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

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).

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.