like-sounding songs. If we have too many mid-tempo songs, we'll leave a couple of them off. Or if we have a better example of a song than another, we tend to leave the second-rate one off." Ignoring the fact that I find “Sensurround” to be perhaps the best song of the Factory Showroom era, I really do like the sentiment behind this statement. So it's a little disappointing to find them pretty much ignoring their old values - here comes The Spine, a disc that fills nearly the entire first half with mid-tempo rockers, of which only “Experimental Film” makes an impression. No, none of these songs are bad in isolation, but stacked one after another gives the album a really bland feel, completely atypical of what we’ve come to expect from these guys. The experimentation is toned down – there’s auto-tune on “Bastard Wants to Hit Me”, and one song that’s reminiscent of Flood but only about half as catchy (“Stalk of Wheat”). Other than that, they’ve almost fully transformed into your typical rock band, although the lyrical puzzles are still abound – Linnell sings about resignation from life (“Memo to Human Resources”), drug addiction (“Thunderbird”), and bizarre strings of cause-and-effect relationships (“Wearing a Raincoat”). The unfortunate thing is that the lyrics are the really the only interesting parts of them. I’m not exactly sure what happened here – maybe they purposely decided to write a more “adult” album to offset the kids’ one – but this group never really did the “mature adult rock” thing in the first place. The saving grace of the album is that side 2 has a few legitimately great tracks - “Museum of Idiots” gets by on a strong and punchy horn section, “Damn Good Times” is an energetic slice of power-pop with an accelerating guitar solo ending, and “Broke In Two” rides a wonky guitar line into the stratospheres of catchiness that this group was always capable of. But other than those tracks (and “Experimental Film”), there’s little on here you’ll want to hear again. So give it credit for those few great songs and making an album that’s at least listenable all the way through, but you know the band can do better than this. It's funny to hear them sing on "Stalk of Wheat" that they're "out of ideas", but less funny when it actually seems true."

I stil havent got round to hearing some recent albums. I love "Sensurround", its a great song.

i've heard most of their later albums and while there are definitely some good songs here and there, the children's albums are by and large better than the 'regular' albums.

"The Spine" is their absolute nadir,

agree with all this

i covered "narrow your eyes" for a fan-assembled TMBG tribute album when i was like 16

At parties some of us have been known to break out into spontaneous acapella barbershop renditions of "Kiss me, son of god".

...I have really nerdy friends :(

Weird, I really like The Spine but could never penetrate The Else. Kids' albums, meh – most of what I've heard annoys the hell out of me, but then I don't have kids so

xp awesome, that song entirely lends itself to spontaneous a cappella barbershop renditions

I was so glad that when I saw them live, it was an unplanned, last-minute second show where they decided on spec to do the whole "Flood" album end to end. This was really before all the "dont look back" trend, as well.

Seeing them do "Fingertips" live was a spinout.

I've seen them three times..."Fingertips" is indeed pretty awesome live

If you can see them at a traditional rock venue (as opposed to something more "family friendly") it's way worth it. Flansburgh has a pretty wicked sense of humor.

Yeah this was a rock show - for "Man its so loud in here" they dropped all the stage lights and lit up a disco ball (prob more to hide the fact its all DAT tape and they have noting to play haha), and then at the shows end they shot 2 cannons full of silvery confetti into the crowd, which was freaking awesome.

And then Paul McDermott walked on, right?

Swap everyone else's opinion of The Spine with Mink Car and yup.

I like Mink Car! It has "Mr XCitement" on it!

"Mink Car" is possibly their third best, after the debut and "Flood". It's certainly my most-listened albums of theirs over the last ddecade (not counting the kids albums - I do have kids and TMBG is the only band they request by name). It just goes from strength to strength, I mean out of the gate with "Bangs" and "Cyclops Rock" they've got the humor AND the rock chops in spades. "Wicked Little Critta" is quite funny as I grew up with kids that talked like that, and the guest appearance by Mike Doughty is great. Not a skippable track on the whole thing.

ugh Mink Car has a few good songs but some real duds. like i said upthread, the recent albums have their moments but i feel like they're one of those bands whose studio output has dropped off to the point that pretty much all of the first 6 or so albums beat anything since then.

Not a skippable track? I dunno I like some of the album but it kills me how much better it could have been. If you were obsessed wtih the band and got the TMBG Unlimited + the web release you can hear a lot of the Mink Car songs in their original versions and a lot of them are much, much better. Especially "Cyclops Rock", "Older", "She Thinks She's Edith Head" and "Another First Kiss". Plus a lot of awesome material didn't even get used like "I Am 40". I really have no idea how they compiled that album. Kinda agree with the above though I feel like The Else is about as good as Factory Showroom was. The first 4 or 5 are untouchable though. Just spin tunes like "Puppet Head" or "Number Three" or "We Want a Rock" again...nobody else writes songs like that

yeah the Severe Tire Damage version of "First Kiss" isso much better. Mink Car seemed like it had way too long a gestation period because they weren't sure how to approach doing a new studio album post-Elektra and so they had time to fiddle with the songs too much and cast aside perfectly good ones.

Exactly, I mean they used different producers for each song and that really threw things off, I still think the album's alright in itself but it could have been one of their better albums had they used the better songs and the best takes.

From Facebook:

Huzzah! In support of our next album They Might Be Giants are planning a 45 city US tour starting in September. Two shows in England in July. Album preview ep on iTunes in April, LP later--release date not nailed down yet.

Well it's about time!!

Also, I just found out that Yukihiro Takahashi was the engineer for The Else. What a bizarre piece of trivia...how the hell did that happen? AFAIK he doesn't even engineer his own albums.

have you guys heard the new album yet?

it's pretty good - supposedly a return to the Flood era but most of the tracks are guitar/bass/drums which few of the early songs were

still, after a few listens, it's really growing on me. is almost definitely their best since, say, Factory Showroom, or maybe even Apollo 18

bought it, haven't listened yet. last one i heard (the spine?) was kind of awful, but i'm optimistic about this one. and anyway, they're a staple in my house because i have a little kid who likes the kids records.

I don't think there's any shame in abandoning the tired and stale grown-up records in favour of the fun & delightful kids records at this stage

yeah, there's a lot on those kids records that could've easily been on flood and no one would blink an eye.

yeah I don't think TMBG is anything more than "decent" as a real rock band. the kids albums are actually pretty good and play to their strengths a lot more. the ABCs album is a lot better for adults than I thought it would be. there's a lot of humor on there that's pretty subtle. that said, Join Us is definitely worth a few listens - it doesn't have the colorful, lush arrangements of the first few albums but the songs are pretty addictive. kind of sounds like a mix between The Else and the collection of Podcast songs that came with it.

btw Tyler - The Spine is definitely one of their worst so don't let it discourage you

"Can You Find It?" is such a great song. One of Linnell's very best. These songs used to be about unrequited love or the destruction of a relationship and now it's about finding letters on a graphic. But it sure is beautiful.

hate to triple post here but I have "Celebration" on repeat and it totally rules.
this new album is great.

haha was gonna post "rip frogbs" when i saw this thread was revived

my immediate favorite on first listen is "When Will You Die," which i have weird feelings about because it was obviously written before Osama Bin Laden's death but listening to it so soon after it's hard not to think of how it could easily be interpreted or appropriated as not at all ironic or comedic in that context

"2082" is working for me in it's subtle way.

i don't think "when will you die?" is about anyone in particular, but it fits so well with OBL, as people actually were celebrating on the streets when he was killed

also, i think it may be the best song here. can't get enough of it

Persevering with this. It might be too early to speak (The Else has only just grown on me ffs) but it really does seem like Linnell's songwriting is severely outpacing Flansburgh's, e.g. Let Your Hair Hang Down is one of my favourite TMBG songs of all time and Cloisonné is so self-conscious (even by their standards) that I can't stand hearing it.

Linnell's songwriting is severely outpacing Flansburgh's

isn't this basically true of their entire catalog to different extents though?

