They Might Be Giants

For a good while, They Might Be Giants were one of the hottest bands on the then-budding alt-rock scene, and for good reason – they were unique, loads of fun, and wrote ridiculously good albums in spite of the fact that they were not really a band for nearly a decade. John Flansburgh played guitar, and John Linnell played accordion, but the rest of the band was filled out by various machines, which led to the band using a tape player as their backing band. This, combined with the constant genre-hopping on their albums made them somewhat like Ween, but without the scatology, and their songwriting talents didn’t take several years to develop – right away, it was evident that these guys had a serious talent (in songwriting, of course – instrumentally, these guys are nothing special). If they had one trademark in the early days, it was their willingness to cram their albums full of songs, which their first five studio albums all having around 20 tracks apiece, while still being able to fit on two sides of vinyl (okay, maybe three for John Henry). This meant that even if you didn’t like a particular song, the next one was right around the corner. But despite the playful melodies and short song lengths, there was always more to their compositions than what met the eye, be it wordplay, mysterious samples, or musical references, and their tendency to keep it short weeded out a lot of the “dead space” their albums could have had.

It’s also worth mentioning the lyrics, which has always been one of the group’s biggest draws. They’re often dismissed as too goofy or trivial, which no doubt is the result of “Particle Man” becoming one of their most famous tunes, but they were often fairly complex and surprisingly deep – one of their favorite tricks was to sing depressing and hopeless lyrics in an upbeat fashion, not to be gimmicky, but rather to project a tone of acceptance – love can ruin your life, there’s always someone better than you, relationships eventually turn into prisons, and everyone dies frustrated and sad. Then again, a lot of it was just whimsy and often surreal, which makes the curveballs that much more affecting (“Let’s toast the sad cold fact/Our love’s never coming back/And we’ll race to the bottom of a glass”). I don’t think these guys ever succumbed to depression – they always knew to have fun, but it’s clear there was some amount of it in their lives, and it’s easy to imagine how many of their songs were built from real life experiences – getting in debt, having your heart broken, being blamed for things out of your control, feeling robbed by the music industry, having the sudden realization that we’re not much different than the animals, etc.

Later period TMBG isn’t quite that exciting – they hired on a full-time band and started writing actual rock songs. It was a bold move that alienated much of their fanbase, and while it did open some doors, it closed many others, as their previous lo-fi and obvious use of synthesized instruments ensured they could never just be mediocre, as they were forced to rely primarily on songwriting. Let’s just say this is a group that never really seized to put out good music, although at the turn of the millennium it was clear that they weren’t as inspired as they used to be, and despite having loads of fun along the way, they didn’t write songs as personal as before, and their sense of bizarre hooks and musical experimentation was toned down. They turned more commercial, writing theme songs for TV shows and commercials, and slowly became the cult band they were always supposed to be. Lately they’ve decided to use those talents for children’s music, where they can still be as obnoxiously catchy as before, but to a different demographic, and have lately been issuing children’s albums at a faster pace than ‘regular’ ones, which is kind of disappointing to anyone who’s been a long time fan. But they never forgot who they were – Linnell still seems like an introverted weirdo, and Flansburgh still puts on that hip and somewhat ironic sense of swagger he’s always had. Either way, they haven’t been intent on coasting, as they are constantly trying out new approaches (such as teaming up with the Dust Brothers), and you know every album’s going to have at least a few winners. So let’s get to it:

They Might Be Giants (1986) *****
One of the most important things to remember as a musician, actor, or writer is to play to your strengths, even if the results have to turn out less than conventional. Here we have two guys whose instrumental skills can be described as “competent”, with no rhythm section and what sounds like a 3-figure recording budget. The album was assembled and arranged on a Mac long before that kind of thing was common. It all screams “bad self-released cassette”, but the Giants were smart enough to turn those things into positives and get a deal on a small record label. For one, the lack of a real ‘band’ aesthetic put all the focus on the songwriting, which the Johns were ace at, and since they had to give the album a lo-fi and unprofessional sound, they were also able to load it up with lots of personality. You won’t find another album this disarmingly bizarre, relentlessly clever, and wickedly catchy no matter how hard you try. Part of its addictive nature comes in its fast pacing, which is its biggest strength – 19 songs, only one of which passes the three-minute mark, with half the remainder not even passing two. This was not a group that repeated itself – the offbeat experimentation (of which there is a lot) doesn’t get drilled into your head, meaning the half-songs like “Chess Piece Face” and “Boat of Car” never get the opportunity to get obnoxious.
As great as some of these are (I’ve always found “Rabid Child” and “Number Three” oddly amusing), the fully-fleshed out songs are the highlights – “Don’t Lets Start” spins an immediately likeable and upbeat hook with depressing yet clever lyricism (listen for the word “Don’t” spelled out in the chorus, complete with “apostrophe T”), “She’s An Angel” is a reflective and powerful tune with a chorus that’ll be stuck in your head for months (seriously), and “Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head” is fast-paced pop masterpiece. But ‘highlights’ is just the word – practically everything on here is good, and there are enough musical references (of which “I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die” is the most obvious) and subtle jokes to satisfy even the most jaded listener – the way they emulate the Cheap Trick-style arena/big hair rock style in “She Was a Hotel Detective” is priceless, particularly in how they embrace the style and purposely get it completely and totally wrong, needlessly wordy chorus and all. This group was aware of their own shortcomings – “Number Three” is about writers block, and the closing “Rhythm Section Want Ad” is not just a fantastically clever piece of fast-paced power pop (Modest Mouse fans – this is where “laugh hard, it’s a long way to the bank” originated), but also a statement on the band itself, who end the album on the line, “and here’s the reason why” – back in an era when CD players automatically replayed the disc after the last track was over. There are plenty of moments like that scattered across this album, but it’s their songwriting skills that stand out the most, giving this album tremendous replay value – if Andy Partridge was less angry and more whimsical he might have been putting out albums like this. Even the wordplay is genius – I’ve always been fond of the lyric “You’re always all overcome with dinge/Weasel overcome but not before the damage done” (pronounce always as "alweese"). In the end, the virtual rhythm section works as a positive, as no “real” band would ever write stuff like this, and the raw sound gives the album a strikingly personal feel. Perhaps not recommended as a first TMBG album – it’s very strange, goofy, and weirdly inaccessible at times, and some of the songs are too off-putting (I don’t know if anyone actually likes “The Day”, but it really does start to grow on a person), but at the same time I’ve always found this to be their most endearing and unique.

Special note:
It’s hard to explain why I prefer this album to the more popular choices, but let me just add that it has the “indie film factor” in spades. I’ll explain it this way - while there are TV shows and movies that I think are hilarious, there’s a certain draw in independent and web-only film – where it’s okay to say anything, draw humor from things only a small percentage of people would find funny, and push ideas that would never pass a focus group. A good example of this is Fatal Farm. TMBG’s debut is kind of like that – unhinged, interesting in ways that major-label albums could never be, and unwilling to make any concessions to accessibility (it’s not hard on the ears, but I’m guessing a good amount of people would be uncomfortable listening to it). The other early TMBG albums have this too, but this one has it the most, and I think that’s what really pushes it over the top for me.

