They Might Be Giants 12: No!

So many of the songs in their catalog had the singsong potential to be playground favorites, so They Might Be Giants should be commended for pointedly recording a kids’ album. While they made sure to swap songs about “death and depression” for ones related to things like bedtime, it’s still a straightforward TMBG album, with wacky sounds and clever wordplay. Their genius, however, is giving their first effort in the genre the absolutely perfect title of No!

Beginning with the charming “Fibber Island”, the guys go through mostly original songs that Gen X parents would certainly prefer to Raffi and the Teletubbies. With its accordion and lyrics about waiting for a girl to show up for a date, “Four Of Two” could be from one of their first albums. “Robot Parade” had already appeared in a more rockin’ “adult” version on Japanese pressings of Mink Car, and this one is vast improvement. The title track is probably not something those parents would want stuck in their kids’ heads, but to us it recalls Apollo 18. “Where Do They Make Balloons?” comes from the voice and pen of the bass player, who isn’t even named John, while “In The Middle, In The Middle, In The Middle” is sung by one John’s wife and is a mid-‘60s PSA written by the same guy who composed the Addams Family theme. “Violin” celebrates that instrument as well as hippos, mops, dust, and quarters for some reason. “John Lee Supertaster” is apparently derived from fact, but mostly gives Flansburgh a reason to wail on the guitar.

“The Edison Museum” is revived from Long Tall Weekend for some reason, but why they’d want to scare kids is beyond us. “The House At The Top Of The Tree” is an intriguing extension of the “Farmer In The Dell” trope, just as “Clap Your Hands” is self-explanatory. “I Am Not Your Broom” is a cute dialogue between John Linell and the object (spoiler alert: it acquiesces), “Wake Up Call” isn’t much more than nonsense syllables over a melody, and “I Am A Grocery Bag” is a nice little list. “Lazyhead And Sleepybones” will resonate with tired parents of multiple children, though they might not appreciate the cacophony of animal noises and other sound effects that pervade “Bed Bed Bed”—hardly the stuff of lullabyes. A little more serene is “Sleepwalkers”, though the band kicks in to close it out.

While the songs may be too wordy for kids to sing, we’d bet their parents have reached for No! on many a car ride. It’s a perfectly charming album, and a nice little side hustle for the boys. (Always hoping to embrace technology, the original CD was enhanced with interactive animated videos for most of the songs. As most operating systems have surpassed those system requirements, they can now be enjoyed on a dedicated website. Meanwhile, a tenth anniversary digital expansion added live versions of four songs from the album and two others, plus an extended version of a song from a different children’s album.)

They Might Be Giants No! (2002)—3

They Might Be Giants 11: Mink Car

They had several albums and oddities under their collective belts, and now They Might Be Giants had the cachet of having an original composition as the theme song for a major network television sitcom. However, Americans hoping to find “Boss Of Me” (as heard every week on Malcolm In The Middle) on Mink Car would have been disappointed, as the song was only available on versions overseas.

Instead, listeners got another unpredictable sequence of wildly different songs in almost as many styles, including odes to girls’ hairstyles (“Bangs”), a song about a pop-up disco that uses the music to illustrate its shortcomings (“Man, It’s So Loud In Here”), a Bacharach homage (the title track), a rewrite of a song already heard on a live album (“Another First Kiss”), a remake of a soul tune originally done by Mongo Santamaria and Georgie Fame (“Yeh Yeh”), remakes of songs from the album before (“Older” and “Edith Head”), a decent could-be hit (“Hopeless Deep Despair”), a pile of other songs we don’t have the patience to describe, and one terrific nod to their youth in the Boston suburbs (“Wicked Little Critta”).

Several producers are credited throughout Mink Car, suggesting that it was merely compiled from various sources until they had enough for two sides. While we do like the nutty side of the band, a little focus would’ve helped.

They Might Be Giants Mink Car (2001)—2½

They Might Be Giants 10: Long Tall Weekend

All the spoiled rotten kids today who grew up in a world driven by immediate gratification will have no appreciation of what their parents went through when downloading music—legally or illegally—first became possible. None of this click-and-drop stuff for us; we had to listen to the static of a 56k modem for any number of minutes, and eventually what we were looking for might end up on our hard drives, assuming there was room.