It is, but on this album it feels like Linnell's at his peak and Flansburgh is just phoning it in, I mean a really really stark difference.

i actually thought Flansburgh was less annoyingly broad on this album than he'd been on the last few

Join Us is really holding up for me, definitely their best since John Henry or Factory Showroom.

yeah i;ve been enjoying it, haven't listened to it too much, but it seems pretty strong.

Have we done a TMBG albums poll?

nah...i always felt like the consensus on their best albums is so obvious that it'd almost not be worth it. maybe non-Flood or post-Flood only would make it slightly more interesting?

I was always about the gimmicky TMBG but John Henry completely flipped my perception. Such a surprise coming as it did after "Why Does the Sun Shine?" Now I'd rate The Spine above Flood. Yes I know.

(ironically I once flipped a car while listening to John Henry)

John Henry was the last of the early albums i heard and i've just never warmed to it

It's great! It's the first time they really allowed themselves to be properly melodic at the expense of silly noises. It even declines properly at the end like a real album </geir>

I remember buying it at launch (off the back of "Why Does etc etc" as mentioned above, so thinking "ugh this can't end well") and being completely blown away.

This week I read that Factory Showroom is Flansburgh's favourite album, which makes me warm inside because I absolutely adored it from start to finish.

yeah FS is much more my speed, the only album where i forgive them for not stuffing 18+ songs onto the record

The Spine is nowhere near as terrible as 'the worst evah TMBG album' should be

That's 'Mink Car's job

Now I'd rate The Spine above Flood. Yes I know.

Ugh, that's just crazy talk!! I mean, really... If you said "Mink Car" above "Flood", I'd be down with that, though. ;-)

John Henry was the last of the early albums i heard and i've just never warmed to it

It doesn't sit well in my mind, either - "Factory Showroom" has higher highs (but is a bit inconsistent).

The Spine is nowhere near as terrible as 'the worst evah TMBG album' should be

That's 'Mink Car's job

― Colin Allstations (PaulTMA), Saturday, 3 September 2011 11:20 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Mink Car always grated on me a bit because I read some early press touting it as a return to Flood. That's always dangerous, especially in this case because it pronounces just how hard the album is trying to be Flood. It's got some great songs, but as a piece it just doesn't hold up that well, and it really tails off at the end. Ending with "Working Undercover for the Man"? Seriously?

Absolutely. The Spine seemed to be a huge return to something resembling TMBG sanity after Mink Car, when even Linnell was writing drivel like Wicked Little Critta. Any album with 'Mr Xcitement' on it can only be the lowest of the low.

imo any of the first 6 albums is better than any of the albums since, they're kind of stuck in a perpetual chamber of diminishing returns

I suppose if you go there for the novelty you're going to be let down by the new stuff. Linnell's songwriting is sharper than ever imo.

Any album with 'Mr Xcitement' on it can only be the lowest of the low.

This probably contradicts what I just said but fuck it: That song I don't mind so much, probably because it's a new idea, and it's always a joy to see what these guys do with new ideas. The Spine is relatively bereft of ideas but my god is it a well-crafted album.

But yeah, Wicked Little Critta should have been a B side.

The Spine is not even remotely shit. It's good!

I suppose if you go there for the novelty you're going to be let down by the new stuff. Linnell's songwriting is sharper than ever imo.

i like a lot of the new stuff (and as said upthread am pretty into Join Us) fwiw, also way to go on being presumptuous AND condescending about me on liking the band for "novelty" songs just because i prefer the early stuff

The last song on the new album "You Don't Like Me" is stunningly good.

yeah that's great

"you like... cutting with a fork" is great. btw is there an albums poll? I can't find one.

some dude: I did make a wrong assumption and I'm sorry for that, I had no intention of hanging you out to dry. Some people do just want novelty from TMBG but that's cool too.

i think hardcore fans just tend to overreact to the band being widely seen as a 'comedy' act or 'weird' or w/e. i respect the songcraft and the subtleties and emotions of what they're doing but i think the humor and left field absurdity and kitchen sink instrumentation and sound effects are also an important and inseparable part of the whole package.

Yeah, and as TMBG fans I think we all get a bit tired of being seen as novelty chasers. I gave up talking up the depth of their music a long time ago.

You Don't Like Me initially struck me as a really weird closer, though I know appreciate the way the album winds down. It's very unlike other TMBG albums.

*now

yeah at this point it wouldn't be hard to make like a mix CD of their best 'serious' or 'straightforward' songs but it feels like wasted effort to overstate that side of their music (xpost)

That would be awesome! It'd also be inevitably loaded with Linnell songs but meh

hey Flans has "Narrow Your Eyes" and arguably "Pet Name"

Yeah, the Linnell/Flans ratio would be similar to the Partridge/Moulding ratio imo

"Careful What You Pack" is a Flans, yeah?

yeah...was just listening to that the other day, good one

http://tmbw.net users rank every song (you can see what ranking each song has) but I can't find a full chart anywhere.

Birdhouse is #1, Ana Ng is #2

here it is: http://tmbw.net/wiki/Special:Ratings

pretty cool, especially since they're not really popular enough on ILM to justify a ballot poll (although maybe i'll take the top 50 tracks from that list to do an automated poll or something)

I kind of wish TMBG would do a full CD of the old Dial-A-Song shit. That's p much the best stuff they ever did.

a lot of it is on the Then collection, isn't it? but yeah that would be cool, it was kind of annoying that they did a CD called Dial-A-Song that was just a straight-up best-of.

Those bonus tracks on Then are pretty weird and Residentsy, is there supposed to be much more that kind of thing in the vaults?

Aw, I like mr xcitement! :(

here it is: http://tmbw.net/wiki/Special:Ratings

pretty cool, especially since they're not really popular enough on ILM to justify a ballot poll (although maybe i'll take the top 50 tracks from that list to do an automated poll or something)

― big spiritual hat club (some dude), Saturday, 3 September 2011 21:09 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Brilliant. You/we/I should totally kick off a poll for that top 50.

Super-annoying to see Dr Worm at #4, I hate that song. #5, #6, #8 (!!!!!!) and #13 are nice surprises though. As expected Linnell smashes it.

(not doing the poll now because I'm going to bed and we have fathers day tomorrow for some reason)

Those bonus tracks on Then are pretty weird and Residentsy, is there supposed to be much more that kind of thing in the vaults?

Tons - some website used to be up where you could download a ton of them, lost those MP3s years ago but there were some serious gems. I think they've mined it a few other times -the aforementioned "Wicked Little Critta" was a Dial-A-Song in some form, and "Cyclops Rock" got reworked (and worsened), but I remember just, like, dozens of little thirty-second songs. This could be way off though.

Lol @ some dude trying to school me on Then, tho

I have the TMBG Unlimited series, that's got lots of odds and ends as well, including works-in-progress and outtakes.

Oh, and for the curious, here's a list of all the Dial-A-Songs: http://tmbw.net/wiki/Dial-A-Song

I had the TMBG fleece from that, though it sadly went missing somewhere unknown. :(

And a bit more googling led me to this site but you need to jump through some hoops to download: http://wallywashis.name/mp3/They+Might+Be+Giants/%5Bnon-album+tracks%5D/

at this point i think i'd be willing to argue that factory showroom is their best album. or my favorite, anyway. i remember in high school making fun of my friend for buying it (i had gotten into "cooler" music i guess) but finally listening to it and loving pretty much every song. tons of great melodies on there.

This is Dan, and that's Dan
And that's Marty on the drums to complete the band
And I am John and he is also John
And all of us are wondering when you're gonna die

^ best lyric in tmbg history

Mink Car always grated on me a bit because I read some early press touting it as a return to Flood. That's always dangerous, especially in this case because it pronounces just how hard the album is trying to be Flood. It's got some great songs, but as a piece it just doesn't hold up that well, and it really tails off at the end. Ending with "Working Undercover for the Man"? Seriously?