Lincoln (1988) ****1/2
This may just be the quintessential TMBG album – catchy as sin, long tracklist but short running time, huge variety of musical styles, quality all over the map (but generally falling on the good side), deceivingly dark lyrics, and so on. It’s more polished than the debut; the emphasis is now more on the melody, there are some hints of production work, and the ideas are more fully formed. That’s what makes this one the real ‘classic’ – it’s as melodically strong as a number of famous great albums, but isn’t as initially off-putting and bizarre as the debut (but don’t fret – it’s still plenty weird). “Ana Ng” is the leadoff track, and from the first listen I knew it was easily one of the best songs they’ve ever done – roaring, gated guitars, poetic and memorable lyrics, and a devastating chorus (as nasal as the guys sound, they do harmonize surprisingly well). Again, the album is a contrast between the fully-fledged out tunes and the adventurous musical sketches – this time, the better songs are mostly power-pop (“Purple Toupee”, “Where Your Eyes Don’t Go”, “Snowball in Hell”), and they’re uniformly addictive. But they’re also great on the other side of the fence – they tackle jazz (“Lie Still, Little Bottle”), jangly country (“Stand On Your Own Head”), samba (“The World’s Address”), and even showtune (“Kiss Me, Son of God”) with ease, dropping a number of tracks that are simply unclassifiable (“Shoehorn With Teeth”, “Cage & Aquarium”). Like the last album, the lyrics are a huge draw, this time slightly less cryptic but startlingly depressing – “I’ve Got a Match” and “They’ll Need a Crane” are two of the most devastating breakup songs I’ve ever heard, and the overall mood is generally melancholy, reflecting on money problems (“Snowball in Hell”), blatant corporate greed (“Kiss Me, Son of God”), addiction (“Lie Still, Little Bottle”), or a diminishing sense of purpose (“Piece of Dirt”). Even when the lyrics are more abstract, they’re fascinating - “Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn’t thinking isn’t thinking of” is one of my favorite lines by the group, and the album’s full of gems like that. If there’s a weakness, it’s that there are a few low points (the irritating “Santa’s Beard”, the purposely abrasive “You’ll Miss Me”), and some of the gimmicky tunes wear thin in a way that something like, say, “32 Footsteps” never really did. But forget about that – it’s musically impressive and lyrically amazing, and like all good TMBG albums simply does not want to leave the stereo. Start here if you’re looking for a way to break in to the group.

Flood (1990) ****1/2
It’s hard to review an album like this objectively – I bought this over ten years ago, and listened to it nonstop. So much so that I ruined the CD, and I ended up buying it again about six years ago, right about when I got my driver’s license. When I got my first car it looped in the CD player for nearly an entire month – I had other CDs, but I couldn’t get these songs out of my head, and I had quite a high “musical tolerance” (even taking Fatboy Slim more seriously than the man himself probably did) that simply did not get tired of hearing the same songs over and over – I mean, the songs on this album were just so good. At the same time, my little brother (who I was taking to school each day) was positively sick of it, and the only thing keeping him from destroying the CD was that I was bigger than him. Maybe it’s the equivalent of hearing “I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad” 19 times in a row – melodically agreeable, positive and upbeat, but undeniably obnoxious. Simply put, it’s not for everyone. So here’s the scoop – it’s TMBG’s first disc after being signed to a major label, and their only platinum record, driven by three tunes that everyone knows – the accordion-led “Particle Man”, the catchy singalong cover of “Istanbul”, and the power-pop hook-fest “Birdhouse in Your Soul” which is one of their finest songs ever. Again, the music is downright addictive; somewhat hokey, sometimes incredibly bouncy (“Lucky Ball and Chain”), almost always immediately memorable, and often surprisingly brief. The lyrics are still clever, but often more playful and abstract (“Someone Keeps Moving My Chair”). In fact, “playful” is a good description of the album as a whole – besides the hymn-like “Dead” and slow, acoustic-laden “Road Movie to Berlin”, everything is upbeat – again, even when the lyrics are not (“Lucky Ball and Chain” is positively devastating if you bother to think about the lyrics). Instrumentally, it sounds positively cheap for a major label, but that’s something of a boon – the goofy sounding synths carry parts of the album (“Hearing Aid”, “Birdhouse in Your Soul”), and the songs play off the novelty value well (“We Want a Rock” would be nowhere near as great if it were guitar-based). If you’ve ever heard songs from this album performed live, you’d know just how much of its draw was based on the accordions, cheap sound effects, and synthesizers (not to say these songs don’t sound good live, but it’s their treatment here that gives this album its personality). This could be the most addicting album you ever own. Proceed with caution.

Miscellaneous T (rec. 1986-1989, rel. 1991) ***1/2
Released in the US after the success of Flood, this was a B-side/miscellany collection that chronicles the unfinished and unused tracks that didn’t make the first two albums. TMBG was creative enough that even their B-sides were very much worth hearing, and like the first two albums, there are clear highlights and a few throwaways, with a few alternate versions of album tracks (including a sparse, accordion-based “Kiss Me, Son of God”). There is some great stuff here – bouncy lead off track “Hey Mr. DJ, I Thought We Had A Deal” is single-worthy, the quirky and fast-paced “Nightgown of the Sullen Moon” holds up to the best stuff on the debut, and “We’re the Replacements” is a hilarious send up that’s just as much a parody as it is a tribute. So it pretty much has everything the first two albums did – instantly catchy melodies (“The Biggest One”, “The Famous Polka”), bizarre experimentation (“Mr. Klaw”, “Hello Radio”), and some brilliant, head-scratching lyrics (“It’s Not My Birthday”, “When it Rains it Snows”). But take out the alternate versions of the album tracks, the long “World’s Address” remix, and the phone conversation, and there’s only 23 minutes new material here, some of which is noticeably underdeveloped (“Birds Fly”, “For Science”). Still gets a good rating as it’s too fast-paced and fun to ever get boring – two thirds of the tracks don’t even pass the 2-minute mark, and the Johns could really do no wrong by this point (even “For Science” isn’t stupid enough to be trivial). And of course, “Hotel Detective”, “Don’t Let’s Start”, and “Kiss Me, Son of God” are all well-worth hearing again. Favorite lines – “A famous person wears the same size water skis as me/She’s got three cars as many years I’ve lived in this city/her hair is blonde and mine is brown; they both start with a “b”/But when the phone inside her ribcage rings, it’s not for me”.