They Might Be Giants was the first major band to release an album through the new eMusic platform. Since they weren’t signed to an actual label at the time, that was one less hurdle. Long Tall Weekend doesn’t fill a CD, which is probably good considering how long it took to download, but the 15 tracks are unique and mostly get to the point.

“Drinkin’” is a snappy little instrumental that barely threatens to get wacky before it ends, then “(She Thinks She’s) Edith Head” seems to have been written to justify the song’s title, and features a seemingly spontaneous fake ending. “Maybe I Know” is a gender-adjusted cover of a Lesley Gore song the boys used to play in the early days, while “Rat Patrol” is loaded with heavy guitar riffing. Keen-eared listeners would recognize the truly silly “Token Back To Brooklyn” as a hidden track on Factory Showroom, and we have a soft spot for “Older”, a sober treatise on mortality, since one of our correspondents sends it to us on every birthday. “Operators Are Standing By” is another accurate portrait of the workplace, and while “Dark And Metric” is catchy, it’s impenetrable.

“Reprehensible” is a wonderful soliloquy set to a big-band backing, whereas “Certain People I Could Name” is taken from another perspective, and not just via the piano. We’re surprised “Counterfeit Faker” hasn’t already been a TMBG title, but good luck navigating the amateur banjo and fiddle backing. “They Got Lost” already appeared on Severe Tire Damage in a superior version; this one is just too slow. It’s been a while since we’ve had a mambo, and “Lullabye To Nightmares” delivers. We must thank the indispensable This Might Be A Wiki site for clarifying the a capella lyrics of “On Earth My Nina”; they’re supposed to sound backwards. Finally, “The Edison Museum” is a hilarious portrait of that New Jersey landmark, sung by the same guy who intoned “I Hear The Wind Blow” on Apollo 18.

Much of Long Tall Weekend had been around for a while, and some would appear again. It’s readily available, and faster, via streaming these days. We’ll take it.

They Might Be Giants Long Tall Weekend (1999)—3

They Might Be Giants 9: Severe Tire Damage

For years, They Might Be Giants worked just as hard at presenting a unique live show as they did crafting their songs in the first place. Now between labels, they took the opportunity to compile their first full-length album from various concerts and field recordings of a sort.

On Severe Tire Damage, familiar songs are largely revamped with the horn and rhythm sections they incorporated throughout the ‘90s. The most radical change is with their punk re-arrangement of “Why Does The Sun Shine?”, but “Meet James Ensor” is delivered by just voices and accordion. “They Got Lost” and “First Kiss” are early versions of songs to be rerecorded, and three new studio tracks bookend the main program—the horn-driven “Doctor Worm”, the even goofier “Severe Tire Damage Theme”, and the shockingly brief “About Me”. Being the wacky guys they were, the program ends with a series of hidden tracks, all supposedly improvised with nonsensical lyrics spoofing the various titles in the Planet Of The Apes film franchise.

There’s always something of an inside-joke cachet to TMBG, and perhaps Severe Tire Damage is a case of “you had to be there.” But it’s still fun, and that’s where the boys excel.

They Might Be Giants Severe Tire Damage (1998)—3

They Might Be Giants 8: Factory Showroom

While they still had a rhythm section and horns at their disposal, on Factory Showroom They Might Be Giants managed to infuse some of their lo-fi whimsy into the more advanced proceedings. Economy extended to the program, which reduced the number of songs to give each more room to shine.

Kitsch is still king, from the Philly strings on “S-E-X-X-Y” to the mildly Memphis groove of “Pet Name”. “Till My Head Falls Off” is a wonderful punky celebration of stubbornness, but “How Can I Sing Like A Girl?” tries a little too hard to be cute. In contrast, “Exquisite Dead Guy” is built on very close wordless harmonies, while “Metal Detector” is the closest we get to geeky science this time out. A cover of a song by an obscure “cuddlecore” band, “New York City” is a love song, to a person as well as the metropolis itself.

