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i'm going through another TMBG phase so here we go. i'll go through their major discography album by album, posting tidbits from wikipedia and/or videos and stuff. no particular timetable just whenever i feel like listening to a record. mostly doing this for me but feel free to listen along, i always love for new people to discover TMBG.
i mostly listen to the first six records, so when we get into the later albums they'll be some rediscovery for albums i don't listen to a lot, or discovery for albums i haven't listened to at all.
They Might Be Giants (s/t)
"nobody in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful / everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful"
1."Everything Right Is Wrong Again" 2."Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head" 3."Number Three" 4."Don't Let's Start" 5."Hide Away Folk Family" 6."32 Footsteps" 7."Toddler Hiway" 8."Rabid Child" 9."Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes" 10."(She Was A) Hotel Detective" 11."She's an Angel" 12."Youth Culture Killed My Dog" 13."Boat of Car" 14."Absolutely Bill's Mood" 15."Chess Piece Face" 16."I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die" 17."Alienation's for the Rich" 18."The Day" 19."Rhythm Section Want Ad"
They Might Be Giants was the second album to be released on the fledgling Bar/None label, with They Might Be Giants as the second group signed to the independent label. Many of the songs on the album existed in a demo form on the band's 1985 demo tape, which was also technically self-titled, though many were re-recorded or given new mixes for the commercial album.[4] The material from the tape was recorded at Studio PASS in New York City with the assistance of Alex Noyes, who permitted the band to use the studio after it closed each day. Additional recording and mixing was done at Dubway Studios.
Some unconventional recording techniques were used in the production of the album. The music is melodic, mostly uptempo synthesizer-and-guitar pop punctuated with odd sound samples and occasionally veering into sparse country- or folk-like arrangements. Drum and bass tracks are almost entirely synthesized, though the album prominently features the accordion. In order to record the guitar solo in "Absolutely Bill's Mood", the band telephoned Eugene Chadbourne in Greensboro, NC, from Dubway Studios. Chadbourne played the acoustic solo and it was recorded onto the studio's answering machine, then mixed into the song.
Flansburgh and Linnell occasionally borrow from other recordings throughout the album. "Rhythm Section Want Ad" features an excerpt from Raymond Scott's composition "Powerhouse", played on the accordion. "Boat of Car" prominently samples the Johnny Cash song "Daddy Sang Bass".[5]
The record sold 10,000 copies in its first year. After Bar/None founders Tom Prendergast and Glenn Morrow got TMBG airplay on MTV, sales dramatically increased. According to Prendergast, "Within another month, we sold another 40,000 records." Total sales eventually passed 100,000, and a follow-up album, also on Bar/None, more than doubled the sales of the first. "That established the label," Prendergast said.[6]
The album was received with positive critical attention. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice, who gave the album an A, praised the album for its wide range of variety and cleverness, saying "the hits just keep on coming in an exuberantly annoying show of creative superabundance." He also made note of the unusualness of the subject matter contained in the lyrics.[16] Jim Farber of Rolling Stone stressed the album's "weirdness," and also noted the diversity in style among songs that "incorporate genres from art pop to country to polka."[17]
Neither the album nor its singles saw success on the Billboard charts, but the three music videos associated with the album generated positive attention for the band.
"Don't Let's Start" is kind of the TMBG mission statement. you can listen to that and decide pretty quickly if this band is for you or not. "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head" is another stone cold TMBG classic. But my personal favorite on this album is "Nothing's Gunna Change My Clothes", in it's own way it's as relentless as a Meshuggah track, and it feels like a precursor to the type of dark cheeriness that embodies their third and best-selling (and maybe best) album "Flood".
also don't sleep on "Number Three", a music about musician's writer's block that will get in your head and never leave.
"She's An Angel" is a slower number that reminds me of their more mature songwriting a few albums down the road on "John Henry". chorus just trudges along and is catchy as all hell.
after "she's an angel" the album gets less poppy and more avant garde, though there are certainly still fun moments. the album returns to poppy fun with "rhythm section want ad" which takes you out on a high but still weird note.