I was really big into the band back then (I was also 15) and found this album to be a disappointment, but looking back it's really not so bad. If you really get into what they were doing ever since Factory Showroom - like, listen to all the TMBG Unlimited releases, the McSweeney's releases, the internet-only stuff, etc., I really don't think that they lost any talent, they just didn't throw anything away and let the fans see everything they'd done, warts and all. Then when it came to cutting an album they severely overthought everything, put 'new' cuts of 'old' songs that were limp compared to the originals (or demos), and seemed to miss a bunch of their greatest material. You can really make a killer 20-track album from their 1996-2001 output, but Mink Car isn't it.

"Working Undercover For The Man" is one of my favorite later songs!

but yeah it seemed like after they got dropped from Elektra and took those 5 years issuing stopgap projects and kind of figuring out where the next proper album would come out they kind of cycled through a lot of material in different incarnations and ended up with something that just wasn't close to ideal.

Lol @ some dude trying to school me on Then, tho

― delmar dillinger (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, September 3, 2011 1:15 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark

a post w/ a question mark in it is probably not making any haughty attempt to "school you" fyi

new album did not sound good to me. they still have some songwriting chops but the arrangements were weak (too much guitar-based stuff) and the lyrics have gone from weird and clever to straining to be funny. it's like they heard themselves described as a joke band so many times that they started to believe it.

IMO the only one that really 'strains' is Cloisonne, which I'm not really a big fan of anyway. I think it takes a few listens but if you think it's a "joke" record you're probably paying attention to the wrong things.

This is really the first album that shows them doing the things they used to do so well. Like writing good harmonies ("Let Your Hair Hang Down") or neat little lyrical puzzles - "Lady and the Tiger" is really quite brilliant, the lyrics are odd but they make sense and almost become profound the more you think about them (unless you don't know the classic Lady and Tiger story), which the band hasn't really done in a while.

According to Flans it looks like the 'other' tracks from the Join Us session are coming out according in another "B-sides and other stuff" type collection. Really looking forward to that, a lot of those recent comps like "Cast Your Pod to the Winds" and "Venue Songs" have been great

Cloisonné is one of the highlights for me. That song makes me laugh when my mind should be concerned with other things (including listening to other bands)

just saw 'em in Milwaukee on Friday, awesome night - I've seen them after the release of their last three adult albums, and the "so we've got a new album out, and it's called xxxxx" line got such a huge reception this time. there was 6 or 7 new songs which all went over well, a lot of classic old stuff from the first 4-5 albums, including "Ana Ng", which is incredible since they're finally playing it at the same tempo as the studio version. only disappointment was no "Puppet Head" which I've always wanted to see. they brought out sock puppets for "Spoiler Alert" which was amazing. also both the guys (especially Flans) are really, really funny.

According to Flans it looks like the 'other' tracks from the Join Us session are coming out according in another "B-sides and other stuff" type collection. Really looking forward to that, a lot of those recent comps like "Cast Your Pod to the Winds" and "Venue Songs" have been great

― frogbs, Tuesday, October 4, 2011 12:18 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark

this is being released on Tuesday under the title Album Raises New and Troubling Questions btw

"The Sun is a Mass (of Incandescent Gas)" has been in my head for days, god, liked that song once upon a time but for an earworm it's pretty shrill. Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.

never much cared for the EP studio version but the live version is always fun imo.

sometimes it's just
the sun is hot
the sun is hot
the sun is hot
the sun is hot
the sun is hot
the sun is hot
the sun is hot
on my head in a loop akjabgfui;abgving

THE SUN IS SO HOT (mental torture)

yeah the Severe Tire Damage version is just stupidly catchy. the original kind of sucks.

In 2004 I worked in a factory over the summer and "She's an Angel" was literally stuck in my head practically every day I was there. Because I'd work at one machine and it would play in my head and then every day afterwards looking at that machine would re-trigger the memory. Like now I still kind of marvel at how many stupidly catchy parts they were able to cram into a two-minute song, but even so, it was like a curse

Listening to "Join Us" now in honor of this thread -- bought this when it came out but never really got into it.

Cliche but correct OPO is "Ana Ng."

Less obvious members of the POX: "Rhythm Section Want Ad," "It's Not My Birthday," "Nightgown of the Sullen Moon," "Pet Name," "Till My Head Falls Off," "Fingertips." But nothing post-Factory Showroom, as far as I'm concerned.

Claim for purposes of discussion: Linnell's 1999 solo record _State Songs_ is as good as any TMBG album.

love all those songs, eephus

The problem with State Songs is that it's cheaply made and doesn't really try to be anything. The songwriting is there though. I just don't really like the high school band feel of it.

My POX would be - She's An Angel, Ana Ng, Don't Let's Start, Narrow Your Eyes, Spiralling Shape, Puppet Head, Birdhouse, We Want a Rock, Sensurround, and See The Constellation. I do feel bad that there's nothing from the last 15 years there as their albums have been pretty good lately, but that early stuff is just ridiculous.

i enjoy singing "Doctor Worm" at my dog, with "Hen" subbed in for worm. After writing them off for years, "You Don't Like Me" off of Join Us is killer grade A material for these guys imo.

Less obvious members of the POX: "Rhythm Section Want Ad," "It's Not My Birthday," "Nightgown of the Sullen Moon," "Pet Name," "Till My Head Falls Off," "Fingertips." But nothing post-Factory Showroom, as far as I'm concerned.

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Wednesday, August 22, 2012 1:01 PM Bookmark

OTM - "Nightgown of the Sullen Moon" would be my OPO. Would have a really hard time with an only-pick-ten but damn that is one amazing track.

"The Sun is a Mass (of Incandescent Gas)"

really annoys me that the internet gives the impression they wrote this song

"A Self Called Nowhere" and "Whistling in the Dark" not getting any love on this thread is baffling to me.

It pains me to say this, given how much I love this record, but "Apolo 18" is surely TMBG's "New Jersey"

Love that record. Not sure it really qualifies for New Jersey status (was it an "event" really?), but it is the point where, if they'd just retired right then, it'd be hard to knock anything in their catalog. John Henry and Factory Showroom both have plenty of great tracks but there's something missing, and I've had no interest at all in checking out the stuff post-Severe Tire Damage.

really annoys me that the internet gives the impression they wrote this song

I don't think anyone really cares that they didn't, especially as the original is nothing special (their studio cover is very close to it and it's pretty dull)

Doctor Casino you should really check out Join Us, it's not *quite* up to the level of TMBG/Lincoln/Flood/Apollo 18, but it's closer than anything else they've done, and it holds up over many listens. Most of it is really good but I really have to nominate "Judy is Your Vietnam" as maybe the best sub-1:30 song they ever did.

yeah Join Us is so good

Listening to that plus the B-sides collection they quickly came out with afterwards was like wow, they finally put all the best songs on the actual album!

all right, what the heck, checking out Join Us now!

'"The Sun is a Mass (of Incandescent Gas)"
really annoys me that the internet gives the impression they wrote this song'

this is better than the impression that barenaked ladies wrote this song, which seems to be what chuck lorre was going for with that terrible theme to big bang theory.

lol

The best post-Factory Showroom song is "A Certain Person I Could Name". That would be in my POX for sure.

Obviously, that's "Certain People I Could Name". Whoops.

you guys have all heard "Sensurround", right?

Sensurround is top 10 for me.

it's v good

I remember being a little upset at Flansy for saying "we didn't put it on the album because it was too close to Spiralling Shape (another excellent tune)", then they put out The Spine which had like, seven or eight songs in a row that were basically all the same

Again, this is what I'm really liking about Join Us, every song is its own thing and nothing really sounds like anything else. Right now I'm obsessed with the one that sounds like a Pure Guava-era Ween outtake ("Dog Walker")

After a couple listens, seriously digging "Can't Keep Johnny Down" - which is to say, I really dig "Here Comes My Baby" by Cat Stevens. Generally an enjoyable listening experience although few things are really jumping out at me - there's something generally flat and even about their sound these days, not sure how to describe it...just sort of "clean studio rock band" or something. Not sure it needs to be 18 tracks. But I'm gonna keep it in rotation, I suspect there's some growers here....

the disconcertingly clean sound of Join Us is actually one of its strengths imo, struck me as off-putting at first but then i realized how well it served the lyrics

"Join Us" may just be my jumping off point for these lads. It just hasn't made an impression at all. I liked "The Else" though I can't remember much from that either. The kids albums were all much catchier and fun for me.

