Which reminded me how we wound up where we are now
I don't usually dedicate an entire post to a single album, because I don't often have that much to say about an album, but They Might Be Giants are sort of a special case in that I will just naturally know an album of theirs forwards and backwards within a week, at which point the breakdown of my critical thinking faculties begin, as I become ever more familiar with the songs and integrate them into the TMBG mainframe that takes up a small but formidable portion of my brain. Even at its full powers, I'm even really sure how to apply critical thinking to a new They Might Be Giants album, because it would have to be pretty damn bad -- maybe an album alternating Linnell doing "Wearing a Raincoat" riffs alternating with Flansburgh experimenting in "You'll Miss Me" territory -- to keep me from listening to it on repeat and declaring it at least very good.
At best, I can try to figure out where their newest album fits into my hierarchy of their albums, ranked on an exacting scale from good to great (note: I don't really count the children's albums in said totally lenient hierarchy, though I know some hardcore fans love No! as much as anything they've done. I do like some of the children's songs quite a lot, especially on No!, but to me they feel more like side projects akin to their Venue Songs album, or when they do a CD to accompany an issue of McSweeney's. It's fine, sometimes great, but it's not really the same thing). Even then, I have trouble. I've been listening to Join Us a lot, and part of me thinks it's better than their last album, The Else: longer, weirder, more eclectic.
But then I listened to The Else again, and I really like most of these songs; there are a few middling ones and a lack of straight-up instant classics, but as someone who likes the rock-band version of TMBG just as much as the duo version, it's nice to hear what Flansburgh and Linnell have since referred to as a more "aggressive" and/or "least cuddly" record. The Else isn't anywhere near my favorite TMBG album but I have probably listened to it, conservatively, fifty or sixty times. Eventually I just sort of absorb it all.
Still, what stands out about Join Us is it's closer in spirit to their first two records, the Pink Album and Lincoln, than much of what they've done since. They adopted a full-band lineup in 1994, and offhand I'd say this is the least full-band-sounding album they've made since then. As a creative decision, it results in something that is pretty neat to listen to. In practice, it means that Join Us will never be one of my very favorites, even though it's quite good. In the aforementioned ludicrously softhearted fanboy hierarchy, I rank the first two records lower than some people probably do. My favorite TMBG is nineties TMBG, when they were moving away from the two-guys-and-a-drum-machine arrangements and into full-band territory.
The format of Pink and Lincoln is pretty similar: four or five flat-out fantastic amazing indie-pop songs supported by a dozen-plus weirder ones. Of course, some of those weirder ones are pretty great on their own, with catchy melodies and/or smart lyrics, but that's basically how those albums work; in the three-record progression from the first album to Flood, the experiments get stronger while the best songs get better and better.
Join Us feels more careful and crafted in its weirdness than those earlier albums; it would almost have to, after nearly thirty years of practice writing and recording songs. Even the weirdest and most off-putting songs (I'll submit "Dog Walker," with its altered, helium-y vocals and willfully bizarre lyrics about a dog walker who wants to be a dog) sound more fully formed than the minute-long digressions on the earliest records.
This general polish came through in The Else, which probably has the fewest great songs of any TMBG album, but also probably the fewest clunkers, too; I don't often skip any of the songs on that one. Like The Else, this new album is, for this band, pretty evenhanded; it doesn't have a "She's an Angel" or "They'll Need a Crane" to flabbergast you with their perfection. Unlike The Else, though, there are some songs that nonetheless stand out as able to stand with the best of TMBG almost immediately: Linnell's "Canajoharie" hit me right away, and Flansburgh's "Old Pine Box," which precedes it, is also pretty crazy catchy. "Can't Keep Johnny Down," the lead single and first track, has Linnell doing what, to me, sounds a bit like a Smiths-gone-new-wave riff (maybe I'm just projecting, and/or remembering Linnell's clear Brit/Smiths homage "Save Your Life" from years ago).