Apollo 18 (1992) *****
Although TMBG hadn’t acquired a full band yet, you can tell that was the direction they were going, as this album has guitar all over the place and a thicker, fuller sound. At the same time, they don’t lose their sense of adventure, or their amazing songwriting ability, and churn out an album that can almost be regarded as their opus (if a band whose average song is around 2 minutes can even have an opus) – fuller arrangements, almost no toss-offs, and a consistent quality of songwriting throughout the album; everything here is good, and a most of it is great. Songs like “Dinner Bell” and “Hall of Heads” are definitely catchy, but the better songs on Apollo 18 thrive on solid pop songwriting and multi-layered hooks – almost nothing here is one-dimensional (“If I Wasn’t Shy” excepted). I know the idea of TMBG becoming a ‘normal’ band means they lose some of their off-the-cuff quirkyness and fondness for experimentation, but no song here sounds like any other song, and there’s enough genre-hopping to satisfy any Giants fan.
That especially includes the 21-part “Fingertips”, a collection of short snippets of songs that don’t exist – the album was meant to be listened to on shuffle, so the song fragments can intersect the actual songs, but it’s almost more interesting if you listen to it in order, sounding like one of those Time Life CD collection commercials as it jumps from chorus to chorus. That’s very cool, but it’s not just that which makes this the ultimate “shuffle/repeat” album – there’s enough depth to the songs to make them worth hearing over and over again, with a few ranking among their best. “The Statue Got Me High” and “I Palindrome I” are obvious examples, but there’s a few sleepers, such as the hard-hitting and psychedelic “See The Constellation” and the devastating breakup song “Narrow Your Eyes” (which features some of TMBG’s best lyrics, and that’s saying something) – I’m convinced Flansburgh has to have had a few bad relationships in his life. All this and you get “Mammal”, which remains one of the best educational songs I’ve ever heard (second only to the version of “Why Does The Sun Shine” by this same band).

Back to Skull (1994)
A fun EP used as a teaser for John Henry, including “Snail Shell” in original and Dust Brothers remix form (who they’d hook up with to produce a full album 13 years later – let’s not forget how in demand those guys where in the mid-90’s), and 3 songs that don’t appear anywhere else. Lost documents of They Might Be Giants, if you will. Only “Ondine” uses the full band though, and it’s good enough to have made the album. The other two are done in their old style, and they’re both pretty fun – “She Was a Hotel Detective” is actually a new song, this time a parody of disco, again using a falsetto. “Mrs. Train” is a clever accordion-led tune that speeds up as it chugs along. Pretty good for a 15-minute side release.

John Henry (1994) ****
The rhythm section want ad finally goes answered, as they pick up a full backing guitar/bass/drum combo, with a horn section to boot. With professional guitar playing and a real drummer, the Giants started to take on more of a typical alt-rock stance, though the twisted lyrics and genre-hopping experimentation continues. By the third track, “Sleeping in the Flowers”, you start to see just how much they’ve changed their approach – there’s heavy and distorted guitars in the verses, a punchy horn section during the chorus, and even a guitar solo (played by Robert Quine, of all people!) All this expands the running time to about four and a half minutes, which is twice as long as your average TMBG song up to this point. The good news is that their songwriting chops haven’t deteriorated – even when they’re writing rock songs, they’re often great and well-formed (“AKA Driver”, “Why Must I Be Sad?”, “Thermostat”, “Destination Moon”). The better songs here never would have worked under the old arrangement (“Subliminal”, “Snail Shell”), and it’s nice to see the Johns having fun with their new freedoms (“Spy”). Plus, the idea of becoming frontmen seems to have inspired them to open up their vocal ranges, and they sound better than they ever have.
The “maturation” of the Giants does take away some of their edge and uniqueness – they’re capable of writing another “Birdhouse”, but they wouldn’t be able to make it as infectious and bouncy, and they’d probably over clutter the thing by plastering horns all over the place. It does lead to some really great tunes – the three best songs here are multilayered musically and lyrically: the addictive, salsa-based “No One Knows My Plan” is about escaping from jail after a murder, the stunning “I Should Be Allowed to Think” is a lament against a futuristic oppressive society, and “The End of the Tour” is a somewhat vague but absolutely devastating description of a deadly car crash from the point of view of the vehicle (“Never depart since the day we met out on Interstate 91/I was bent metal, you were a flaming wreck/when we kissed at the overpass”). There’s plenty of minor gems here, particularly the art-history lesson “Meet James Ensor” that shows the Johns are still capable of writing the interesting and effortlessly catchy songs of their past. But there’s also some filler – maybe indiscernible as short pieces on a 40-minute album, but on this 20-track, near-hour long effort, they become tedious. It’s easy to pick a few songs that were bad ideas (“Unrelated Thing”, “Extra Savoir-Faire”, “Dirt Bike”) or just shouldn’t have been on the album (“Out of Jail” would have been a neat pop tune for Apollo 18, but there’s so many similar-sounding tracks here that it passes without making an impression). As a result I have to give John Henry the title of “great but flawed”.

Live!! New York City (1994) ***
No longer commercially available, this plays out more like some radio broadcast transferred to CD (complete with an MC and corporate sponsor). Surprisingly diverse selection of tracks here – about four selections from each of their albums, including rather obscure picks like “Turn Around” and “Chess Piece Face”. This is really nothing special – the band hasn’t been around too long at this point, the show isn’t incredibly well-rehearsed, and the horn section is overused to the point where it replaces almost all the synths on the studio albums. It’s not a big deal until the incredibly off-key intro to “The Statue Got Me High”. There is some pretty good stuff here – “Don’t Let’s Start” becomes a fully realized power-pop gem, and the warp-speed “Dig My Grave” rocks harder than anything else they’ve done to this point. But the main attraction is hearing the old drum machine-era tracks done with a full band; even if the results are mixed (“Ana Ng” just simply does not sound good live). Although it’s easy to complain about the band being a little sloppy, they’re definitely professionals; from here on out the Giants would be constantly honing their live act. Decent release, but probably not worth getting if you already own Severe Tire Damage.