I was so disappointed State Songs was original songs and not Linnell just singing the official state songs. Really wanted him to bust out the old accordion for the nice waltz that is "Here We Have Idaho." I just couldn't listen to the album because of flase advertising!

It's just kind of weird, like... these guys used to be able, just the two of them, generate a really full and interesting sound. And yet with a full band they either do kind of generic uptempo stuff in the general sonic territory of "Boss of Me," or, inexplicably, something like "Cloisonne" which just seems totally lazy, demo-button-on-the-keyboard stuff. I mean, even "Which Describes How You're Feeling" has a more interesting and surprising arrangement.

Don't get me wrong, though, the good songs on this are probably the best songs I've heard from them in over a decade, although I guess I didn't really give this many listens to the other post-Factory Showroom records. Definitely a lot of good stuff to cherry-pick from this. Still think it could be pruned and tightened a bit, although at least at 47 minutes it doesn't overstay its welcome.

I basically cosign every word uttered by Doctor Casino itt

Picking this album back up again, still liking it okay, still convinced it's got too many tracks, or too many things that feel like they'd make solid endings. I would happily cut "Three Might Be Duende," "Cloisonne," and "Protagonist," and there's a few others that are good but not that good. Just kind of dilutes the impact of what could be a pleasant, chewy platter of songs a la Factory Showroom.

incidentally, pulling out Factory Showroom - - - how did this cover art get so bad? Really one of the ugliest things I've ever seen.

tbf NOBODY had a good album cover in 1996

Has our burgeoning 90s rock revival hegemony yet produced a "worst album cover of 1996" poll? Because that would be HARD if this one wasn't in the list.

no but that would be a competitive poll

But the Factory Showroom artwork is good

I was so disappointed State Songs was original songs and not Linnell just singing the official state songs. Really wanted him to bust out the old accordion for the nice waltz that is "Here We Have Idaho." I just couldn't listen to the album because of flase advertising!

If you feel like doing some looking, I know he sang a whole bunch of the real state songs when he did his solo tour around that time.

he did stuff like "California Uber Alles" too, which is hilarious

the whole "State Songs" project was really one of the least ambitious albums of all time and I love it for that. here's a quote from Linnell himself:

"I don't think that the songs are liable to be adopted as the state anthems of the actual states, sadly. I was thinking initially that that might be a nice thing, but thinking about it I think songs like 'Oregon is bad' are not likely to go down very well in Oregon."

frogbs, i'm curious what you mean about "high school band" and "least ambitious" and "cheaply made" re State Songs -- to me the recording is indistinguishable from TMBG records of the same period

oh the arrangements are definitely more spare than live band era TMBG (and less polished and drum machine-driven than early TMBG)

It's similar to some early stuff, but there are more horn players, and none of the musical parts are tricky like, say, "Puppet Head". IMO it's very distinguishable from Apollo 18 and beyond. I have no idea if it really was cheaply made, but the synthesizer sounds all make it seem that way; most of the musicians really do sound like high schoolers. As far as the ambition goes, I can't speak for Linnell, but to me it's always felt like he was doing it because TMBG was on break, the only concept was "I'm going to write a bunch of songs titled after states, that are only vaguely about those states", y'know, just to keep his muse strong or whatever. It's very charming.

yeah it was during that long period after they got dropped from Elektra where they seemed to be actively avoiding doing a new studio album until they knew if they were going to another major or whatever; live album, internet-only rarities album, EPs, side projects, endless tours, etc. also feels like the beginning of them just picking a theme to write tons and tons of songs around (Venue Songs, Here Come The ABCs/123s/etc.)

They wrote a lot of good tunes in that period; it's a shame that so few of them ended up on Mink Car (and the ones that did were often in inferior versions). I think I've been a fan since '97 (as an 11 year old!) and I remember how frustrating it was for the "new" TMBG album (Long Tall Weekend) to be basically inaccessible. It was pioneering in retrospect but having no physical product was a pretty bad idea at the time.

Yeah, that was exactly the period where I fell off as a fan, and I don't know if that's because the content was really in decline, or because it felt sort of ephemeral and stopgap, or because my own tastes were shifting or what.

see i only bought Flood like less than a year before Factory Showroom and saw them live for the first time '98 so that was a whole period of me getting into the band and exploring the back catalog. although by the time Mink Car came along i'd kind of exhausted my interest in them and didn't cop it or see them live for a few years.

2 of 70 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Hmmmm! Time to make lemonade!, November 23, 1999
By Bruce Richardson (Herscher, IL United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: State Songs (Audio CD)
(Updated from previous review after some more listening)
I was sent to this album through a link on the State Song Web Site. Even though I recognized the TMBG name as something I wouldn't normally buy, I was totally unprepared for the disappointment I was soon to feel. They are far from the Official state songs, as one would be led to expect from the title, etc.

I was hunting for a reference recording to use with my music students. I now have a recording for when I want to play Crazy music for my 1st graders. This music should prove very enjoyable to those fans of Barney and Teletubbies.

Can you tell I am sincerely disappointed in this album. My colleague sympathized with me on this Dog purchase

That's pretty much OTM, and I like the album

haha the album really does serve a nice function as a rickroll

I love the line on the first song: "The songs of the 50 states/The songs of the 50 states/I'm not gonna say they're great/I ain't gonna say they ain't"

I feel like any album that serves well as "Crazy music for 1st graders" is a must-buy for me

one of the main reasons State Songs is great is that Flans didn't write any of the songs

I have nothing against him, but especially lately his melodies haven't exactly been setting the LPs alight

Melody wise Linnell's always been at the front for me anyway...most of the early singles etc

Linnell definitely has the stronger melodic gifts of the two. Flansburgh is no slouch, and makes up for it in ideas and personality, he's just a bit less consistent or subtle by comparison.

Well "Judy is Your Vietnam" off Join Us is definitely a highlight. Agreed that Linnell usually writes the better melodies (he has a superhuman gift for that) but I can't talk shit about the guy behind "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head", "Narrow Your Eyes", and "See the Constellation"

what i'm saying

Flansburgh being better than usual is i think what made the difference in Join Us being an improvement from other later albums

This is all reminding me of an incomplete project I began sometime in the late 90s with the intent of "proving," Paul-Is-Dead-style, that John Flansburgh conspired to have John Linnell murdered and replaced by a robot duplicate, all of which was spelled out in their songs before, during, and after the crime.

Man, I got a lot further along with this than I thought!

March 1992: Apollo 18 (1992) This bleak, darkly-shaded album is the core of the entire murder theory. It seems apparent that the attack and switcharoo took place directly after the completion of these recordings, which are top-heavy with references to death, murder, and duplication. There is little of the (admittedly black) humor that made "Miscellaneous T" so easy to swallow; Linnell has reached the nadir of his Hamlet-like state of inaction, writing and performing songs which refer without much artifice to his own very imminent doom. As a final general note, the album's cover art is again significant here: a whale and a giant squid are depicted locked in mortal combat, with a spaceship floating nearby. So it was with the band: the original duo was stalemated, and a machine waited in the wings to take the place of one of them.

The songs themselves, up until the Fiingertips Medley that concludes the album with a barely-concealed murder song-cycle, trade more than usual in images of death, from both singers. In fact, the two sing together more than usual, perhaps again due to Linnell's resignation. They cooperate on the scene-setting album-opener "Dig My Grave" (could it be any more obvious?), as well as "The Statue Got Me High," in which an automaton (statue) "makes" Linnell "fry" and "die."

We must linger on the extended narrative of "Turn Around"...

Linnell seems to recognize that Flansburgh will kill him, but wants to leave a final message to his one-time friend: After you kill me, don't forget me. Look behind you and see my skull on the ground. Flansburgh would later throw this request back in the metaphorical face of his deceased collaborator by titling the band's next major release Back to Skull - by implication refusing to turn around and behold Linnell's legacy.

yes, and now the Linnell-bot is going to murder Flans, hence "When Will You Die?"