The weirder songs ones are mostly good, too. "Cloisonne" is one of Flansburgh's strangest-sounding songs in years, and one of my favorites here. "Judy Is Your Viet Nam" goes more in the direction I associate with Flansburgh lately, the surprisingly muscular straight-ahead rocker. But in addition to Linnell and Flansburgh offering typically strong songs, there are several tracks that feel more collaborative, where it sounds like they mixed and matched each other's lyrics and melodies -- most directly on "Spoiler Alert," where they sing different sets of lyrics simultaneously. A few of the experiments, like the sung stage directions of "Protagonist" or the half-spoken "The Lady and the Tiger," aren't as interesting in practice as they are in theory.
Also, and this was true of bits of The Else as well, they sometimes lean on their horn section a little too much, at the expense of their other, more permanent band members. Occasionally, they'll do a song like "When Will You Die" which is definitely enjoyable and catchy, but feels like a throwaway designed to give their sometime horn section something fun to do. I actually love horns on their songs -- they're a major component of John Henry, perhaps my favorite album ever -- but other parts of the arrangements often sound spare on Join Us, which sometimes feels like a wasted opportunity when you have a talented backing band and a strong horn section.
But that may just be my preference for a fuller sound. Based on various interviews and such, it sounds like the experience of playing Apollo 18 songs with a full band made them wish parts of that record had been recorded that way, which caused them to do a proper full-band album with John Henry, and then, be it due to fan reaction (I hope not) or personal whim, they've basically tried various mixes and fusions of the old approach and the new approach since then. I understand that they don't want to repeat themselves and make another big-sounding John Henry record but I do tend to prefer a few bigger numbers than Join Us has to offer.
In terms of album mechanics, I also question their sequencing of late, or maybe I just questioned those types of things less often when I was seventeen. What Join Us lacks is the unification of a truly great record. John Henry and Apollo 18 aren't concept albums, but they feel of a piece (and related to each other in many of their topics and thematic concerns). In the five years between Factory Showroom and Mink Car, TMBG was super-busy, with a bunch of tours, an early-years retrospective, a live album, an mp3 album, several EPs, and soundtrack projects. This is just speculation, but I feel like all of the attention to various methods and shapes of releasing new songs in those years left their traditional album-assembling skills a little rusty. My only real problem with Mink Car is that it feels much more like an anthology of songs, several previously released in some form, than a cohesive album, as if they were suddenly unsure how to tell the difference between what should make the album and what should be a B-side or a bonus track or whatever (it's also entirely possible that they simply disagree with me on these matters).
The following record, The Spine, has a few lyrical echoes here and there, but moreover feels like it sustains a mood of mildly psychedelic uncertainty throughout; it's probably their best post-nineties record in terms of fitting together as an album. Even that one, though, has a strange album-closer: "I Can't Hide from My Mind," which sounds to me more like a second-to-last track. One area where their nineties albums really stand out is endings: "Road Movie to Berlin," "Fingertips" and "Space Suit," "The End of the Tour," and "The Bells Are Ringing" are far better endings than "Working Undercover for the Man," "I Can't Hide from My Mind," "The Mesopotamians," and now "You Don't Like Me" (again: it feels like a second-to-last, like Join Us should finish up with one more, slightly less resigned-sounding song). To indulge further fan speculation, Marisa has theorized that Linnell, who once mentioned feeling like maybe people overlooked "The End of the Tour" because it appeared at the end of a twenty-song album, is reluctant to place a really strong song at the end of the record. It's a nitpick, but it's one that will come up when I'm comparing ten albums that I like a lot.
So for me, Join Us feels like a cross between the freewheeling, frequently catchy grab bag of Mink Car and the more spontaneous experimentation of the early albums (which of course were not exactly late-period Beatles in terms of careful sequencing). It makes sense, then, that it probably won't be able to crack the all-nineties top four. But it doesn't really matter: every time TMBG puts out a new record, there's a point where I realize that this is going to be an album I listen to ridiculously often, which is a comforting feeling, especially when I've been able to renew it consistently for fifteen years. Plus, on Join Us, the band sounds energized by their own sound, and getting back to "adult" (or at least all-ages) rock and roll. I won't go as far as saying they're psyched to make this album "for the fans" or whatever, but they seem excited to share their weirdness, and confident about it, which is probably what keeps them interesting to me even as everyone goes and gets older.
