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

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