Flood book coming: 33 1/3 Series of books

YES, will buy without hesitation.

screw the 33 1/3 book, I want Doctor Casino's Linnell-is-dead book!

hahaha, I wish I still had a really stupid, geeky, cornucopia-of-random-articles type website, it's kind of hard to think of what venue this sort of thing belongs on...

The Awl? =

Sure I saw some John-on-John slash fiction once

these guys are another one of those 80s bands - kind of like the Cure - who I have a hard time thinking up clear antecedents for. Spike Jones? a bit of Devo?

Sparks?

I think the answer's even simpler than that, IMO they pretty clearly date back to the power pop era of Big Star, Todd Rundgren and even XTC, but their combination of Apple II-level production (in the early days) and an affinity towards oddball lyrical concepts makes them seem a lot more gonzoid. I'm sure they were huge fans of Sparks too!

i know their image is goofy jokesters but if you listen to the early stuff they're more clearly part of the NYC '80s art-rock scene

Sparks! of course.

I don't hear any Big Star. Rundgren I'm not familiar enough with. And XTC was only ahead of them by a couple years, right? They seem more like peers, but I agree there's some similarities in the aggressive nerdiness dept.

NYC '80s art-rock scene

I know that's where they came out of, but who else was doing drum-machine-and-accordian with the occasional fuzz guitar art-pop in that scene?

Sonically, I don't know but in attitude/humor this is right on. Especially in the minor tracks and Dial-axSong only material, there's a self-conscious fakey weirdness ''LISTen to the SOUND...of my VOICE'' which is very Laurie Anderson. Talking Heads also have to be huge here.

i don't know about that scene to say specifically who, but asking who else was using their specific instrumentation seems like a different question from who their antecedents were

They were kind of a poppier version of bands like Fish & Roses and Orthotonics maybe, if that means anything to anyone.

I just relistened to an old tribute album I had sitting on my hard drive: "Hello Radio: The Songs of They Might be Giants"

Hearing these songs performed by other bands has been eye-opening. They sound totally unnatural; most of these bands (OK Go and The Wrens for two) sound like rather standard indie/alt-rock groups, most of whom try to add some quirks to match the kind of thing that TMBG does, but nearly all of them struggle to figure out how to cram so many syllables into a mostly standard 4-chord rock song. Like no one can get the timing right. Nor figure out how to transition between the verses and the choruses which are often wildly different from each other. It's as if they're trying to cast these as more "normal" rock sounds to reveal how profound they really are minus the "jokey" arrangements but in the process kill most of the profundity that the songs had in the first place.

TMBG are pretty singular. I'm glad I never knew they had a tribute album.

TMBG seems like a band who would be on a lot of tribute records of other acts; dont think it works the other way around

I'm still quietly lobbying for them to be Colbert's house band when he takes over for Letterman, btw.

YES

I mean, yes, this is a great idea, not Yes should be Colbert's house band

Although....

TMBG used to do a thing in their live show where they'd try to find a bunch of local radio stations and would play along to whatever they found. They definitely have the talent to fit whatever the show needs. I would imagine Colbert is a fan.

They're already tied into the Daily Show universe by having done the current incarnation of the TDS theme music.

I have a theory that TMBG do a lot of TV/commercial music without anyone knowing. I think Flansburgh has referred to this in a few interviews; they're listed in the Daily Show credits and for the kids shows they do but I believe they do a lot just as working musicians. I remember an interview long ago where they were asked what they thought when fans accused them of "selling out" - their response was "it's our dream to sell out"

Like, Tim and Eric do a bunch of commercial work but nobody knows it's them

https://www.tmbgifc.com/
apparently the future of music is what TMBG used to do

Three CDs, 1 DVD, 1 T-shirt, weekly new songs in mp3 format all year, random swag and tickets for two to a show for a hundred bucks.
So let's say $20 per ticket, $20 for the shirt and $15 a disc; all eminently reasonable prices and the swag and MP3s are free and you get to directly support the band. It's an equitable deal.

Oh hmph. THey've booked a spring tour, so I guess my Colbert dream will remain a dream.

Wait, all the shows are in Williamsburg, so the dream is alive!

I realize I'm just having this conversation with myself, but the band just posted this on their fb page in response to someone's inquiry about what cities they were playing: "April-May means Brooklyn, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Minneapolis, Madison, Cleveland, Albany, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Boise, Seattle, Portland OR, San Francisco, Dallas, Austin, Oklahoma City, St. Louis, Columbus OH"

Makes it kind of hard to be a late night show's house band if you're doing that much touring.

they would be a good late night house band. but maybe darnielle will step up

Johnny Fever, I think you should take your Colbert dream public ... or if you already have, then, like, MORE public. Start a campaign! It's a brilliant idea and should happen. The spring tour is just a bump in the road, doesn't mean it can't happen.

Just this morning I was randomly thinking about how many times I saw TMBG as a teenager (6 or 8?) and how many of their shirts I owned (probably 4 or 5?). I love these guys forever, even if I stopped paying attention.

Might have to hit that tour.

the Colbert idea really is great. he's supposedly not starting on CBS until around September, so there's still time that it's plausible!

I'd love to see that too, I think what's kind of lost on a lot of people who haven't seen them live is that they're both really funny in person, especially Flansburgh.

Oh, September really? The dream is alive!

they'd seriously be perfect for the job. personable, talented and versatile, very funny/quick-witted, quirky but can rock if necessary, based in NYC, probably not super expensive?

this has to happen. someone start a tumblr or something

RIP early TMBG booster and showbiz legend Joe Franklin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFRjVXh9_8E

new video by Mark Marek!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okT-EgXUD0M

these lyrics from "Answer" made me laugh out loud:

You wanted tall
I came in under 5'4
Then you asked for dark
I tend to sunburn a lot
As for handsome, well
Can't help you there
So make of it what you will

It may take an ocean of whiskey and time
To wash all of the letdown out of your mind
And I may not be the one you expected but
I am the answer to all your prayers

Dud.

like 'em, don't like 'em, at least watch their cover of Bills, Bills, Bills

it's good!!

http://www.avclub.com/video/they-might-be-giants-covers-destinys-child-221191

i love that song and that band too much to ever watch that

^

They'll need a crane

http://www.avclub.com/video/they-might-be-giants-covers-destinys-child-221191

This is really really good!

stop waving that thing around, i'm not clicking on it

LOL

Hahahahaha!

New album Phone Power is quite good - a few songs sound like obvious duds but there's like 13-14 really solid tunes there. Kinda weird that there's another version of "Black Ops" on there but it's better than the original. As usual the Linnell songs are generally better, two in particular are really really great - "ECNALUMBA" and "Shape Shifter".

Didn't even know about this; will check it out

It's just another collection of last year's weekly Dial-A-Song songs

there was another one? i haven't heard any news since Glean came out

yeah, but if you haven't heard it yet you wouldn't know. it plays like any of their albums and the songs are consistently good. I'd say it's about as good as Glean, maybe better, so if you like that one...

ohh i didn't even realize till now that Glean was a DAS comp. and i thought that was their best album in over a decade!

seconding phone power. i bought it back when it was a non-streaming release (early march?) and it's great. not groundbreaking, but quite albumly sequenced and a lot of really good songs (the first seven tracks are faultless imo).

ohh i didn't even realize till now that Glean was a DAS comp.

The most recent kids album Why?, as well as being a sequel to No!, is also largely / sort of a compilation from last year's Dial-A-Song project - they did a song a week as a tiered subscription download or freebie youtube thing.

