They Might Be Giants - C/D, S/D, OPO etc

I'm more interested in an overview of their ouevre/"schtick", their songwriting, and the issue of their "dorkiness" (particularly how that has limited their appeal and why that is). Also how, at least on their first three albums, they fit into that 80s tendency of nerdy white guys appropriating and using explicitly non-nerdy white guy idioms - folk, reggae, world music, dance music (see also David Byrne, Paul Simon - I wanna throw Pere Ubu's 80s records in here too for some reason).

I think they've written a lot of great songs, but have a tendency to retreat behind a wall of schtick that makes any kind of emotional connection with their music problematic. But some stuff, if you peel away the levels of forced irony and wordiness, is really quite bleak and despairing, genuinely moving even. (see "They'll Need a Crane", for ex.)

x-post um have you seen the movie about them? 100% "serious critical evaluation".

Look at cast list in link provided! Jon Stewart! Dave Eggers! Paul Simon! Sarah Vowell! Etc!

They Might Be Giants [Bar/None, 1986]
Two catchy weirdos, eighteen songs, and the hits just keep on coming in an exuberantly annoying show of creative superabundance. Their secret is that as unmediated pop postmodernists they can be themselves stealing from anywhere, modulating without strain or personal commitment from hick to nut to nerd. Like the cross-eyed bear in the regretful but not altogether kind "Hide Away Folk Family," their "shoes are laced with irony," but that doesn't doom them to art-school cleverness or never meaning what they say. Their great subject is the information overload that lends these songs their form. They live in a world where "Everything Right Is Wrong Again" and "Youth Culture Killed My Dog." A

Lincoln [Restless/Bar/None, 1988]
XTC as computer nerds rather than studio wimps--change for chord change and beat for irrelevant beat, they're actively annoying even if intelligence is all you ask of your art-pop. Except maybe on the antiboomer "Purple Toupee," side one's hooks begin and end with "Ana Ng," a beyond-perfect tour de force about a Vietnamese woman they never got to meet; until "Kiss Me, Son of God," which closes the album and could be anti-Castro if they let it, side two's are cleverness for cleverness's sake. And damned clever they are. B+

Flood [Elektra, 1990]
tunes, aarghh, tunes--please not more tunes ("Dead," "Your Racist Friend") **

Classic.

Lincoln
Flood
Apollo 18

OPO:

Tough call. I'll go with "Ana Ng" for now.

"I'm gonna die / if you touch me one more time
Well I guess that I'm / gonna die no matter what"

So these days, as a grown-up non-wacky non-fanboy, my picks would be:

Spiralling Shape. A very OTM song about novelty fixation and the race to hip, and the fact those things don't bring any happiness. "Nobody knows what it's really like, but everyone says it's great".

I Can Hear You. Recorded on an old wax cylider, it's just a small handful of two-line vignettes about different forms of communications technology, and the lengths people will go to to find new ways of just talking to each other. It can move me to tears. First time I heard it, I immediately ripped it to mp3 and emailled it to somebody, because that just made sense.

Four of Two. From the first kids' album, a little nonsense song which is in fact a sneaky allegory about how easy it is to think you'll one day meet your ideal partner, but then wake up one morning to realise that you're old and your life's flown by and it's too late...and yet to still think you're bound to meet them, soon.

She's An Angel. A very sweet and simple first love song, which is amazed and shocked by the way it feels, and is too shy to say "I really like you", so hides behind random tangents and adolescent surrealism...but doesn't manage to hide its real message very well, in the end.

Till My Head Falls Off. Drug addled suicide note. Which rocks.

Dr. Worm. Possibly their most archetypically TMBG sounding chorus ever, and the words are about a nice old man who's always wanted to be a famous jazz drummer and thinks he still can be, one day, if he just practices a bit more. Beautiful.

I could probably go on for a while, but I won't.

Nowadays, their childrens albums are about fifty billion times better than their "real" ones.

oy

"road movie to berlin," from "flood," was the first song my wife ever saw me sing in public...we've been married over 13 years now. I totally credit John and John of TMBG. Thanks, nerds!

-chadly con Queso

I wish no particular harm on TMBG. Flood is a nice album.

I'm conflicted about "Shoehorn with Teeth": either it's meaningless and infuriating or it's wonderfully oblique. I can't make up my mind.

Wonder if anyone's heard their newer records? The Else was surprisingly good. Very straightforward but just a good rock record. I actually kind of enjoy the kids stuff. I'm a dork.

I mostly bumped this to say that "Narrow Your Eyes" may be their best song ever. The lyrics on that one kill me - "I get off the bus/ride past our stop/and though I'm late/I can't get off/I just can't bear/to tell you some lies/so narrow your eyes" **shudder**

i've heard most of their later albums and while there are definitely some good songs here and there, the children's albums are by and large better than the 'regular' albums. also the bonus disc for The Else is more fun than the proper album.

but yeah "Narrow Your Eyes" is great, they can kill you with occasional sincere moments.

I'm a dork.

also this sentence is just kind of assumed when you're posting on a TMBG thread, no need to type it

Yeah I was surprised by the amount of effort they put into those kids albums. They remind me of the earlier stuff but with somewhat dumber lyrics. I don't know if they're better than The Else but some of it is very good. "Can You Find It?" and "C is For Conifers" are just oddly touching, I guess

the kids stuff is fun. for the most part, not all that diff (musically at least) from their regular stuff. and kids do indeed love it.

the bonus disc for The Else is more fun than the proper album

Oh, fer sher! "Why the Christ, why the Devil, Why did you grow a beard?!?"