The goofiness picks up on “Your Own Worst Enemy”, which illustrates a kind of madness with a reference to “Precious And Few”. “XTC vs. Adam Ant” imagines a heavyweight competition for the rock title between those two ‘80s icons, and while the music only occasionally hearkens to XTC, there’s a sly reference to the lead singer of Bow Wow Wow (a band made up of former Ants). The ultra-catchy “Spiraling Shape” is another hit single that never was. Some recycling occurs in “James K. Polk”, a remake of a Flood-era B-side that provides a fairly sanitized biography of the president. As long as they’re steeped in history, “I Can Hear You” provides some hilarious buzzwords and catchphrases related to modern technology, but was recorded solely on acoustic instruments using no electricity whatsoever to a vintage Edison cylinder. And just as “New York City” seems to evoke the holidays, “Bells Are Ringing” takes a seemingly harmless melody to the point of madness.

While still not as strong as the first handful, Factory Showroom is a grower, and has emerged as one of TMBG’s sleepers. Hell, it took us a while to get it, and we’re glad we did. (It’s since been re-allocated to a rarities collection, but the original pressing of the CD included the amusing “Token Back To Brooklyn” in the form of a pre-gap bonus track, which you had to rewind to at the start of the disc to hear.)

They Might Be Giants Factory Showroom (1996)—3

They Might Be Giants 7: John Henry

Having experimented with an actual rhythm section on Flood and Apollo 18, as well as subsequent tours, John Henry found They Might Be Giants expanded to a full combo. The challenge remained: would they still sound like themselves?

The simple accordion that runs through “Subliminal” cleverly links the past to the present, and the backwards ending is a cute touch. Things immediately get loud on “Snail Shell” and “Sleeping In The Flowers”, though the latter has a catchy chorus in a different tempo. “Unrelated Thing”, a song about the breakdown of a relationship as mined on Lincoln slows the proceedings down incredibly but uses a pedal steel for variety. No lyrics are provided for “AKA Driver”, likely because of the frequent use of the brand name NyQuil. “I Should Be Allowed To Think” is the first really impressive tune, this time hilariously warping the opening couplet of Allen Ginsburg’s “Howl” to dis other bands and proclaim one’s ubiquity. “Extra Savoir-Faire” is something of a son of “If I Wasn’t Shy”, and lopes along too slowly for our tastes, while “Why Must I Be Sad?” isn’t much more than an attempt to weave as many Alice Cooper song titles into the lyrics as possible. “Spy” is a remake of the closer from the previous year’s EP, with an almost arbitrary extended ending that would change every time they’d play it onstage. “O, Do Not Forsake Me” is sung by a male a capella group, just because.

Things seem to pick up in the second half, beginning with the jaunty “No One Knows My Plan”. They get their money’s worth out of the horns for the intro to “Dirt Bike”, which seems to sing about roving gangs of pre-teens terrorizing neighborhoods, but ends up referring to a band “over their sophomore jinx”—presumably one already referred to in “I Should Be Allowed To Think”? “Destination Moon” and “Out Of Jail” both manage to sound like classic TMBG, despite the full band sound, while “A Self Called Nowhere” is almost Beatlesque in its psychedelic choruses. “Meet James Ensor” (which celebrates “Belgium’s famous painter”) and “Thermostat” (a metaphor within an owner’s manual) return to the their more geeky aspects, then “Window” sounds like a “Fingertips” segment stretched out to a full minute. The energy keeps going on “Stomp Box”, a frenetic tune akin to “Dig My Grave” from the last album, and then “The End Of The Tour” uses another travelin’ band image while describing a car crash, or something like that.

Overall, John Henry is the band’s weakest yet. For the first time it felt like they put too much on one album; perhaps some paring back might have helped, or better pacing between the slower ones and the better, faster tunes on what we used to call side two. The good moments are good, certainly, but listeners will likely prefer to go back to the earlier stuff.

They Might Be Giants John Henry (1994)—3

They Might Be Giants 6: Why Does The Sun Shine?

TMBG aren’t just geek musicians—they’re actual geeks. This would have become more apparent given the “Mammal” science lesson on their last album, and it was taken to a further extreme on an EP presenting three cover songs and one original.

While it shares the EP title Why Does The Sun Shine?, the lead track is better known by the subtitle “The Sun Is A Mass Of Incandescent Gas”. The song is instantly memorable and so quirky, it’s hard to believe it existed decades before the band did. Another trip through the past is “Jessica”, the Allman Brothers song here taken at a slightly slower speed, presumably so the guitar can best double the accordion, and kept to about a third of the original’s seven-minute length. “Whirlpool” was a recent track by the Meat Puppets, the proto-grunge band about to be championed by Kurt Cobain, delivered in a horn arrangement. Finally, “Spy” is a TMBG composition, heavy on the horns again with a full band backing.