I haven't heard any of the kids albums since No! actually... but you've got me interested

Hate to say it, but found Glean to be their worst since Mink Car. Phone Power is a lot better yet still bitty. They were on a huge roll with Join Us and Nanobots though - best albums since the 90s

I lionize the early stuff as much as anyone, but I think this is just as good - it seems to follow the pattern of the best TMBG albums where it's just one great song after another until the final third where things get a bit weird. It's even got those songs that pass you by on the first couple listens until one day you just feel like listening to them on repeat.

new song today. I like it a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-1SqAJHhFc

They'll need a crane

― kurt kobaïan (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, June 23, 2015 3:10 AM (two years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes

not sure I like the new song, but I like when they sing together. it's also a bit outside what they usually do, kind of going back to the sound on John Henry

i forgot which tab i had open and for a second thought this was track four on River of Dreams

the lyrics to "When Will You Die?" really reminding me of a certain person right now

seriously

I'm so tired
Of your lies
And the evil things
You're doing behind my back

Are there crimes
That you have never committed?
I doubt it, sometimes I wonder
When will you die?

You're insane
You are bad
You wreck everything you touch
And you're a sociopath

But there's one thing
That everyone's wondering
When will you die?

We've all known a few

one of my faves

has anyone ever written a review of TMBG (in recent-ish years, I mean) that basically says "Linnell still writes good songs, but Flansburgh does not"?

feel like it's been this way, more or less, for 20 years...just not sure if it's ever been acknowledged.

disagree! there have definitely been times where Linnell gets stagnant, as does Flansburgh, but they both eventually come back

hmm...if you can point me to some great late-era Flans songs, i'm all ears

IDK it's pretty much always been Good Linnell > Good Flansburgh > Bad Flansburgh > Bad Linnell for me. I can't think of a single album where John F. outshines John L., outside of Apollo 18? It's tough to compare the two since Linnell's songs usually outnumber Flans 2:1. Kind of a Patridge/Moulding situation. Though when you see them live, Flansburgh clearly comes off as the frontman.

As for great late period Flanses..."Judy Is Your Vietnam" (basically the perfect Flans song), "In Fact", "Darlings of Lumberland" (which I think succeeds in the area "Cloissone" fails in), "Let Me Tell You About My Operation" and "Impossibly New" are all pretty great to me. I like more than that but those are the big ones.

Good Linnell > Good Flansburgh > Bad Flansburgh > Bad Linnell

I've always thought of Linnell as having the better songs overall, but I also think he has the better voice, which certainly plays a hand in it

New album is pretty good - especially if you've gotten burned out on them recently, since this is much more an album proper. It's probably their darkest set of lyrics yet; compared to the "fight the power" message of The Else this is more of a "everything sucks and we're all gonna die soon" type of album. Only listened twice but I think "Last Wave" is gonna go down as one of their greatest songs - feel like this is their "Wheel and the Maypole"

also "The Greatest" has one of the best opening lines in TMBG history : "They call me the greatest/'cause I'm not very good and they're being sarcastic"

State Songs >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Mono Puff

When I listen to Underwater Woman and Let Me Tell You About My Operation I get to understand how life sounds through the ears of people who hate They Might Be Giants when they hear their best material

what does that mean
those songs are great btw

this new album is pretty great, top to bottom. i'm kinda stunned.

fun fact about Last Wave - the lyrics were written to sync up to the Run DMC/Aerosmith "Walk This Way" video, which is why they make no sense in a vacuum

Had me in stitches.

https://vimeo.com/253025437

ok that's amazing

hilarious

oh damn I didn't know that was online

amazing how they can still manage to sound exactly like they did 33 years ago if they want to

Now that was hilarious. Thanks for making my morning.

omg

can't breathe

Beautiful

in case anyone missed it, but has a bookmark here, there's a great big ballot poll going on: Hope That I Get Polled Before I Die: THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS 1982-2002 POLL - Voting, Campaigning, Discussing

too hard to decide for me. they have like hundreds of songs by now

The poll only covers 1982-2002, per the title, and excludes not-formally-released songs, so there are a mere 431 eligible.

(It says 430 in the thread, but somehow I missed Stomp Box from John Henry.)

An all too easy one to forget about though now I'll surely be made a fool of when it hits top 10.

like hundreds of songs by now

They have released at least 170 songs just in the last six years; only 22 of them are for children.

Results rolling out: YOUTH CULTURE POLLED MY DOG: They Might Be Giants (first 21 years) POLL RESULTS

anyone who liked last year's album should really check out My Murdered Remains, a 16-track collection of outtakes and Dial-a-Song tunes that's basically I Like Fun 2. maybe even a little better actually. TMBG seem to do this thing a lot where they write two fairly similar songs and chuck one out for the album, often booting out the better song. if you've listened to ILF a lot you can definitely tell which ones those were here. either way despite not getting much fanfare, it's basically a brand new TMBG album, and a quite good one in fact.

My Murdered Remains has its own outtakes album, More Murdered Remains

^ it's essential for the "Starry Eyes" cover alone, which I'd somehow forgotten about

Roky or The Records?

The Records

The Records: http://tmbw.net/wiki/Starry_Eyes

Cool. One time I struck up a conversation with a guy on the subway because his headphones were leaking that.

Never heard this cover version before. Pretty good.

this song is so good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvteQ8kW41A

sic's campaigning/voting thread (linked above) is probably (still) the most, um, encyclopedic such thread I've seen. Bless.

and it only covers the first 20 years (which I think now was a good call). and they've only been MORE prolific since then, I'm pretty sure

its hard to tell, they weren't able to release outtakes albums every 3 years or so like they are now

didn't they put out like 3 albums last year not even counting the John Henry demos

Three studio albums plus an outtakes disc plus a live album plus the remastered John Henry Demos

weren't able to release outtakes albums every 3 years or so like they are now

I didn't track '80s and '90s Dial-A-Songs that never turned into released tracks in that poll, though. Balance may have been more even with those in.

Even with things like releasing a song a week in 2015 and 2018, writing and performing a new song at every venue on a 2004 tour, my feeling is that the eMusic era is still their most consistently prolific:

The first 17 years of this poll saw about 280 songs released; the next four see another 130 or so, not counting dozens of cues and miniatures for Malcolm In The Middle.

The cascade of music this year (2001) included 75 new songs. Lennon/McCartney wrote 121 in a decade.

Once or twice a month I open and poke at the spreadsheet for a 2003-2019 listening thread, and all of a sudden it's seven hours later and I'm A-B-C-D-E-ing two people's rips of Clock Radio tracks against a tape transfer and a streaming rip of the same song in Dial-A-Song form and the ParticleMen upload, and making notes in ID3 tags on which ones are different or more listenable and my hips hurt

(quick count looks like 78 songs in 2004, including covers and TV themes and Homestar Runner collabs. Only 44 new songs last year, plus one they wrote for the third album but ran out of time to record.)

Picture disc 30th anniversary reissue of Flood.

The A-side features the original Flood album cover art and the B-side is a brand new animated psychedelic zoetrope image of TMBG ephemera created by Paul Sahre. You will need a phone and a glass hookah to experience it in its full psychedelic glory! (Viewing instructions are included on the LP jacket.) Buy two and sell the second on eBay for the price of both!

ok that is p cool

In the series "lyrics snippets that haven't aged all that well":

Why is the world in love again?
Why are we marching hand in hand?
Why are the ocean levels rising up?

ok yeah I had to order that

The free download of FLOOD LIVE IN AUSTRALIA has been reposted on our website’s Downloads page but it leaves on February 1 (for something else free!). https://found.ee/freedownloads

Thanks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt1V5gD4GoE

lmao "gonna tell my kids this was Animal Collective"

Restreaming a previously subscriber-only concert from 2015 this evening on youtube, for pandemic party times.

The TMBG Watch Party goes up at 11pm London, 7pm Eastern US, 4pm Pacific US, 10am in Sydney, 8am Tokyo. We will be streaming a performance of a Brooklyn show from October 2015, and as it streams you can chat in real-time with other TMBGers.

For spoilers, here's the setlist for this "Horntoberfest"-themed gig.

whoa, that's an awesome setlist

saw them on this most recent tour where they were doing Flood in its entirely, one of their last gigs before they all got cancelled in fact. without coming off too fanboyish they really do seem to get better every time I see them. the wonky "Spy" improv included a sample of The Eagles "Take It To The Limit" which was one of the funniest things I've ever seen them do

I'll be watching the Steven Universe finale but will probably catch up with that later

Suspect it won't be archived, but should run longer than Steven Universe to join in when you get a chance.