Factory Showroom (1996) ***1/2
I can imagine many TMBG fans rushing out to buy this album on its release date, taking one listen and declaring, “well, that’s the end of They Might Be Giants”. That’s not really true – they would produce a lot of quality work from here on out, and they never lost their taste for genre-hopping or nods to their past experimentation, but it was clear that the days of Lincoln were in the past. What we have here is a 13-song, 40-minute album from a band that was famous for banging out nearly 20 in that amount of time. A band that reveled in its uniqueness was now churning out songs that could have been written by anyone (“Pet Name”). The group has now turned to a sort of alt-rock power pop sound, and the results are mostly pretty good – they haven’t exactly forgotten how to write songs, and the excel even when writing more in conventional genres – everyone seems to forget that the Giants could easily be an above-average pure pop band (“How Can I Sing Like A Girl?”, “New York City”), and they can write a great rock song when they need to (“Till My Head Falls Off”). Plus, they haven’t dropped the experimentation yet – “Your Own Worst Enemy” sounds like it could have landed on the debut, and the quirky “Exquisite Dead Guy” and “Metal Detector” show they haven’t lost their ability to write an effortlessly catchy and off-kilter tune. Perhaps the most shocking track is the opening “S-E-X-X-Y”, which is start-and-stop disco, complete with sharp violin backing. If that wasn’t jarring enough, the lyrics might be about an androgynous woman (which would have an XXY chromosome). Most bizarre is a song recorded on a wax cylinder at the Edison Museum (“I Can Hear You”) – it’s about as lo-fi as you can get, but strangely charming. The high point is “Spiraling Shape”, with a brilliant rotating keyboard riff and a great power pop chorus, and a few neat touches like vibraphones and harmonization that recalls “Ana Ng”. Altogether I’d say this is a good if somewhat unremarkable album – varied enough to be easily listened to all the way through, with enough memorable tracks to make it worth spinning multiple times, but there just aren’t as many great moments as there are on the albums prior to this.
Looking back, the disappointment should have been expected – every band that strings together a number of great-to-amazing releases then puts out something that’s merely good is subject to a ton of unfair criticism (see Mouse, Modest). Giants fans shouldn’t skip this one.

Side Note: If you rewind the disc past the beginning of the first track, you get to hear an extra track, the short “Token Back to Brooklyn”. I owned this disc for 5 years before I accidently discovered that – needless to say I tried the same on the rest of my TMBG discs but got no such luck. In a time where “hidden track” simply means “unlisted track tacked on to the end” it’s neat to see one that’s actually well hidden.

S-E-X-X-Y EP (1996)
There is one really essential track on this EP, and that’s “Sensurround” – a fast-paced slice of power-pop with a fantastic chorus that remains one of their best rock songs. Flansburgh claimed it didn’t make the album because it was too similar to “Spiraling Shape” – a legitimate concern, but when you have songs that great, who’s going to complain? I’m all for diversity in albums, but when you’re cutting your best songs then you have a problem. Haven’t they ever heard of Kimono My House? Other tracks include a gentle cover of “We’ve Got a World That Swings”, the forgettable “Unforgettable”, and an obnoxious remix of the title track – the song’s only half-serious in the first place, and the Mortal Kombat-inspired remix sounds hopelessly mired in the 90’s.

Severe Tire Damage (1998) ***
TMBG’s first (and so far only) live album, and it’s a mess. The good: there’s a fantastic new single that is easily one of their best with the full band (“Dr. Worm”), and a few non-album tracks that are much more spruced up and energetic than their studio counterparts (“First Kiss”, “They Got Lost”, and “Why Does the Sun Shine?”, a second major highlight), plus you get to hear alternate versions of their older songs using the full band. The bad: they don’t perform the pre-band tracks very well, the group sounds out of tune in places (“Ana Ng”), and there’s surprisingly little of the crowd interaction that the group is known for, which is probably due to the fact that half these tracks were recorded “live-in-the-studio” instead of actually being live. The songs are good enough that it’s far from disaster, but I can’t imagine any TMBG fan being satisfied with this after being promised a ‘live album’. The Johns have always recruited upper-tier musicians for their band, but for some reason they don’t seem to gel all the time, and they have problems translating the older material to a live setting. For the record, I saw the band live in 2005 and again in 2007 and they seemed to have worked everything out, sounding great no matter which era of the group they were drawing from (although I don’t know if they had kept any of the band members from the 90’s group). So it’s kind of hit-and-miss, and the group seems a little preoccupied with providing alternate versions of their tunes, even if they aren’t well-thought out (however, the near-acapella version of “Meet James Ensor” is a treat), and the set is too short for a group with over 100 songs – instead we get some half-written studio tracks and a set of badly recorded bonus tracks based on “Planet of the Apes”. So why does it still get a decent grade? It turns out that barring sound quality issues, live albums from good bands are pretty hard to screw up, especially when the songs themselves range from good to excellent. Live NYC gives a better “live experience”, but I wouldn’t want to be without “Dr. Worm”, plus this is at least in print. Or better yet, pick up one of their download-only sets on their website, which not only gives you a better deal ($10 for a 2+ hour live show), but is more than likely to include “Dr. Worm” anyway. Just sayin’.

Long Tall Weekend (1999) **1/2
They Might Be Giants made history with this one – it was “the first album by a major artist to be released exclusively over the internet”. In this case, it was released through eMusic (which is still one of the best music download sites out there, although I’m not keen on the idea that an album’s worth hinges on how many tracks it has). I’m not sure what the term “major artist” means, but no one seems to dispute this fact, so I’ll give them credit - Long Tall Weekend made TMBG the most-downloaded artist through 2000, and the album remained the top-selling MP3-only album for a while. That would be a pretty significant achievement, but it’s really only half an album – this is more of a collection of toss-offs and whatever the band had sitting around in the vaults anyway, so it might as well be called Factory Showroom: The B-sides (which it most likely was, anyway).
As a result, the songs are mostly thin and underwritten, without any of the dynamic production on the last few albums, as most of the songs sound like demos. There’s a pretty wide selection of genres here – bluegrass (“Counterfeit Faker”), showtune (“Reprehensible”), and falsetto-laden hard rock (“Rat Patrol”) all sound good here, but for each truly worthwhile tune like those, there’s some kind of toss-off (the worst of which, “On Earth My Nina”, is simply an a capella rendering of what Linnell heard when he played one of the group’s songs backwards). Perhaps the best one is a Latin-flavored horn-led tune that was probably bumped from John Henry in place of “No One Knows My Plan”, that’s punchy and worth putting on repeat (“Lullaby to Nightmares”). But besides that and “Rat Patrol”, there aren’t any real knockout tracks here, and it barely feels like an actual album – it’s too short and doesn’t really flow well, three of these songs would appear on later albums that were released on CD, and one was the hidden track from Factory Showroom. It seems as though the band released this as a way to test the MP3 format without having to dedicate any of their future “A-material” or even really writing new songs (most of these had been performed live on the Factory Showroom tour). I don’t blame them - keep in mind that this is still 1999, and most people didn’t even know what an MP3 was, not to mention that CD burners cost somewhere around 400 bucks. This of course got a lot of the fans worked up (especially the ones without internet access), but kudos to TMBG anyway for being the first to try it out.

Working Undercover For The Man EP (2000)
Another eMusic exclusive. Not a bad release, with a few decent rock songs (“On the Drag”, “Rest Awhile”), and a catchy Tijuana-flavored instrumental (“Empty Bottle Blues”). I don’t really have much to say about the title track – it’s fairly catchy, but doesn’t have a real chorus, and like much of the Long Tall Weekend material, it’s underwritten (this one would appear on Mink Car in an identical version, however). Otherwise there’s a purposely irritating alternate version of “Robot Parade” (which would appear on No!) that’s fairly amusing, and the short jingles the band did for “Radio They Might Be Giants” that are rather unnecessarily tacked on (especially since you pay by the track on eMusic). I guess if you liked Long Tall Weekend, this is about the same quality. Regardless, this caused quite a bit of backlash as it only seemed to highlight the fact that it had been 4 years since Factory Showroom was released, and still no talks of an actual new album amidst all the side projects, solo work, MP3-only albums, discs for literary journals, TV themes and movie soundtrack work, none of which was as good as TMBG’s other material.