At best, I can try to figure out where their newest album fits into my hierarchy of their albums, ranked on an exacting scale from good to great (note: I don't really count the children's albums in said totally lenient hierarchy, though I know some hardcore fans love No! as much as anything they've done. I do like some of the children's songs quite a lot, especially on No!, but to me they feel more like side projects akin to their Venue Songs album, or when they do a CD to accompany an issue of McSweeney's. It's fine, sometimes great, but it's not really the same thing). Even then, I have trouble. I've been listening to Join Us a lot, and part of me thinks it's better than their last album, The Else: longer, weirder, more eclectic.
But then I listened to The Else again, and I really like most of these songs; there are a few middling ones and a lack of straight-up instant classics, but as someone who likes the rock-band version of TMBG just as much as the duo version, it's nice to hear what Flansburgh and Linnell have since referred to as a more "aggressive" and/or "least cuddly" record. The Else isn't anywhere near my favorite TMBG album but I have probably listened to it, conservatively, fifty or sixty times. Eventually I just sort of absorb it all.
Still, what stands out about Join Us is it's closer in spirit to their first two records, the Pink Album and Lincoln, than much of what they've done since. They adopted a full-band lineup in 1994, and offhand I'd say this is the least full-band-sounding album they've made since then. As a creative decision, it results in something that is pretty neat to listen to. In practice, it means that Join Us will never be one of my very favorites, even though it's quite good. In the aforementioned ludicrously softhearted fanboy hierarchy, I rank the first two records lower than some people probably do. My favorite TMBG is nineties TMBG, when they were moving away from the two-guys-and-a-drum-machine arrangements and into full-band territory.
The format of Pink and Lincoln is pretty similar: four or five flat-out fantastic amazing indie-pop songs supported by a dozen-plus weirder ones. Of course, some of those weirder ones are pretty great on their own, with catchy melodies and/or smart lyrics, but that's basically how those albums work; in the three-record progression from the first album to Flood, the experiments get stronger while the best songs get better and better.
Join Us feels more careful and crafted in its weirdness than those earlier albums; it would almost have to, after nearly thirty years of practice writing and recording songs. Even the weirdest and most off-putting songs (I'll submit "Dog Walker," with its altered, helium-y vocals and willfully bizarre lyrics about a dog walker who wants to be a dog) sound more fully formed than the minute-long digressions on the earliest records.
This general polish came through in The Else, which probably has the fewest great songs of any TMBG album, but also probably the fewest clunkers, too; I don't often skip any of the songs on that one. Like The Else, this new album is, for this band, pretty evenhanded; it doesn't have a "She's an Angel" or "They'll Need a Crane" to flabbergast you with their perfection. Unlike The Else, though, there are some songs that nonetheless stand out as able to stand with the best of TMBG almost immediately: Linnell's "Canajoharie" hit me right away, and Flansburgh's "Old Pine Box," which precedes it, is also pretty crazy catchy. "Can't Keep Johnny Down," the lead single and first track, has Linnell doing what, to me, sounds a bit like a Smiths-gone-new-wave riff (maybe I'm just projecting, and/or remembering Linnell's clear Brit/Smiths homage "Save Your Life" from years ago).
The weirder songs ones are mostly good, too. "Cloisonne" is one of Flansburgh's strangest-sounding songs in years, and one of my favorites here. "Judy Is Your Viet Nam" goes more in the direction I associate with Flansburgh lately, the surprisingly muscular straight-ahead rocker. But in addition to Linnell and Flansburgh offering typically strong songs, there are several tracks that feel more collaborative, where it sounds like they mixed and matched each other's lyrics and melodies -- most directly on "Spoiler Alert," where they sing different sets of lyrics simultaneously. A few of the experiments, like the sung stage directions of "Protagonist" or the half-spoken "The Lady and the Tiger," aren't as interesting in practice as they are in theory.