"Don't Let's Start" is kind of the TMBG mission statement. you can listen to that and decide pretty quickly if this band is for you or not. "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head" is another stone cold TMBG classic. But my personal favorite on this album is "Nothing's Gunna Change My Clothes", in it's own way it's as relentless as a Meshuggah track, and it feels like a precursor to the type of dark cheeriness that embodies their third and best-selling (and maybe best) album "Flood".
also don't sleep on "Number Three", a music about musician's writer's block that will get in your head and never leave.
"She's An Angel" is a slower number that reminds me of their more mature songwriting a few albums down the road on "John Henry". chorus just trudges along and is catchy as all hell.
after "she's an angel" the album gets less poppy and more avant garde, though there are certainly still fun moments. the album returns to poppy fun with "rhythm section want ad" which takes you out on a high but still weird note.
My wife has threatened to divorce me if I ever make her listen to "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head" again. She just doesn't get it, man.
I remember seeing the "Don't Let's Start" video on MTV back in the day and falling instantly in love with it. Been a fan ever since.
I used to cover "She's an Angel" in my acoustic singer-songwriter days. Nobody ever knew what to make of it, but it was fun to sing/play.
Post by RyDollaCяab on Aug 21, 2023 17:38:25 GMT -5
Listened to the album (first time listening to them), I'm on the bandwagon. Favorites were "Boat of Car", "Absolutely Bill's Mood", and "I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die".
Post by NothingButFlowers on Aug 21, 2023 17:59:39 GMT -5
Fun! I’ve listened to Flood a half a billion times, but I have hardly listened to any of their other albums all the way through. I put this one on while working on a project tonight and really enjoyed it! I did recognize a few of the songs. Will probably follow along with you on this.
"Don't Let's Start" is kind of the TMBG mission statement. you can listen to that and decide pretty quickly if this band is for you or not. "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head" is another stone cold TMBG classic. But my personal favorite on this album is "Nothing's Gunna Change My Clothes", in it's own way it's as relentless as a Meshuggah track, and it feels like a precursor to the type of dark cheeriness that embodies their third and best-selling (and maybe best) album "Flood".
also don't sleep on "Number Three", a music about musician's writer's block that will get in your head and never leave.
"She's An Angel" is a slower number that reminds me of their more mature songwriting a few albums down the road on "John Henry". chorus just trudges along and is catchy as all hell.
after "she's an angel" the album gets less poppy and more avant garde, though there are certainly still fun moments. the album returns to poppy fun with "rhythm section want ad" which takes you out on a high but still weird note.
My wife has threatened to divorce me if I ever make her listen to "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head" again. She just doesn't get it, man.
The checks in the mail And I'll see you in church And don't you ever change!
I never get sick of that song. I should, it's the type of song one should get sick of, but I don't. Anytime it comes on I'm like "oh hell yeah".
Where your eyes don't go a filthy scarecrow waves its broomstick arms And does a parody of each unconscious thing you do When you turn around to look it's gone behind you On its face it's wearing your confused expression Where your eyes don't go
A1 Ana Ng A2 Cowtown A3 Lie Still, Little Bottle A4 Purple Toupee A5 Cage & Aquarium A6 Where Your Eyes Don't Go A7 Piece of Dirt A8 Mr. Me A9 Pencil Rain B1 The World's Address B2 I've Got a Match B3 Santa's Beard B4 You'll Miss Me B5 They'll Need a Crane B6 Shoehorn With Teeth B7 Stand on Your Own Head B8 Snowball in Hell B9 Kiss Me, Son of God
I love the bolded quote from the reviewer below:
Lincoln is the second studio album by the band They Might Be Giants. It was released by Bar/None in 1988. The album is named after John Linnell and John Flansburgh's boyhood home of Lincoln, Massachusetts. The album produced three singles—"Ana Ng", "They'll Need a Crane", and "Purple Toupee".