Note: I was only able to find a 128 kbps version on eMusic, and I don’t recommend getting anything in that format, as music compressed that much simply isn’t going to sound good no matter what – what a difference an extra 64 kbps can make.

They Might Be Giants Vs. McSweeney’s (2001) ***
This is something of a holy grail for TMBG collectors, as it was given away with an issue of a literary journal and never printed again, with many of the songs not appearing anywhere else. Amazon currently has it at $125. Luckily there was a copy floating around on the web so guys like me could hear it. Basically, it sounds like the band was commissioned to write a soundtrack to a journal, with (I assume) music to accompany each of the pieces that it contained. It’s over an hour long and features 43 tracks, 35 of which are credited to the Giants. Churning out so many tracks in what I assume to be a short period of time did revert the group to their older, more experimental ways, but it didn’t leave much time for songwriting, so there’s a lot of noise experiments and half-finished tunes that make the songs on Long Tall Weekend sound like symphonies. So here’s the notable stuff – there’s a few songs that would show up on Mink Car (“Bangs”, “Edith Head”), a John Linnell solo track (“West Virginia”), a badly produced but nevertheless completed song that deserved to make the album (“I Am 40”), a whimsical and entertaining toss-off from Mike Doughty (“Frog and Banjo”), a serene piano piece from Philip Glass (“Modern Love Waltz”), and a 9-minute story reading that’s oddly creepy (“Rosalyn’s Dog”). The rest is mostly sub-1 minute tracks showing the group having fun and experimenting with their equipment. I expected this to be fairly tedious but it was surprisingly enjoyable – there’s enough good tracks spread out (my favorite is a banjo-and-wordless-vocal tune called “Swimming Hole”, but I have no clue who did it), and it’s always worthwhile to hear the Johns loosen their ties and goof around a little, even if it results in an album that’s 80% toss-offs. Unless you’re a TMBG-fanatic I wouldn’t pick this up, but I am and I’m glad I did.

TMBG Unlimited (2001)
Another promotion through eMusic – the idea was to give out a batch of MP3s each month, showing off the group’s more whimsical side alongside demos of songs both new and old and live cuts throughout the groups’ history. This was quite a novel idea, giving the hardcore fans more access while allowing the group to show off silly ideas such as a fake Battle-of-the-Bands contest (similar to what the Turtles did) and live recordings called “Spin the Dial” where the band improvises to the tune of whatever’s playing on the local radio stations. Throughout the 14 releases you got to hear most all of upcoming releases Mink Car and No!, albeit in 128 kbps format. Also included a couple of live shows, one of which shows them playing the entire Flood album front-to-back (although they realize halfway in they screwed up the track order – but hey, the album was over a decade old).

Mink Car (2001) ***
Finally, the wait for a real TMBG album was over, and it’s more of a grab bag than anything they’ve released to this point. Hardcore Giants fans have heard almost all these songs before, especially the ones who subscribed to TMBG Unlimited, while the more casual fans were probably just happy to see the group finally putting out a studio album after a five-year layoff. I suspect the casual fans liked this one more - the group had already released some fifty-odd tracks through various channels and as such the devoted probably already assembled their dream version of the album. This is not exactly the best 17 tracks they’ve written since Factory Showroom (“I am 40”, “Your Mom’s Alright”, “Lullaby to Nightmares” and “Rat Patrol” all deserved inclusion here), and even though they’ve all been re-recorded (under the supervision of multiple producers, further adding to the album’s disjointed feel), in many cases they’ve made the song worse – “She Thinks She’s Edith Head” loses almost all of its energy, turning it into a bland and listless tune with mumbled vocals, “Cyclops Rock” loses the ska section and adds in a terribly abrasive guest vocal spot that nearly ruins the track and “Older” replaces the guitar with an obnoxious buzzing horn noise. The only real re-working that sounds fine is “Another First Kiss”, which works fairly well as a soft-rock ballad. There are a few bursts of energy (“I’ve Got a Fang”, “Mr. Xcitement”, which features Soul Coughing’s Mike Doughty), but on the whole it could have used a lot more – while the melancholy feel works with the hookier tunes such as “Drink!”, it turns “Hopeless Bleak Despair” and “Hovering Sombrero” into near-nothingness.
So it’s kind of uneven, but overall it’s a fine listen – “Bangs” benefits from a fuller arrangement, turning into the power-pop gem it was intended to be, and “My Man” is a thoughtful and catchy tune that resembles the better parts of Lincoln. The real winner here is “Man, It’s So Loud In Here”, an electro-disco song complaining about how everything is turning into electro-disco. It’s a satire both musically and lyrically, tackling the issue of aging rockers that attempt to rejuvenate their careers through electronic music (such as Cher’s “Believe”, from which this track gets its vocal effects, or Madonna hooking up with William Orbit). The fact that the Johns were middle-aged themselves when they recorded this makes it all the more brilliant. It’s worth it for that track alone, and on the whole this is a fine if not entirely ideal collection of the work they’ve done since Factory Showroom.

No! (2002) ***
The first of a series of kids’ albums. The idea of They Might Be Giants doing an album specifically for the kids was a little perplexing (since their music was already kid-friendly) and a little aggravating (since their last studio album already took 5 years to come out), but it turned out to be a somewhat successful venture – if nothing else, it helped them find a new audience as well as get back to their more minimal roots where a catchy hook was all that mattered. This album was actually in the works for a while (it was supposed to come out alongside Mink Car, but it took nearly a year to find a willing label), and those who followed the eMusic releases will probably recognize some of these songs. Unlike their subsequent kids’ releases, most of these tracks seem to be ‘converted’ from unfinished TMBG songs, and several of the better tracks would have done well on Mink Car - “Four of Two” is another lyrical puzzle from Linnell, and both “Sleepwalkers” and “Lazyhead and Sleepybones” are gorgeous tunes that the fans who understandably passed up this album ought to check out. Yes, there is a good amount of child-like goofiness here (“I Am Not Your Broom”, “Violin”), and while this can make it a tough listen for those of us born in the 21st century, it does allow the group to step away from the alt-rock scene and focus on the simple and quirky ideas that made them popular in the first place. For example, “Robot Parade” features a jarring processed vocal from Flans, but the backing is a soothing electric piano line that could stand by itself. There’s a few neat ideas here – a cover of an old Public Service Announcement (“In the Middle, In the Middle, In the Middle”, sung by Flansburgh’s wife), a simple and agreeable pop tune that’s as weightless as the title suggests (“Where Do They Make Balloons”, sung by bassist Danny Weinkauf), a bizarre instrumental that uses the same vocal manipulation tricks that the group used nearly 15 years past (“Wake Up Call”), and of course, the obligatory “listener participation” track that all kids’ albums have (“Clap Your Hands”, now a live staple). Best of all, most of the tracks don’t cross the 2-minute line, so if you don’t like something, there’s not long to wait. The only real problem with the album is that little of it is really well-written enough to warrant listening outside of the album – “Sleepwalkers” aside. But it is surprisingly fun, and TMBG is really one of the few groups that could put out an album like this that’s enjoyable for kids as well as adults – most of the group’s fans should be accustomed to this kind of stuff already, so it’s basically just a regular TMBG album with the goofiness quotient turned way up.