For spoilers, here's the setlist🕸 for this "Horntoberfest"-themed gig.

guessing they’re starting with set 2

First set was probably a tech rehearsal, given some of the glitches still in the first few songs here.

yeah, it’s a mess, i bailed

I kept it on for background listening once the audio settled down, but gave up on looking at it almost immediately.

I put a playlist together of my favorite Glean/Phone Power songs:

1) Erase
2) Apophenia
3) I Love You for Psychological Reasons
4) Music Jail, Pt 1 & 2
5) Answer
6) ECNALUMBA
7) End of the Rope
8) All the Lazy Boyfriends
9) It Said Something
10) Impossibly New
11) Unpronounceable
12) I'll Be Haunting You
13) I'm a Coward
14) Aaa
15) Shape Shifter
16) Let Me Tell You About My Operation
17) I Wasn't Listening

I think, when listened to this way, it would be maybe their strongest single album ever?

don't suppose you've got that put together on a streaming service somewhere, do ya?

worth noting, i guess, that apparently TMBG has to move all its merch from one warehouse to another, and as a result they've put lots of stuff on mega-sale. some stuff 30% off, some 80%, some in between. i grabbed a couple of LPs and some stuff i don't really need (keychain, air freshener, etc), but was bummed because the FLOOD picture disc sold out while it was in my cart.

the shipping costs are expensive, but YMMV

if I can remember my Spotify login I could throw it in a playlist

I noticed that sale too, kinda funny cuz I just ordered the 2 LPs I was missing last week

for whatever reason they seem to be really overstocked on Nanobots, it was a free throw in with any other LP for a while and now it's just 10 bucks. its a really good album too, people should buy it

I ordered the John Henry demos and My Murdered Remains, but put back the reissue of the debut when I saw how much shipping was.

One of these days, I should really listen to the albums that came out between Factory Showroom and I Like Fun. I don't think I've ever listened to any of them, at least not more than a song or two.

see if this works for you:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6E4745G3aaX6shYJEazCZo

the band definitely stumbled around a bit after Factory Showroom, I think Mink Car & The Spine are probably their two weakest (excluding the kids albums which you can't really judge). Everything after that is pretty solid though. I like The Else a lot but I think for most fans Join Us is where they really came back

their first 3 releases are the best as are their label mates the dead milkmen first 3 releases!

Mink Car def a low point - probably the only TMBG album I never want to listen to again

They're still incredible songwriting machines after all this time though, still love 'em

when i was super into TMBG - 25 years ago, in my teens and early 20s - i didn't really differentiate between the two johns, who was singing what, who had obviously written what, etc. i just enjoyed the band.

these days, i approach their music differently and it has become clear to me that John Linnell is one of the greatest rock 'n' roll songwriters of the past half-century.

that playlist worked, frogbs, thanks! and thanks for the post-Factory pointers. i'll start with Join Us and The Else.

I used to listen to their albums nearly every day on my paper route and it never occurred to me that there were two singers

totally agree about John Linnell - I'd love to read an actual musician explain what makes his songwriting so unique, his progressions sound very distinct to me but I can't quite peg why. I remember some long article about Flood where a lot of their peers talked about how deceivingly complex "Birdhouse" was, that it had way more chords than your typical pop song and that's why it's so memorable. for example, a song like "Unpronounceable", it's not particularly experimental or strange but it's got his unique stamp on it. if any other artist did it I think I'd recognize it as being influenced by him.

totally agreed about john L's largely unappreciated genius. i spent a lot of time and words in the ballot poll threads realizing this and trying to articulate some of it... but yeah, would love to hear someone who really "gets" songwriting examine his stuff.

i'm not a theory expert, but even his songs without complex chord progressions have hyperactive, tricky melodies (i'm particularly thinking of "she's an angel," which only uses I IV V in E (the simplest guitar chords imaginable) but manages to use every note in the scale in many different interval combinations. it's also kind of weird how the intro and verse of the song is built around the V chord, which adds a mounting sense of unease and tension before the comedy of linnell's situation comes through with the tonic in the pre-chorus and chorus

i'm realizing now that there's a minor chord in the chorus of that song but whatever. the chorus melody could be a bach minuet.

If we're doing "John Linnell as unrecognized songwriting genius of the late 20th / early 21st c." then I am once again asking you to listen to his incredible solo record, State Songs

https://www.theymightbegiants.com/state-songs

oh i very much include State Songs in my assessment of him

literally once every six months i look up its release date so i can think about pitching a 20-year anniversary piece somewhere (to be rejected, of course). and every time, i realize (again) that i missed it.

apologies if this has been posted before, but i watched it a while back and really enjoyed it. the grainy quality gives it a serious "unearthed treasure" vibe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozYJ7zi8cyk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga9nI_qeQa8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6igO_fLQbSE

I assume he has been asked 100 times over the years if he will ever do another record of state songs. Anyone remember his answer?

I loved how he performed other "State Songs" during those shows like "North to Alaska" and "California Uber Alles"

my copy of I Like Fun arrived today, man does "By The Time You Get This" feel very relevant right now

new album finally came in the mail, only listened once but I really liked it. maybe the only TMBG album where I thought every song was good on the first spin.

I just found out that apparently if you join their fanclub at the highest tier they will record a custom ringtone for you with your name in it. I guess when you have the ability to write a tune in 15 minutes you might as well make some money off it

their first 3 releases are the best but they lost me after that pretty much except Can't Keep Johnny Down is good!

as usual the new album made me Google a bunch of stuff, "If Day for Winnipeg" is a pretty cool slice of history. weird to hear them doing overtly political stuff like this now

I think they're completely excellent up to and including John Henry, and there's lots of rad stuff in amongst the rest, but it's definitely an "in small doses" thing for me past that point.
I say that as someone with all the releases including bonus CDs and whatnot, and for some reason even a member of the current Instant Fan Club.
I've moved on, but they're still a nice place to visit.

thats all accurate

idk if I just burned myself out on the early stuff when I was younger but I actually get more mileage out of the newer albums these days. Join Us, Nanobots, Phone Power, I Like Fun, Book...maybe the high points aren't as great but overall I think these albums are more solid track-for-track. in part I think this is because I get to see them live a lot, and hearing the new songs alongside the old helps you appreciate how good some of them are. I actually don't think their songwriting has changed a whole lot in the last three decades.

that said getting into those first 4-5 albums as a teenager is the sort of thing you can't really replicate, idk if I'll ever again just slam an album on repeat for a few weeks the way I did with Flood and Apollo 18. but when I'm in the mood for them I always seem to pick something new

So I'm guessing you guys would say NOT to buy that package of BOOK

I have the BOOK of BOOK and it's very pretty and has recent lyrics and things in arty fashion.
It's definitely a fan thing. I am not quite at the level but enjoy the fun inherent in the Instant Fan Club.

this bit from a JL interview is fascinating (the getting pulled off YouTube part...I didn't know it could do that):

We seem to specialize in finding complicated things to do, although sometimes we do simple things, and that works really well. Last year we learned how to play one of our songs, “Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love,” backward. We taught the band to play all the notes in reverse order, and John and I learned to sing the song phonetically in reverse order. It took weeks. But not only did we pull it off, we played it live just just before the COVID lockdown started up. We were on tour and we got to play it a few times. Somebody took a video of it, and then whatever the robot is that figures out what songs are under copyright heard our backwards version and could tell what song it was, and tried to ban it from YouTube. Once we start touring again, we’re hoping to revive it, because we spent so long learning how to do it.

sheesh...right after their first post-pandemic show

An important message from John L. pic.twitter.com/S3YHMdrH7N

— They Might Be Giants (@tmbg) June 9, 2022

Oh no, poor John F. When I'm back in the US, I really hope to see these guys again

Oh man, that tour is cursed. I was going to see them Saturday for a show that had been postponed mutiple times due to COVID.

Feel so lucky I got to see them back in March of 2020, when it was just an uneasy air of “this may be the last thing we do for the next few weeks”

It was a great show by the way. The Flood set was good but the second set was even gooder. All the best to Flans.

