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

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