Lincoln maintains the range of musical styles present on the previous album, They Might Be Giants, and lyrically attempts to merge word play into narrative songs. Lyrical themes are broadened with the inclusion of songs detailing troubled romantic relationships ("Ana Ng", "They'll Need a Crane", "I've Got a Match"),[1][2] and songs that verge on social or political satire ("Purple Toupee", "Kiss Me, Son of God"),[3][4] whereas musically, the album explores a number of genres. For example, songs such as "Cowtown" and "Mr. Me" incorporate elements of sea shanties, while "Lie Still, Little Bottle" suggests a jazz influence.[5]
Like previous releases, Lincoln does not utilize a full band arrangement. Instead, bass and drum tracks are entirely synthetic or sampled, with the exception of live drums on "Lie Still, Little Bottle". The drum tracks on the album were produced with an Alesis HR-16 drum machine.[6] The album featured The Ordinaires, a nonet which was also signed to the Bar/None label, providing the arrangement for "Kiss Me, Son of God".[7]
As of 1999, the album had sold more than 200,000 copies, double the amount of the previous album.[8]
Lincoln received generally positive reviews. David Kissinger of Rolling Stone called the album "every bit as eccentric as its predecessor, and even more eclectic", though this was supplemented with the disclaimer that "at times this penchant for the bizarre leads them into pointlessly sophomoric zaniness". Robert Christgau of The Village Voice described the band as "actively annoying even if intelligence is all you ask of your art-pop" and called the album's hooks "cleverness for cleverness's sake", nonetheless conceding that "damned clever they are."[20] The album placed at number 78 on Pitchfork's 100 Best Albums of the 1980s.[21]
The album peaked at number 89 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart in 1989, spending 19 weeks on that chart. Its success led to They Might Be Giants' signing to the major label Elektra Records in 1990. Lincoln also generated the band's first charting single, "Ana Ng", which peaked at number 11 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart.[22] The single, which was only released promotionally in the United States, also received positive attention. Christgau praised it as "a beyond-perfect tour de force about a Vietnamese woman they never got to meet". The other singles from the album, "They'll Need a Crane" and "Purple Toupee", failed to chart, though both songs and the track "Kiss Me, Son of God" received praise from Stewart Mason of Allmusic.
not going to try to front, "Ana Ng" is the best song on this album and my favorite song on this album. Stunning in it's simplicity, it's lyrical prowess, it's effortlessness. a song that makes me feel a way i can't explain. why do i feel so sad when he sings "who was at the Dupont pavilion? why was the bench still warm who had been there?" i don't know what it means, but i can feel the longing. "when i was driving once i saw this painted on a bridge" during the bridge of the song, repeating of the line "and it sticks like a broken record everything sticks like a broken record". there just isn't a second of this song i'm not totally engaged.
Lincoln easily escaped the "sophomore slump" trap a lot of bands deal with, given you have your whole lives to write your first album and only a year or two to write your second. obviously the Johns were still full of ideas, as I'd guess Lincoln is considered their best record for a lot of fans.
but beyond Ana Ng, if I was trying to sound cool, I'd say "Where Your Eyes Don't Go", a beautiful silky little number about paranoia, is my favorite. The vocals just plod along to the infectious melody with devastating terrifying lyrics:
Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders What the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of Should you worry when the skull head is in front of you Or is it worse because it's always waiting where your eyes don't go?
what the fuck man what are y'all doing
other highlights include the absolutely frenetic "Purple Toupee", undeniably catchy and upbeat from a narrator who is wildly confused about historical events in the 20th century. "I've Got A Match", "They'll Need a Crane", "The World's Address".
"Santa's Beard" and "You'll Miss Me" are both a bit too silly even for me, but I loved them as a kid.
I can't neglect "Shoehorn With Teeth", which is exactly the right amount of silly for adult me. Song is so stupid but I love it.
The album wraps up with perhaps their most song sounding song to date (i think it actually used live instrumentation), "Kiss Me, Son of God", a song that might seem prescient in it's description of a populist fascist's rise to power, but just stands to remind us that fascism isn't something that started in the past decade. It's short, it's brilliant, the lyrics are spot on. Hell of an album closer.
not going to try to front, "Ana Ng" is the best song on this album and my favorite song on this album. Stunning in it's simplicity, it's lyrical prowess, it's effortlessness. a song that makes me feel a way i can't explain. why do i feel so sad when he sings "who was at the Dupont pavilion? why was the bench still warm who had been there?" i don't know what it means, but i can feel the longing. "when i was driving once i saw this painted on a bridge" during the bridge of the song, repeating of the line "and it sticks like a broken record everything sticks like a broken record". there just isn't a second of this song i'm not totally engaged.
