They Might be Giants post-1994 album poll

without thinking too hard about it, my ranking would be something like:

Factory Showroom > Join Us > Here Come The 123s > John Henry > Working Undercover For The Man EP > Severe Tire Damage > Mink Car > Indestructible Object EP > Cast Your Pod To The Wind > Here Comes Science > The Else

(have not really heard The Spine or Long Tall Weekend or the first couple children's albums)

have heard none of the albums between 1996 and 2011 so i don't think i can vote on this

or you can vote for John Henry, if you like it?

I'm surprised you think so little of The Else. Tis a good rock record.

My vote is either gonna be Here Come the ABCs (channels their first few albums pretty well, is genuinely a lot of fun even for adults as it doesn't really "talk down" to its audience), or Join Us

Yeah, The Else is my winner here. Great record.

maybe i should listen to The Else again, it's not terrible or anything. but for me enjoying the bonus disc (Cast Your Pod) more than the album proper just casts it in a pretty negative light.

Last one I bought was Severe Tire Damage, but I'm hoping to use this poll as a guide for delving into the real late-period stuff...

Cast Your Pod is full of toss-offs and weird concept tunes, which they've always done well, really no shame in thinking highly of it (theres another disc I have called Podcast Highlights which is more of the same, but even more far out)

The Else for me is kinda like Factory Showroom, its not typical for the group but is really just a good rock record
Will have to relisten some time in the next day or two

I really like No! but have never listened to any of the other children's albums. Maybe I should check them out. (would vote here for Factory Showroom, most of the songs go on a little long but I think I actually like pretty much all of them)

definitely check out the ABCs one. 123s is kinda similar, but not as much fun. Science is decent but they lose their ability to be abstract which is a big deal.

I probably would have voted Factory Showroom had "Sensurround" made the cut. That's one of their very best, so I have no idea why it never actually made an album (and is never played live AFAIK)

my two-year-old daughter loves this song. guess it's sung/written by one of the non-John band members.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVtW4O9XWL8
as for this poll, factory showroom! that album is wonderful.

Voted Join Us, definitely the best since Factory Showroom. Not yet sure if where it's to be placed in the long run.

Long Tall Weekend, surely that's not an official studio album?

Factory Showroom has some strikes against it (lack of Sensurround, S-E-X-X-Y being maybe their worst album opener ever, 13 songs instead of the standard 18-20) but it's still got just a ton of songs i love and i definitely consider it part of their peak along with the first four albums (never totally warmed up to John Henry).

Long Tall Weekend was one of the first mp3-only albums i ever remember seeing commercial available, and yeah it's kind of a stopgap odds'n'sods collection. but it's not like Severe Tire Damage was a studio album either.

John Henry.

No! is a close second.

I was kinda thinking about putting together an 'ideal' Mink Car album , taking all their Long Tall Weekend stuff (which is on the poll, but I don't really consider it a 'real' album), the TMBG Unlimited material, McSweeneys, etc. and seeing how that stacks up

thinkin about Factory Showroom a lot now, that's definitely a solid one, "Spiralling Shape" is arguably their last truly great tune

i lost my McSweeney's 6 in the fire u_u

huh, what was the mcsweeneys thing? did they do a whole album?

they more or less did, apparently there's a song for every article/ad in the digest. most of what TMBG does is odd little vocal or instrumental pieces, there's a few Mink Car demos in there, some cool (and very atypical) instrumentals, and some stuff done by unknowns. Mike Doughty also contributes an odd track called "Frog and Banjo". It's actually a pretty good listen, and it does contain "Robert Lowell" (here called "I Am 40") which really should have made the album

oh lol, i think my wife actually bought that. don't know if i ever listened to the CD!

you can see the tracklisting here:

http://tmbw.net/wiki/They_Might_Be_Giants_Vs._McSweeney%27s

I honestly had no idea that TMBG were still releasing albums. Huh. Haven't heard anything after John Henry, I don't think. It's also sort of weird to me that I saw them at least 2x that I can recall but probably more.

i'm really enjoying Join Us, but i might go with The Else just because i wrung a lot of happiness out of it at the time. "The Mesopotamians" is so infectiously joyful!

also i really liked John Henry years and years ago, i mentally group it with the classic period

They do seem to have this neat improvisational/quick songwriting thing that's never really manifested itself on the albums but showed up in like the Venue Songs set (where they wrote a new song every show), the podcasts, the McSweeney's thing, TMBG Unlimited. In the past I suppose it would have been the Dial-A-Song stuff. Would love to see some kind of comprehensive set of this kind of stuff since a lot of it really is pretty good and in some cases eclipses what actually made the albums.

yeah, also the 'planet of the apes' songs on Severe Tire Damage...i get the feeling Flansburgh powers a lot of the more improv/conceptual stuff (although Linnell also had that State Songs solo album so obviously he also likes having those kinds of thematic things to write around).

Wow, I totally missed the McSweeney's thing too - and I tend to be a TMBG completist (if that's possible, and it bloody well is NOT!). Downloading it now.

Meanwhile, I recently found some "Power Of Dial-A-Song" compilations which, as you might expect, sound like crap as they're recorded OFF THE PHONE! I concur, the lads need to put together a disc or three of the best of all this stray material.

I dunno, just one big 2 GB file of everything they've ever made that didn't make it on the album that they could sell for $30-$40 or whatever would be amazing. If you look at the TMBW "all songs" page, there are so many that I've never even heard of, and I'm a completist as well

Also, I think John Henry is really under-rated, but I do think I prefer Factory Showroom.

The Spine was awful. It was so bad I never listened to any of their later material, but now people say the last two are pretty good? What a world.

Well, Join Us is pretty much nothing like The Spine, so you should at least check that one out.

Totally don't get any of the love for "Factory Showroom." So much dross.

"John Henry's" got some bare patches but it gets my vote.

Never understood The Spine hate, especially when Mink Car was much worse.

The second half of The Spine is decent, I just don't like how every song sounds like every other song during the first half. It's got some good stuff - I really liked "Broke in Two", I just don't think it's a good album. Mink Car has a lot more stuff I actually like on it, even if it tries too hard to be Flood 2 and falls way short.

I never liked "Long Tall Weekend", just felt like the second tier material it was. All the kids albums are good, with "No" and "Science" being the strongest. But I've still gotta rep for "Mink Car" - maybe because I'm the guy who likes when bands try to do something different and fail. It's the one I keep going back to from the past 15 years. "Fang", "Man It's So Loud In Here", the Doughty tune, "Cyclops Rock" - these make me happy.

I really loved the original "Cyclops Rock"

Never worried that much about Long Tall Weekend being second-tier material as I don't think it was ever intended to be a serious effort and was most likely for fans only. If they put something like 'Rat Patrol' on a conventional album it would be worrisome, but in it's this context it's a bit of a scream.

And yep, they went and ruined Cyclops Rock on Mink Car.

Hey, "Rat Patrol" is one of my favorite songs from that thing and it's better than most of what made Mink Car ("Lullaby to Nightmares" too)

I've never heard the original Cyclops Rock! I enjoyed the version on Mink Car plenty -- what was it like initially?

the first verse is really upbeat (almost like ska), and it doesn't have that terrible vocal interlude, it's not so self-consciously "heavy"

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

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