They Got Lost (2002)
It’s a compilation, but since I have it I figured I’d include it here. Essentially, this is a collection of tracks from Long Tall Weekend, the Working Undercover For The Man EP, the McSweeney’s collection, and a few of the tracks from the Unlimited collection. Since you already know what to expect I figured I’d just say a few words about the group’s 1997-2002 period. You could really divide the group into pre-band and post-band phases, but up until that period, nearly everything they wrote was pretty good. The pre-band group wrote songs that were whimsical, concise, and surprisingly infectious, while the post-band group got by through solid fundamentals and a welcome appreciation of power-pop. However, after Factory Showroom, it’s pretty unclear where the group’s direction laid. The Johns went in multiple directions at once – they wanted to embrace the Internet and try MP3-exclusives, they were being approached by Hollywood guys to write music for film and TV, McSweeney’s wanted them to write a bunch of tunes for their journal, Linnell did a solo album, Flansburgh formed Mono Puff, they decided to put out a live album, and they knew somewhere in there they wanted to try a kid’s album.
This eventually culminated in Mink Car and No!, two albums that definitely had moments and were good listens, but were nowhere near as stunning as Lincoln or John Henry. I’m guessing this can be attributed to a change in work ethic – if you count side projects and solo albums, they wrote about 6-7 albums worth of material in those 5 years, as opposed to the album-every-two-years approach they used for a decade. I had always wondered why I liked the early albums much more than the Long Tall Weekend stuff – they were both made up of shorter songs with varying genres, but looking back at songs like “Everything Right is Wrong Again” or “Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head” (just to name the first two off their debut), you can see that their early stuff really did have fairly complex hooks and arrangements in addition to their punchy and concise nature. Compare this to their recent (circa 2002) material – nice hooks, some replay value, lots of variety, but ultimately nothing groundbreaking or mindblowing, and many of the songs seem unfinished. Listening to this album – basically a ‘best of’ among the material that didn’t make Mink Car or No! (although it doesn’t contain “I Am 40” or “Lullaby to Nightmares”, two of my favorites from this period), it’s clear that they really could have notched another two great albums if they had just decided to flesh out the better material and focus on making a great album as opposed to just a diverse one. Some of these songs have good ideas, but aren’t quite there yet (“Words Are Like”, “Reprehensible”), and they do pretty well for a band that working at this pace. As for They Got Lost - it’s a good collection for the dedicated TMBG fan who’s not hardcore enough to seek out the eMusic or McSweeney’s stuff, but in the end, you have to wonder how good a lot of this could have sounded at the hands of an actual producer – they’ve already proved that the title track can becoming a rousing rock song as opposed to the boring dirge it is here, so it only follows to wonder what else they could have done.

Bed, Bed, Bed (2003)
A 4-song EP that’s a companion piece to No! and its accompanying book. What can I say – I’m enough of a fanatic to spend a good while searching out the MP3s. Anyways, three of these songs are new (the fourth is a kid singing the title track), and they’re slightly less kid-oriented than the material that made the album. “Happy Doesn’t Have To Have an Ending” is a neat funk number with enough distinct sections to make it seem longer than just 2:30, and “Idlewild” is a trippy lullaby that displays a great sense of harmony from Flans.

Indestructible Object (2004)
5-song teaser EP for The Spine. Opener “Am I Awake?” was the theme to a TV-documentary series, and it’s fairly unique in the TMBG songbook – the electronic noises and skittering beats suggest an outside producer (similar to “Man, It’s So Loud In Here”), and for now the technique works. Other tracks include a full-band remake of the early B-side “Ant” and a surprisingly well-sung cover of the Beach Boys “Caroline, No”, as well as two songs from the upcoming LP – sadly, they’re the worst ones on here.

The Spine (2004) **1/2
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, the problem with this statement is that it’s not even really true – 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 most 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. Maybe the Johns had it right on “Stalk of Wheat” when they declared they were “out of ideas”.

The Spine Surfs Alone (2004)
A 7-track EP sold online alongside The Spine on They Might Be Giants' official website. I guess it consists of the songs that didn't make the album, weren't fully developed enough to be considered, or fell too-much into the genre of self-parody ("Now is Strange", a "Rat Patrol" knockoff). It's barely 10 minutes long, but it's not a bad listen, showing off a sense of adventure that the LP lacked. The highlight is "Fun Assassin", which is my favorite track off either release - it's sinister yet calm, and Robin Goldwasser's backing vocals harmonize extremely well (the lead was taken by the drummer from Space Hogg, but it sounds enough like Flansy to not stand out - like, it's almost uncanny). Her vocals alone make the track worth it, but it's still a fantastically catchy tune besides. The rest of the EP is mostly forgettable, but as a companion piece it's worth a few spins.

Almanac (2004) ***
From 2004 until the present day, They Might Be Giants decided to take a soundboard recording of every show they did and sell them online for $10. I really like this idea - it fits the band well, as they have 300-some songs and the setlist changes daily. It benefits the fans - who wouldn't like to have a soundboard recording of a show they went to of one of their favorite bands? Or at least have the opportunity to skim a year's worth of setlists and pick the live recordings they want to hear? And the band themselves gets to take all the profits? Sounds like a win/win to me - especially as the shows themselves are nearly 2 hours long, $10 is really not a bad price. As for this release - it's essentially a 'best of' of these 2004 shows, but I'm not entirely sure what criteria they used to determine what was the 'best', and you're better off just browsing through the available shows and finding the setlist that you like the best - not only do you get a complete show, but you get more than what exists here. I've heard a number of them and the quality is pretty consistent - you got Flansburgh doing his faux-rock star shtick, lots of funny stage banter, some nice reworkings of a few tunes (the stuff from No! sounds surprisingly good here), and a band that's generally fairly tight. There are lots of tunes from The Spine, but they sound better mixed in with the other stuff, and they generally seem to pull the better tracks, which is a big plus ("Damn Good Times" is a showstopper, as it was probably intended to be). I have to give credit to Flansburgh, who really does seem like a naturally witty guy and really knows how to liven up the shows. Overall probably should rate higher, but I just don't find anything special about this selection of tracks - in fact, listening to the other live sets I have from this era, they didn't even seem to be trying too hard to find the 'best' stuff. Not a bad collection in its own right, but the actual full shows are just all around a better choice.