Lincoln easily escaped the "sophomore slump" trap a lot of bands deal with, given you have your whole lives to write your first album and only a year or two to write your second. obviously the Johns were still full of ideas, as I'd guess Lincoln is considered their best record for a lot of fans.
but beyond Ana Ng, if I was trying to sound cool, I'd say "Where Your Eyes Don't Go", a beautiful silky little number about paranoia, is my favorite. The vocals just plod along to the infectious melody with devastating terrifying lyrics:
Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders What the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of Should you worry when the skull head is in front of you Or is it worse because it's always waiting where your eyes don't go?
what the fuck man what are y'all doing
other highlights include the absolutely frenetic "Purple Toupee", undeniably catchy and upbeat from a narrator who is wildly confused about historical events in the 20th century. "I've Got A Match", "They'll Need a Crane", "The World's Address".
"Santa's Beard" and "You'll Miss Me" are both a bit too silly even for me, but I loved them as a kid.
I can't neglect "Shoehorn With Teeth", which is exactly the right amount of silly for adult me. Song is so stupid but I love it.
The album wraps up with perhaps their most song sounding song to date (i think it actually used live instrumentation), "Kiss Me, Son of God", a song that might seem prescient in it's description of a populist fascist's rise to power, but just stands to remind us that fascism isn't something that started in the past decade. It's short, it's brilliant, the lyrics are spot on. Hell of an album closer.
Fun fact: Lincoln is the first album I ever bought with money I earned myself, from cutting lawns in the summer of '88. Purchased on cassette at the Camelot Music at Fayette Mall in Lexington, KY.
IMO, this record is wall-to-wall bangers. I agree about "You'll Miss Me," but I actually have a soft spot for "Santa's Beard" just because it's an excellent, unhinged performance by Flansburgh. "Lie Still, Little Bottle" deserves mention, especially as a live cut when the stick comes out ("stiiiiiick").
Also, Side Two of this record carries two of the Johns' most devastating songs. "They'll Need a Crane" is the higher-profile of the two (it got rotation on MTV), and is the perfect encapsulation of the philosophy TMBG have espoused that it's more interesting to write a sad song that sounds cheerful than to just write a sad song that sounds sad. But, fuck, man, "I've Got a Match" fucks me up. The pivot from the main version of the chorus:
Love people are there, the smell of love is everywhere You think it's always sensitive and good You think that I want to be understood I've got a match, your embrace and my collapse
To the last time we hear it:
Love people are there, the smell of love is everywhere Why can't you be sensitive and good? Why don't you want to be understood? I've got a match, your embrace and my collapse
It's so subtle, turning the statements in lines two and three into questions, but it just puts a heartbreaking exclamation point on the song's embodiment of the emotional turmoil that comes with the death of a relationship that's been terminally ill for some time.
But, fuck, man, "I've Got a Match" fucks me up. The pivot from the main version of the chorus:
Love people are there, the smell of love is everywhere You think it's always sensitive and good You think that I want to be understood I've got a match, your embrace and my collapse
To the last time we hear it:
Love people are there, the smell of love is everywhere Why can't you be sensitive and good? Why don't you want to be understood? I've got a match, your embrace and my collapse
It's so subtle, turning the statements in lines two and three into questions, but it just puts a heartbreaking exclamation point on the song's embodiment of the emotional turmoil that comes with the death of a relationship that's been terminally ill for some time.
that kind of lyrical dexterity is a big part of what makes TMBG so special to me. the lyrics are always dense with meaning and intelligent, but also never overcomplicated? like they never forget they are writing pop songs and not free verse poetry. the lyrics and song performances are always earnest, but you also kind of know that they know that any genre, to a certain extent, is bullshit. like the form doesn't matter, but the music does. which is an idea i stole from a random quote from a ranty trey anastasio in the "bittersweet motel" doc.
speaking of phish, before i say this let me be clear that TMBG are far superior lyricists than Tom Marshal, who writes the lyrics to most Phish songs, but there is definitely a connection between me discovering TMBG in grade school and later falling for Phish in high school. the silly seriousness of TMBG's lyrics paved the way for me to accept the silly seriousness of Phish's lyrics without question. it feels like john and john could have just as easily written the line "BRAIN DEAD AND MADE OF MONEY NO FUTURE AT ALL".
