The Spine
I wrote this in November 2004:
The Spine was a little slick, and also contained a disappointing lack of the WTF Factor. Any TMBG album that I eventually love starts out with me being puzzled and surprised - if it's all laid out neatly, according to a larger, easily- penetrated, grand schema, the album will get boring fast. Mostly, The Spine was too thin in the two axes on which I want TMBG albums to swing.
Axis 1: Flansburgh necks-ercise. There were too few of those tracks by Mr. Flansburgh that usually make me sit up and bob my head around in a pathetic white girl way. Flansburgh is a big juicy hamburger - thick, dense, redolent of tasty reliable middleness, middle culture, middle America, a center of things. Buddha belly music.
When he is doing his Flanburgherest, you get stuff like "Prevenge." I am listening to it right now, and my head is doing the involuntary bobbing thing. With TMBG, usually you know what you ordered, what that hamburger (Flans-burgher with cheese, please) is gonna do on your plate, on your palate, and when you have finished, you're satisfied. I'm still hungry after I listen to The Spine. My neck hasn't gotten a complete work out, either.
Axis 2: Not enough WTF. To get this flavor, one should order his Flansburgher with a side of Linnell. I do, anyway. The Linnell platter is chef's choice, and you might get a Pierian pimento sandwich on white with broken shards of 100 watt lightbulb artfully embedded in it. Or you might get fried chicken heads on an eyeball polenta, with a ladle or two of sinfully creamy baritone, or maybe with some whiskey n smoke flavored black cherry reduction. The whole cherries blink back at you from the plate. Yikes. WTF, I mean, WTF.
It is the integral to the TMBG experience, that you get a little creeped out in places. The Linnell side order, like your 'burgher, is finger food, but it's food you fear, eat anyway and then gingerly lick your fingers. Sometimes the food licks your fingers for you, which makes you squirm. Not enough of this creepiness on The Spine. Museum of Idiots does it: listening to it, all the hair on my upper torso stands straight up. But very little of that piloerection occurs on other Spine tracks.
If you talk to me later, I may have listened to The Spine more, and may have decided it is a meal, but I still am thinking "snack."
Now, about 5 years later, I really like The Spine, and don't feel it's light-weight at all. It just amused me that my initial reaction was less than enthusiastic. I'd forgotten.
The Spine was a little slick, and also contained a disappointing lack of the WTF Factor. Any TMBG album that I eventually love starts out with me being puzzled and surprised - if it's all laid out neatly, according to a larger, easily- penetrated, grand schema, the album will get boring fast. Mostly, The Spine was too thin in the two axes on which I want TMBG albums to swing.
Axis 1: Flansburgh necks-ercise. There were too few of those tracks by Mr. Flansburgh that usually make me sit up and bob my head around in a pathetic white girl way. Flansburgh is a big juicy hamburger - thick, dense, redolent of tasty reliable middleness, middle culture, middle America, a center of things. Buddha belly music.
When he is doing his Flanburgherest, you get stuff like "Prevenge." I am listening to it right now, and my head is doing the involuntary bobbing thing. With TMBG, usually you know what you ordered, what that hamburger (Flans-burgher with cheese, please) is gonna do on your plate, on your palate, and when you have finished, you're satisfied. I'm still hungry after I listen to The Spine. My neck hasn't gotten a complete work out, either.
Axis 2: Not enough WTF. To get this flavor, one should order his Flansburgher with a side of Linnell. I do, anyway. The Linnell platter is chef's choice, and you might get a Pierian pimento sandwich on white with broken shards of 100 watt lightbulb artfully embedded in it. Or you might get fried chicken heads on an eyeball polenta, with a ladle or two of sinfully creamy baritone, or maybe with some whiskey n smoke flavored black cherry reduction. The whole cherries blink back at you from the plate. Yikes. WTF, I mean, WTF.
It is the integral to the TMBG experience, that you get a little creeped out in places. The Linnell side order, like your 'burgher, is finger food, but it's food you fear, eat anyway and then gingerly lick your fingers. Sometimes the food licks your fingers for you, which makes you squirm. Not enough of this creepiness on The Spine. Museum of Idiots does it: listening to it, all the hair on my upper torso stands straight up. But very little of that piloerection occurs on other Spine tracks.
If you talk to me later, I may have listened to The Spine more, and may have decided it is a meal, but I still am thinking "snack."
Now, about 5 years later, I really like The Spine, and don't feel it's light-weight at all. It just amused me that my initial reaction was less than enthusiastic. I'd forgotten.