Venue Songs (2004) ***
One of the cool quirks about the 2004 tour is that the group would write songs on the road specific to each venue, insert them into the set, and never play them again (at least, in the vast majority of cases). It plays a little like Linnell's State Songs project - each of the songs are named after the city and are loosely related to the venue, but they generally go off on unrelated tangents. This disc (which originally came with a DVD) showcases 31 new TMBG songs, some live and some during soundcheck, in less than 50 minutes. Now it’s one thing to be at a show where the band plays a special song they wrote just for that gig, but can you listen to fifty minutes worth of them? As it turns out, it’s not just listenable but a lot of fun too. I'd almost forgotten how good the Johns are at this sort of thing - Venue Songs is, of course, too hastily written to really be a great album in its own right, but it is a lot of fun. The songs are catchy and concise without any of the overthinking that marred The Spine, and there's enough genre-hopping to recall the early days. Probably the best thing about it is that it allows the Giants to do things that they'd never attempt on an actual album - use vulgarities, try speed punk, put on bad accents, and even do a parody of Yes - the lyrics of "Dallas" (which resembles "We Have Heaven") include "Tell the moon you've seen the serpent/Found the sword/And walked upon the trees" - Jon Anderson would be proud. Likewise, there’s a great tribute to The Who – “Leeds”, which is of course the venue where their famous live album was recorded. A number of these songs would probably work fine on an actual album if they were fleshed out a bit - they're weightless enough that they go over well live, and catchy enough to stick in your head for a while. The “Richards on Richards” song (Vancover) is a prime example, but there are many others – “Asbury Park” and “London” display the same effortlessly whimsical and catchy style of songwriting that was a major boon to their first two albums, and like on their good albums, the songs are never long enough to be irritating. The reason why it doesn't score higher is the lack of any real first-rate material - a lot of these songs are downright forgettable, and only a few of the tracks give off the vibe of being truly finished. Either way I take it as a good sign for the Giants.

Here Come the ABCs! (2005) ***1/2
A second album for kids, the one sort of kickstarted a second career for the Giants. A concept album about the alphabet isn't exactly going to make Ray Davies jealous, and as a CD it's a little confusing; it's usually packaged with a DVD, and some of the songs don't really make sense without them. Of course I'm not in the target market, but I do appreciate kids music - when it's effortlessly catchy, and goofy yet still clever, it's actually pretty fun. Seeing as that describes most of They Might Be Giants discography, it's no surprise that they have a winner here. Here the Johns take the Schoolhouse Rock approach; write solid tunes with catchy hooks that'll hopefully play in the kid's mind over and over until they realize that they're actually learning something. Add in an occasional wink and nod to the adults who will inevitably be forced to listen to this album and you've got a pretty decent effort. The leadoff is "Alphabet of Nations", which they played live both times I saw them; it's not much more than a cute tune in which the Johns trade off naming countries down the alphabet (although I think they made up the "X" one), but I do smile every time I hear it. Most of the songs on here are short, simple and somewhat nonsensical, but still plenty of fun - "I C U" is an exercise in forming sentences out of letters that sound like words, and there's a lot of opportunities for the Johns to do funny voices ("D & W"). There are enough highlights to keep my attention throughout - "Can You Find It?" is classic Linnell that's as brilliant as some of his Lincoln-era tunes, "C is for Conifers" is a surprisingly sincere song about trees ("most with cones for seeds/most with needles for leaves/C is for Conifers/my kind of trees" is a line that's looped through my head for weeks on end), "D Is For Drums" is funky, hilarious, and seemingly improvised (Flansburgh puts on his live persona here), and Marty Beller's "Alphabet Lost and Found" is a well-written pop tune with more than a few word riddles. Flansburgh's "Pictures of Pandas Painting" is a song about alliteration, done in full psychadelic mode, with an acidic guitar solo, phase effects, and multi-tracked harmonies - and I do find the fact that they did it in that style because "psychedelic" starts with a "p" immensely clever, especially since no kid would ever pick up on that. I still wouldn't recommend this to anyone who couldn't appreciate kids' music - yeah, the lyrics are silly and shallow, but there's something disarmingly clever about that. Either way it allows the Giants to step away from their rock personas and do what they do best, and the result is some of their best work in a good while - making kids albums in addition to their regular music career left the Johns revitilized instead of strained, and the results of that certainly show here.

Podcast Highlights (2006)
Released after a year of podcastin', this was a promotional non-commercial release, which of course meant it hit the BitTorrent trackers a few minutes after it was released. This 14-track compilation is basically a grab bag of the different tracks featured on the podcast - one live track ("Damn Good Times", same recording as the one from Almanac), one live-in-the-studio ("Metal Detector"), one live-on-wax-cylinder ("The Edison Museum"), a remix by the Elegant Too ("E Eats Everything", which turns into a club-bound track with the letter "E" repeated over and over, if you don't see the irony), some spoken word pieces and a few new tracks ranging from weird to really bizarre. There's not much overlap with the Cast Your Pod To The Wind disc that came with The Else, so if you liked that disc try to track down a copy of this. "I Enjoy Being a Boy", "Yeah, the Deranged Millionaire", and "Miniature Sidewalk Whirlwind" are all album-quality, but probably a little too weird and unlike TMBG to have made one. I'm glad they get the airing they do here because they don't deserve to be relegated to a podcast. And then there's some really weird stuff like "P.S.O.K." which samples a bunch of ridiculous Paul Stanley stage banter. Linnell gets in a couple of spoken-word pieces - he does a parody on DVD commentary tracks by doing a commentary of one of their own songs, complete with some really terrible celebrity impressions, and the bizarre "Turtle Songs of North America" is hilarious. It's all tossed off and of varying quality, but in the end I'm glad this exists.