Damn this sucks

I am thinking about their feelings and about fan disappointment, but my hard-headed son asked a good question; is this going to be OK for them financially? I have no concept of what the business of being They Might Be Giants looks like.

I kind of feel like Gloria from the Dial-A-Song answering machine: "But what kind of money does he make? It don't make no sense. Well, he don't make any money, right?"

I am purely speculating here, but I would hope/guess/think they will be fine. Smart guys, at it for many years (hopefully they learned long ago and have been doing it right for a long time), made many licensing / royalty deals, played many sold-out shows, etc.

The two Johns, I mean. The rest of the band obviously would be different.

They had already (re-)re-scheduled the 2020 Flood tour into a series of 2-3 week regional tours stretching into 2023, to limit the financial liability of any one mini-leg getting cancelled by covid. In that light, it seems plausible that this will be a major financial hit to the business and their band/crew seasonal employees.

They Might Be Broke

Sad to hear about John F, hope he recovers quickly

Someone uploaded the recent show to D1m3adozen, and included this link, which may be of interest -

"PS, I've got a google drive fulla older (mostly TMBG) cassette bootlegs I've recently obtained and digitized. I don't have enough time in the world to try and put all on here individually. Feel free to share these wherever. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1H9ICuR0cjVNBph3kbuqWzEomc2EGQAqQ "

very good link, thanks!

I'm listening to a Jan & Dean compilation I made years ago but never put on again until now...I grew much more familiar with They Might Be Giants in the interim, and listening to these Jan & Dean cuts now it sounds like they both could've been the same band had they never aged and left behind surf and California culture after moving to Brooklyn. Their musical sensibility and even the physical character of their voices sound eerily similar. It's even more amusing when I realize the biggest TMBG fan I personally know lives in Pasadena.

Free download:

Please enjoy this download of us performing Flood live in its entirety while on tour in Australia. Downloads are instant and the sound quality is surprisingly high! "Dead," "Birdhouse in Your Soul," "Your Racist Friend," "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" and all the other perennial favorites!

remember when Johnny Fever had the idea that TMBG should be Colbert's house band (after Colbert left Colbert Report)?

that was genius.

Colbert doesn't deserve 'em

They would be a good house band, but I'm glad they just do their own thing (which I'm seeing again next month). The closest we'll get is the Daily Show theme

I was thinking about the etymology of the word 'autism' (from the Greek 'autos' meaning 'self') and it got me thinking about They Might Be Giants as an autistic band in a literal sense, like almost all of their songs seem at some level to be about this fraught connection between the self and the world? Between the objective world that exists outside of your perception and the world as you perceive it from your body - the possibility/impossibility of a perspective outside of the self.

(I think other lyrical concerns are downstream of this, like the obsession with death - of the world still existing when you don't - and the obsession with failed attempts at communication, obsession with 'outside' forces controlling the mind and/or body, this reversal that sometimes happens in their songs where instead of the perspective of a person looking at objects/the world you instead get the perspective of objects/the world looking at a person, songs that are about the song itself). Does any of this make sense?

also does anyone else mentally bracket TMBG together with Lana Del Rey? Death, dissociation, old-timey Americana etc

That resonates with the little I know of them so far, and makes me want to listen to way more.

(To soref's first/longer post above, specifically the question "does any of this make sense?")

Good posting. They strike me as a surrealist band in the classic early-postmodernist sense, taking simple elements and recontextualising them without explanation or overt purpose

their newest album in particular is full of this kind of thing. I don't know if "I Lost Thursday" was intended to be a COVID-era thing but it definitely feels that way. the other thing I'd add is an obsession with time and how it relates to memory, that sort of thing is all over the place in their catalogue. their lyrics often scan as goofy and I think a lot of their fans tend to read more into them than is actually there but at the same time they've got some amazing lyrical puzzles like this, which I think is as great a rumination on consciousness and memory as anything:

https://tmbw.net/wiki/Lyrics:Less_Than_One

also notable is "I Broke My Own Rule", which I always did think of as an autistic sort of song; it's about that obsession with things that you know are only important in your own mind, and how when you try to ignore them some fabric of your reality comes apart

their lyrics often scan as goofy and I think a lot of their fans tend to read more into them than is actually there but at the same time they've got some amazing lyrical puzzles

when I see fan interpretations that I see as someone reading too much into their lyrics it's usually because the fan is proposing answers to these puzzles that you mention, but more often the point seems to be that these are puzzles without answers, or mazes that lead round and round with no exit, just endless recursion. Confusing the map with the territory and trying to correct but finding you've just constructed another map.

I don't think its just the lyrics that are "autistic" but also the music itself, at least a lot of the time. I wish I knew how to describe this but there's just something in the way they write pop music, the chords they use, the way they use syncopation - it's a bit abnormal, they write songs the way I used to write songs on piano, except they're way better at it of course. You hear it more in Linnell than Flansburgh, but they both have it (Flans I think is more just a clever songwriter and student of pop in the vein of Andy Partridge). It's hard to come up with specific examples but like the way the vocal melody in "Experimental Film" keeps jumping up to meet the key of the background vocal, idk who else writes songs like that exactly. But even the verse melody...it's not exactly the same from one measure to the next. There's one note that jumps down an octave. Maybe someone else can put it better. But their music is full of that kind of thing.

I was wondering why this band seemed to attract so many folks who are on the spectrum. I'm in a TMBG discord and most people there seem to be pretty open about it. I dont think words like "quirky" and "weird" quite describe it. It's a different appeal than say, the Barenaked Ladies.

Linnell himself has acknowledged this: https://www.tumblr.com/killhitleragain/711358355817578496/thinking-about-this-interview-where-john-linnell

From my experience, in every single TMBG fan space I've been in there's some sort of running joke about everyone in the server/forum/page etc. being autistic (I am no exception lol). A lot of their music deals with common autistic emotions - paranoia, mistrust, confusion, overwhelming & unmanageable bursts of emotion, being in situations you find absurd but everyone else finds normal, and (on the positive side) singing about things not really deemed songworthy or of general interest (Mammal, 2082, James K. Polk, Linnell's whole State Songs project - I could go on!). Also just the obscure and circitous way they approach subjects appeals to me a lot.

great post

beautiful, really

I was thinking about the etymology of the word 'autism' (from the Greek 'autos' meaning 'self') and it got me thinking about They Might Be Giants as an autistic band in a literal sense, like almost all of their songs seem at some level to be about this fraught connection between the self and the world? Between the objective world that exists outside of your perception and the world as you perceive it from your body - the possibility/impossibility of a perspective outside of the self.

^this too

flanny is so charismatic and adorkable in this performance that i almost kinda wanna jump his bones? didn’t know he had it in him. it just came up in my youtube feed a few weeks ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpXdfi09cy8

I wouldn't say their music is "completely stripped of emotion", they're just specific and unusual emotions that you suspect some people don't have

re: “numerical fascination”, “way of ordering things” i do remember a couple of big tmbg fans in my middle school who were not into any other bands at all except maybe the beatles? left brained mathlete types. i remember one of them telling me he was going to buy “the beatles anthropology” when it came out :)

But often there's a kind of autistic quality that I like, where it seems to be completely stripped of emotions. It almost has some numerical fascination, a way of ordering things that appealing that doesn't seem emotional or personal.

I hadn't seen this quote before, but I think this is kind of what I was trying to get at as a feature of their songwriting (particularly Linnell's). But also that what he describes as not seeming personal can somehow simultaneously be very 'personal' in the sense of being contained within the self and not relating to interactions with other humans. Like someone who is relatively uninterested in or unable to pursue relationships with other people but is very interested in 'things' or apparently dry lists and statistics, things that are both impersonal but also very personal in that they're a closed loop with no other people involved. And there can be a great deal of emotion wrapped up in these things and lists etc, this complex inner world that is not necessarily visible to other people, so there isn't a contradiction between saying that "there's an emotional resonance to everything" and this fascination with autistic, numerical 'ordering', almost like a direct connection to the world unmediated by other people.