At only ten minutes, Why Does The Sun Shine? may seem slight, but it was only ever considered a single, and should be priced accordingly. It’s still a lot of fun, and a nice bookend to the first four albums. If you’re a fan, you need it. (Though you probably already have it.)

They Might Be Giants Why Does The Sun Shine? (1993)—3½

They Might Be Giants 5: Apollo 18

The public being as fickle as they are, TMBG’s fifth album didn’t exactly burn up the charts. It could be that the band had already converted their maximum density, and would have to rely on their cult audience. But that didn’t mean they were about to coast. Apollo 18 may not have as many memorable tracks as previous albums, but they pulled one gimmick to present something that literally hadn’t been done before.

“Dig My Grave” is a nice trashy opener, and while “I Palindrome I” isn’t as direct as “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “Bob”, it still has some memorable lines (beginning with “Someday Mother will die and I’ll get the money”). “She’s Actual Size” and “My Evil Twin” would appear to be opposing Johns talking about people they know, and neither really register in the wake of “Mammal”, a straightforward science lesson. “The Statue Got Me High” was a single, and sounded like one, but “Spider” is thoroughly wacky, and therefore more satisfying. This is particularly apparent when followed by “The Guitar”, an interminable track that shares so much with “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” that they were forced to add that title to the track and apply royalties accordingly. (R.E.M. would do the same later in the year for a much better song.) Much more entertaining is “Dinner Bell”, a dizzying litany of food and competing vocals over a jaunty piano.

“Narrow Your Eyes” provides an overdue return to the lost-love-with-alcohol song, which isn’t so obvious at first. “Hall Of Heads” would appear to be instrumental until a minute in with a shift to an entirely different melody. The brief “Which Describes How You’re Feeling” sounds like their old sound, which would make sense since it was one of their earliest songs. “See The Constellation” is upbeat and stupid, and while the intro suggests otherwise, “If I Wasn’t Shy” is pretty calm. It moves seamlessly into the hilarious situational horror of “Turn Around”. “Hypnotist Of Ladies” isn’t that exciting, but it doesn’t matter compared to what comes next.

The keen-eyed would have noticed that track 17 is called “Fingertips”, followed by track 38, the instrumental “Space Suit”. As it turns out, “Fingertips” is the overall title given to a series of 21 short songs, most only consisting of a single sentence or phrase, each a different melody. In today’s iTunes environment, each has its own title, but according to the original liner notes, they were designed to show up at random whenever the CD was played in shuffle mode. Therefore, it makes one wish such tracks as “I Hear The Wind Blow”, “Come On And Wreck My Car”, “Aren’t You The Guy Who Hit Me In The Eye?”, “Please Pass The Milk”, “Leave Me Alone”, “I Don’t Understand You”, “Mysterious Whisper”, “The Day That Love Came To Play” and “I’m Having A Heart Attack” were more than a few seconds long.

Using strict mathematics, it might be assumed that Apollo 18 is less than good. But as the highlights overshadow the lowlights, and the brevity of each of the “Fingertips” is so misleading, it becomes a worthy installment in their catalog.

They Might Be Giants Apollo 18 (1992)—3½

They Might Be Giants 4: Miscellaneous T and Then

To cash in on the marginal success TMBG had with Flood, their old distributor collected a bunch of tracks from the EPs originally released to promote the singles from the debut and Lincoln. With the somewhat inspired title of Miscellaneous T, it presented in more or less a reverse chronological order to that of the original EPs.

As with most B-sides and whatnot, they’re not all zingers, else one would think they’d’ve made it to the albums proper. Highlights include “We’re The Replacements”, a silly tribute to the Minnesota band (no matter what the fatter John says), “The Famous Polka”, the original version of “Kiss Me, Son Of God”, “It’s Not My Birthday”, the scandalous commentary in “Hey Mr. DJ I Thought You Said We Had A Deal” and, possibly, the so-called “Joshua Fried Remix” of “The World’s Address”. Beyond that, well, you gotta be a fan.

