polling all the songs on Apollo 18 by They Might Be Giants except "Fingertips"

i love this album

"Hypnotist of Ladies" because it delves into creepy psychosexual stuff that TMBG rarely touch on in their songs about puppets and hats.

Their initial run of four albums is pretty unstoppable.

might vote "narrow your eyes" for the rare tmbg sad song

^^ for real, love that one

fuck, guys, sorry i left off "Space Suit," although i can't imagine it would've gotten a lot of votes

I actually love "Space Suit" but it wouldn't win against the rest... I mean there is a ton of good stuff on this album. A little confused by the idea that psychosexual and sad songs are rare for TMBG, are you guys kidding around? Totally what makes the band work for me!

As for this album it's down to:

"I Palindrome I" – 2:25
"Narrow Your Eyes" – 2:46
"See the Constellation" – 3:27

...although the latter two are kind of in for one perfect line each - love the way they deliver "And we'll race to the bottom of a glass" and "I was in the sky, all dressed in black" - solid climaxes both. "I Palindrome I" is really sustained across the song, although again there's a moment where it kind of ratchets up the creepy tension into something really memorable, the whole bit where it spreads beyond the immediate situation into an endless generational war:

See the spring of the grandfather clock unwinding
See the hands of my offspring making windmills
Dad palindrome dad, I palindrome I
And I am a snake head eating the head on the opposite side

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I don't love "Narrow Your Eyes" the way the Dr. does but he correctly identifies the best line in that song by far. For, me, though, the highwire scansion act of "All they'll find will be a statue standing where the statue got me high" is the best thing on this album and "Statue" wins.

Someday Mother will die and I'll get the money
Mom leans down and says, "My sentiments exactly,
You son of a bitch."

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Thread has apparently eated my theory that "Statue" is about Richard Pryor's crack pipe.

John Linnell said at a 1994 show, "This song is based on, uh, the life of Don Giovanni, which I didn't know when I wrote the song." Don Giovanni is an opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte that does in fact share a number of similarities with the song's lyrics.

Don Giovanni kills someone in a duel then after a whole opera of incidents he gets pulled to hell by the dead man's statue. I think it's only loosely inspired by that story. The last part of the song always confuses me - is the singer now the statue and now he's killing someone? Or is it just the same killer statue?