Also, and this was true of bits of The Else as well, they sometimes lean on their horn section a little too much, at the expense of their other, more permanent band members. Occasionally, they'll do a song like "When Will You Die" which is definitely enjoyable and catchy, but feels like a throwaway designed to give their sometime horn section something fun to do. I actually love horns on their songs -- they're a major component of John Henry, perhaps my favorite album ever -- but other parts of the arrangements often sound spare on Join Us, which sometimes feels like a wasted opportunity when you have a talented backing band and a strong horn section.
But that may just be my preference for a fuller sound. Based on various interviews and such, it sounds like the experience of playing Apollo 18 songs with a full band made them wish parts of that record had been recorded that way, which caused them to do a proper full-band album with John Henry, and then, be it due to fan reaction (I hope not) or personal whim, they've basically tried various mixes and fusions of the old approach and the new approach since then. I understand that they don't want to repeat themselves and make another big-sounding John Henry record but I do tend to prefer a few bigger numbers than Join Us has to offer.
In terms of album mechanics, I also question their sequencing of late, or maybe I just questioned those types of things less often when I was seventeen. What Join Us lacks is the unification of a truly great record. John Henry and Apollo 18 aren't concept albums, but they feel of a piece (and related to each other in many of their topics and thematic concerns). In the five years between Factory Showroom and Mink Car, TMBG was super-busy, with a bunch of tours, an early-years retrospective, a live album, an mp3 album, several EPs, and soundtrack projects. This is just speculation, but I feel like all of the attention to various methods and shapes of releasing new songs in those years left their traditional album-assembling skills a little rusty. My only real problem with Mink Car is that it feels much more like an anthology of songs, several previously released in some form, than a cohesive album, as if they were suddenly unsure how to tell the difference between what should make the album and what should be a B-side or a bonus track or whatever (it's also entirely possible that they simply disagree with me on these matters).
The following record, The Spine, has a few lyrical echoes here and there, but moreover feels like it sustains a mood of mildly psychedelic uncertainty throughout; it's probably their best post-nineties record in terms of fitting together as an album. Even that one, though, has a strange album-closer: "I Can't Hide from My Mind," which sounds to me more like a second-to-last track. One area where their nineties albums really stand out is endings: "Road Movie to Berlin," "Fingertips" and "Space Suit," "The End of the Tour," and "The Bells Are Ringing" are far better endings than "Working Undercover for the Man," "I Can't Hide from My Mind," "The Mesopotamians," and now "You Don't Like Me" (again: it feels like a second-to-last, like Join Us should finish up with one more, slightly less resigned-sounding song). To indulge further fan speculation, Marisa has theorized that Linnell, who once mentioned feeling like maybe people overlooked "The End of the Tour" because it appeared at the end of a twenty-song album, is reluctant to place a really strong song at the end of the record. It's a nitpick, but it's one that will come up when I'm comparing ten albums that I like a lot.
So for me, Join Us feels like a cross between the freewheeling, frequently catchy grab bag of Mink Car and the more spontaneous experimentation of the early albums (which of course were not exactly late-period Beatles in terms of careful sequencing). It makes sense, then, that it probably won't be able to crack the all-nineties top four. But it doesn't really matter: every time TMBG puts out a new record, there's a point where I realize that this is going to be an album I listen to ridiculously often, which is a comforting feeling, especially when I've been able to renew it consistently for fifteen years. Plus, on Join Us, the band sounds energized by their own sound, and getting back to "adult" (or at least all-ages) rock and roll. I won't go as far as saying they're psyched to make this album "for the fans" or whatever, but they seem excited to share their weirdness, and confident about it, which is probably what keeps them interesting to me even as everyone goes and gets older.