Some years later, after the band had returned to obscurity, the quest to remaster and reissue things led to Then, a repackaging of the first two albums, bolstered by the various EP tracks, along with another 19 tracks heard only on Dial-A-Song or before shows. All the EP tracks had of course been reissued once on Miscellaneous T, so fans old and new could marvel at those extras. The “intros” are fairly entertaining, and earlier versions of “Don’t Let’s Start”, “Which Describes How You’re Feeling” and “Hope That I Get Old Before I Die” contrast how those songs began with how they started out. “Number Three” sung entirely in Greek will scratch a few heads, but the track titled “Schoolchildren Singing ‘Particle Man’” offers just that, and is just plain charming.

Then, therefore, is the way to go if you don’t have anything prior to Flood. But if you do, you might as well upgrade.

They Might Be Giants Miscellaneous T (1991)—2½
They Might Be Giants Then: The Earlier Years (1997)—4

They Might Be Giants 3: Flood

By the advent of the CD era, Elektra Records had developed into one of those labels that wisely kept releases to a minimum, maintaining a lean roster that kept an eye on the past while taking a few chances on what could be considered college rock (before it evolved into adult alternative). Having seen success with 10,000 Maniacs, the Cure and Tracy Chapman, they signed They Might Be Giants and gave a big push to their third album.

That big-budget backing made Flood something of a hit, a deserved result considering the quality therein. Despite some production assistance and even the use of—gasp!—a real drummer, it’s still a quirky TMBG album, slathered in accordion and wacky samples. Just the way we like it.

After the brief fanfare of an actual theme song, “Birdhouse In Your Soul” is a simple song sung by a nightlight. Some discord occurs in the bridge, but it’s redeemed by the lyrical comparison to a picture of a lighthouse (“I’d be fired if that were my job/After killing Jason off and countless screaming Argonauts”). “Lucky Ball & Chain” is related to Led Zeppelin’s “Hot Dog” both thematically and musically, another lost love song, countered by “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”, a combination cover and history lesson, here given a very appropriate Eastern accompaniment. “Dead” is another favorite, a rumination on reincarnation or the lack thereof loaded with great rhymes. “Your Racist Friend” is a fairly straight narrative, with any tension deflated by “Particle Man”, a hilarious comparison of fictional superheroes. “Twisting” takes its title from the suggestion in the Farfisa organ riff, and is probably the only end-of-romance song to reference the dBs and the Young Fresh Fellows. The title of “We Want A Rock” would appear to be a pun on a certain Twisted Sister song, but instead becomes a universal yearning for pieces of string and prosthetic foreheads.

“Someone Keeps Moving My Chair” remains an enigma, but no more so than “Hearing Aid”, the longest track at three-and-a-half minutes and a continuation of some of the more experimental moments on their first two albums. “Minimum Wage” provides an interlude and a sorbet in its silliness, and the rest of the album follows suit. “Letterbox” is sung at top speed and in close harmony. “Whistling In The Dark” has something of a martial feel with a touch of motivational speaking. “Hot Cha” goes by quickly enough to make way for the twisted sea chantey of “Women & Men”. “Sapphire Bullets Of Pure Love” turns out to share a title with a song by the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and also gets out of the way for the almost closing theme of “They Might Be Giants”. Instead, the final scene of the audio movie is “Road Movie To Berlin”, starting nice and quiet, going through a big middle section, and ending anticlimactically.

Flood has become so popular over the years that TMBG has occasionally performed it in concert in order, to the delight of fans. And even though it was “a brand new record for 1990”, it still sounds fresh and fun today. While Lincoln is still the better album, Flood deserves the rating below.

They Might Be Giants Flood (1990)—4

They Might Be Giants 2: Lincoln

TMBG’s second album continued along the same path as their debut—two guys with a drum machine too clever for most people to follow—but manages to improve on that blueprint. For one, there’s less reliance on wordplay for its own sake, making the subjects of the songs much more direct. That, plus a continued variety of song styles, makes Lincoln the superior album.