The Else (2007) ***1/2
One of the consequences of making separate albums for kids and adults is that it pretty much guarantees that most of the goofy and unique ideas will ultimately end up on the kids' albums. What would have happened to "Cowtown" or "Particle Man" if they had started making them 20 years ago? The Spine did show some hope in showcasing TMBG as a bona fide rock band, but it seemed to suffer from a lack of inspiration, and lacked the whimsy and adventurous spirit that made the band great in their early years. Three years later, it seems like they figured it out - The Else doesn't experiment much, but the songs are good enough to show why these guys made it in the first place. Getting the Dust Brothers to produce half the tracks was an inspired stroke, and you can hear all sorts of interesting drum loops and electronic noise throughout the album (some of which is kind of unwelcome, but overall I'd say they did more good than bad). Plus, you can tell that they really did want to make an album that changes it up - it's well paced, the songs don't blend together, and there's a good mix of styles. Even when they're doing rock songs that are more or less standard, they're written and produced well enough to bounce around in your head for a while ("Take Out the Trash", "Feign Amnesia"), and there's a number of nice surprises - the funky "Withered Hope" continues the TMBG tradition of building a great tune around a strong horn part, and "With the Dark" takes the song fragment idea of "Fingertips" and makes a three minute "Supper's Ready"-type epic out of it. Probably the best thing about this album is it shows that the Johns' gift for clever songwriting and creative hooks never really left them - "Careful What You Pack" is a dreamy and apprehensive pop song that could easily have landed on Lincoln 20 years back, and the disc includes a theme song to a fictional band that could be their catchiest song in a decade ("The Mesopotamians"). Not all the tunes are winners - "Contrecoup" seems unfinished, and "Bird of the Bee of the Moth" sounds like an outtake from one of their kids' albums. But there are a few constants - the production is great, leaving lots of nice touches in the mix to go and rediscover, and the lyrics are plenty quotable again - there are plenty of clever lines ("if the bass doesn't get you, the treble will get you" is a favorite of mine, and the lyrics to "The Mesopotamians" are twisted and hilarious in a way that only Linnell could pull off). In the end, I do wish there were a few more great songs on here - it doesn't measure up to their early masterpieces, but I do feel comfortable in saying that this is their best full-length effort in over a decade.

Cast Your Pod to the Wind (2007)
They Might Be Giants may just be the band best-suited to the podcast format – they’re big proponents of new distribution methods, they have a huge cult following, they’ve been around 25 years to this point and have a vault full of odd unreleased tracks and live shows, they’re prolific and write plenty of toss-offs, and they love putting on personas. This is a bonus disc released with the first printing of The Else that collects a bunch of these podcast-exclusive tracks and puts them onto one collection, mostly re-recorded and presented in CD quality (there exists another CD compilation, Podcast Highlights, that is similar to this one). It’s a bit light on musical substance, as many of the songs are only two- or three-chorders, and many of the 23 tracks are forgettable, but I’m glad this disc exists – like Venue Songs, it shows that TMBG can be fairly clever and adventurous even when they’re doing toss-offs, and the album as a whole barely lasts 40 minutes anyway. Highlights include the infectious “Brain Problem Situation”, the old-style R&B “Yeah, the Deranged Millionaire”, and the hilarious “We Live in a Dump”, which features Beach Boys-esque harmonies in what could be TMBG’s most pop-oriented song in nearly a decade. Other tracks include a station ID, a live performance of “Metal Detector”, and a song called “She Was a Hotel Detective in the Future”. It’s certainly worthwhile as a bonus disc, and on top of that provides a good argument for TMBG to go back to their more experimental and whimsical approach, as a few of these tracks could have easily made it on their early albums.

Here Come the 123s (2008) ***1/2
Another kids album, and like the last one it’s full of tunes that are short, playful, and educational. The aim here was to make songs that are simple and catchy enough to make them stick in the minds of kids as young as 3, but sophisticated and musically competent enough to appeal to the adults who will be forced to listen to them on a daily basis. It apparently worked too, as the album ended up winning a Grammy. It’s structured a lot like the ABC’s album – most of the songs focus on a single number, and there’s even another tune about drums (“Heart of the Band”). These songs are just as catchy as the ones I still remember from my childhood (“Seven Days of the Week (I Never Go to Work)”, “The Secret Life of Six”), and the whole thing is a batch of goofy, unpretentious fun. Even I can get a kick out of lyrics like “I used to be bummed that I am not number one/until I found out that I am twice as fun”. And some of these rank among TMBG’s finest – “Triops Has Three Eyes” is a jangly, well-written pop tune that deserves repeat listens; “Figure Eight” is an addictive piece of surf-rock, and “813 Mile Car Trip” is a speedy and all-too-brief slice of power pop. It may be kids music, but it’s really well-made kids music – “I Can Add” has a great sense of harmony, full instrumentation, and lots of subtle touches, and even the short tunes like “Nonagon” contain enough ideas to require a few repeat listenings, which is probably what this was set up for. All things considered, it’s still a kids album, and those of us who have passed elementary school might not appreciate the goofy lyrics and kid vocal spots, but it’s apparent that it’s not a cash-in – like Schoolhouse Rock and most of the songs on the Muppets’ album, there’s some real depth to the material.

Here Comes Science (2009) ***
A fourth kids album, this one aimed at a slightly older crowd (like 3rd-5th grade), covering biology, chemistry, the scientific method, and the universe (it is just me, or are They Might Be Giants attempting to pander specifically to kids born in the year 2000? First they come out with goofy, nursery-rhyme like songs, then teach the kids about the alphabet, then numbers and math, and now more complex topics like science. Is the teen angst album coming out next?) This is really the album you’d think TMBG was made for – even before they ever did kids albums, they had a few educational songs such as “Mammal” and “Why Does the Sun Shine?” (which appears here), and an obvious affinity for dorky lyrics. It’s good, but not as good as you’d expect. It’s not disarmingly cute the way the last two kids albums were, and besides maybe “Electric Car” (sung by Goldwasser) there aren’t many standouts. The idea of science-based topics seems to constrict the group a bit as it makes their songs excessively wordy and less clever – they even felt obligated to make an addendum to “Why Does the Sun Shine?” because all the information wasn’t right (“Why Does the Sun Really Shine?”) Basically, it’s taken away the Giants’ ability to use the abstract, which is kinda like asking them to entertain you with one arm tied behind their back. I mean, this band made a name for themselves by being abstract. It would be like asking the developers of the next Mario game to adhere to the laws of physics. I’ll give them credit for coming out with a some good vocal hooks despite that – “Cells” is a Beach Boys-inspired tune that basically combines “We Live in a Dump” with “Finished With Lies” (although that itself is basically a rip of “Getting Better”), and Marty Beller’s “Speed and Velocity” is a good example of this sort of thing done right. Like most TMBG albums, its rapid-fire nature helps an awful lot, and it’s hard to deny their talent for this sort of thing – the hooks are just catchy and plentiful enough to make you want to listen again, even if the concept isn’t so amusing (“Solid, Liquid, Gas”, “How Many Planets?”), and again I’m left with the impression that it would be an effective educational tool. Hell, even I learned a few things. Musically, it’s fine, using the same grab bag of styles and solid songwriting that got them to this point, although I can’t help notice they cannibalize themselves a bit – isn’t “I’m a Paleontologist” just “The Shadow Government” with different lyrics?

On a side note, am I the only one who finds the album to be a bit more anti-religion than it should be? The first song mentions that the Big Bang and evolution are real and that angels are only stories, in a way that seems too specific to not be pointed. Plus, there is a song called “My Brother, the Ape”. It’s not that I mind that, or that I think TMBG is really trying to actively push something, but it's surprising that Disney didn't step in and make them change some of the lyrics. You'd think they'd shy away from the word "evolution", especially when they're marketing to parents of very impressionable children. Like, they're the company I would most expect to do something like that. Even Flansburgh was surprised they didn't. Perhaps they're more liberal than we thought?