For starters, one might assume that one or both Johns had suffered a romantic breakup. “Ana Ng” displays a longing for an unattainable partner, complete with an excellent “broken record” effect built directly into the arrangement. “I’ve Got A Match” is as straight a pop song as they’ve ever written, about two people who can barely stand each other, underscored when followed by the twist of “Santa’s Beard”, wherein Mommy seems to be doing much more than kissing Santa Claus. “You’ll Miss Me” is fairly chaotic but clear once the lyrics come through, and the otherwise catchy “They’ll Need A Crane” details the end of a romance.

Lest anyone think they’re too serious, other topics are explored. “Purple Toupee” presents a wonderful distortion of ‘60s turmoil from the point of view of someone who just didn’t get it. “Shoehorn With Teeth”, with an instrumental backing consisting solely of saxophones, accordion and three glockenspiel notes, always seems to be “about” something but probably isn’t. “Snowball In Hell”, however, stands a bunch of clichés on their heads to bemoan the horror of menial labor. “Kiss Me, Son Of God” is a hilarious portrait of a egotist responsible for much pain and suffering (“I built a little empire out of some crazy garbage called the blood of the exploited working class… I destroyed a bond of friendship and respect between the only people left who’d even look me in the eye”) to the snappy accompaniment of violins.

Not everything has to have deep meaning, of course. “Cowtown” is best remembered for the wonderful scream sample on each break, while “Cage & Aquarium” seems to be an excuse to make fun of a certain song from Hair. “Where Your Eyes Don’t Go” sports a dizzying spiral format, a pointedly anti-melodic chorus (“You’re free to come and go, or talk like Kurtis Blow”) and a terrific guitar solo repeated over the fade. “Pencil Rain” also has a big guitar solo, and marches along in a suggestion of reaching something more than it does. “Mr. Me” is just plain fun, a first in string of unique cartoon characters in TMBG tunes.

With only 18 songs under 40 minutes this time, and the high potential to fall victim to a limited scope, Lincoln still manages to cover a wide range of territory. The album would become a beloved classic among the Comic-Con crowd, and set the dynamic duo up for that coveted major-label cash.

They Might Be Giants Lincoln (1988)—4

They Might Be Giants 1: They Might Be Giants

Arguably, a band can be considered successful when they divide the public into two distinct groups: those who like said band and those who hate them. Such has been the case for They Might Be Giants for close to three decades. Success hasn’t spoiled them—in fact, it’s barely touched them—and their champions are grateful for that.

TMBG (as their fans call them, and it’s a lot easier to type so we will too) began as two guys named John presenting a truly original version of geek-rock, with the accordion being a central instrument and their tendency toward songs about science and American history. Imagine Ween without the drugs and you’re almost there. With one John handling the stringed instruments and the other tackling keys and horns, their earliest shows were accompanied by a meticulously programmed drum machine. Considering the processing that real drums had received in the ‘80s, the percussive sounds heard on their self-titled full-length debut album don’t sound any more fake that many other records of the time.

The album crams 19 songs into a program just under 40 minutes, and it’s safe to say nothing sounds like anything else. Many of the songs debuted on their “Dial-A-Song” answering machine greetings, so brevity was the soul. As many of the songs are simply sketches and not Grand Works of Art, a brief synopsis of the more substantial ones will have to suffice.

“Everything Right Is Wrong Again” is a built-in contradiction, using a plot point from the Lucy-and-Desi film The Long, Long Trailer as a key chorus element. Their first “hit”, “Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head”, crashes that away, and “Number Three” aptly delivers the third song in a transition to the next “hit” in “Don’t Let’s Start”. “Hide Away Folk Family” is one of the longer tracks on the album, with a round-style chorus, and the discovery too late that a backwards accordion doesn’t sound too different from a forward one. “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Clothes” and “I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die” are full of the wacky lyrics, music references and rhythm changes fans love. “(She Was A) Hotel Detective” gets a way-over-the-top vocal for a song that doesn’t deserve one. Being good pioneers of modern recording, “Boat Of Car” includes a Johnny Cash sample, while “Absolutely Bill’s Mood” is built around a literally phoned-in guitar solo.

They Might Be Giants didn’t set the world on fire, but it fit in perfectly with the rest of the stuff on college radio before the term “alternative” was coined. Our general impression is that one of the Johns didn’t take himself as seriously as the other, but for the most part they complement each other nicely. The album is like the people who created it: you’ll either like it or you won’t.

They Might Be Giants They Might Be Giants (1986)—3½