Of the later stuff, "Mink Car" is brilliant but "The Spine" is their absolute nadir, just completely unredeemable.

Oh, and Tyler I wanna party with you, always find you on my fave threads. :-)

Really really liked "Brain Problem Situation", "We Live in a Dump", "Yeah, the Deranged Millionaire" and "Cast Your Pod to the Wind". I don't think it's better than the main disc but it's a great bonus. TMBG were really a band built for these types of podcasts.

Agree that "The Spine" is the worst. I mean it is fairly decent in spots but I really hate how every song on the first half sounds like every other song on the first half. I really liked "Broke in Two"

haaa right back atcha, gerald. and i agree about the spine -- i remember listening to that a bunch and deciding it really was *bad*. or just completely lifeless.

So these guys are releasing a new album this year and will be touring the US in September. Which is when I was thinking of visiting. They've already announced a few cities and SF and ATL are among them so now I am really really wondering I cant only get over but get to see the beloves Johns live again woo!

Here was my review:

"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, I really do like the sentiment behind this statement. So it's a little disappointing to find them pretty much ignoring their old values - 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 really the only 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. It's funny to hear them sing on "Stalk of Wheat" that they're "out of ideas", but less funny when it actually seems true."

I stil havent got round to hearing some recent albums. I love "Sensurround", its a great song.

i've heard most of their later albums and while there are definitely some good songs here and there, the children's albums are by and large better than the 'regular' albums.

"The Spine" is their absolute nadir,

agree with all this

i covered "narrow your eyes" for a fan-assembled TMBG tribute album when i was like 16

At parties some of us have been known to break out into spontaneous acapella barbershop renditions of "Kiss me, son of god".

I love the Giants cover of the Allman Bros "Jessica," way more than the original.

i'm not associated with rolling stone but this opinion should be illegal lmao

Apart from "Back in Los Angeles," I find the new one to be extremely backloaded. The last 5 or so tracks in particular are pretty much all terrific and left me with a more favorable impression of the album as a whole on first listen than I ended up with after listening through again. A lot of it feels weirdly unambitious. Maybe they just really wanted to focus on making catchy pop songs here, above all else...I don't know. I'm not crazy about "Wu-Tang" but I have to admit it's been a massive earworm for me. "What You Get" and "Slow" are a real one-two punch of classic TMBG though.

xp the discussion above about.. "Neil C."? tmbg has always worn their old + modern influences quite proudly, they usually mention such inspirations

My Murdered Remains is definitely a B-sides/Dial-a-Song lump - many retakes of older material, for one thing - just happens to have great stuff on it, which has almost always been the case when they throw their leftovers in a pile. Last Wave redux!

cosign on Phone Power being awesome

must go pick up the new album soon, you guys seem pretty enthused!

(I'm not lol, but don't let that stop you...it's been a good excuse to listen to stuff from all over their career, much of which is commonly underrated!)

As for Neil C, what if I told you that not only did Son Of TMBG exist, but it's kinda the best? Start...idk, here? https://needlejuice.bandcamp.com/album/hip-to-the-javabean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7cG1R6YFzw

Every Music Reference & Sample in They Might Be Giants Songs

Quite a few "How did I not notice that?" moments.

one of my favorite things they do is taking an odd lyrical phrase they liked and turn it around, guess they do way more of that than I thought. I only knew about a quarter of the ones in this video.

maybe I missed it in there but in "Weep Day" the line "it's samba time for Tambo and weep day for Urine Man" is a reference to the way "Tambourine Man" is listed as "Tambo-Urine Man" on a Dylan record, always wondered if a single person would've gotten that if they hadn't mentioned it

I bet they’re really good at crossword puzzles.

very fun video! it's funny, i knew tons of those, accept the quotation/transformation as a part of the songs that they expect you to "get," but never really think of them as pastichey postmodern pop-cultural magpies! notable how many of them are from the mid 60s through early 70s, when the Johns were, let's say, ages 5 to 15, and how much Elvis, Beatles, and classic country is in there. soaked in as the contemporary lingua franca, but as time passes they'll all become more like Tin Pan Alley nods.

here's some fun trivia, "The Long, Long Trailer" was released in 1953, meaning it was just over 30 years old when they referenced it in "Everything Right is Wrong Again" (which was on their '84 demo tape) - as old as Factory Showroom is now, or perhaps akin to making a Seinfeld reference today

that video is awesome, will definitely finish it eventually. so many good finds!

that extended Alice Cooper tribute buried in the "Why Must I Be Sad?" backing vocals!

awesome video, but yeah, that Alice Cooper bit is incredible. did anyone here catch that at the time? i wonder if any reviews mention it.

i was heavy into the album at the time - was a huge fan, bought it on release day, listened to it a ton - but was 18, had never heard Alice Cooper's music and certainly didn't realize what they were doing.

John Henry is an endless box of magic, I've decided it must be my favourite they've ever done. The narrative that they got worse with it is such absolute bullshit, honestly it's where it all kicks on for me

Speaking of narratives and bullshit, John Linnell is simply too cool for that other thread isn't he

I was working on some big college paper, pulling an all-nighter when John Henry clicked for me. I listened to it on repeat 4 or 5 times and around 4am “Dirt Bike” struck me as truly menacing.

ya I never got why that one was considered a disappointment, other than TMBG fans just being fussy. I kinda got the disappointment with Factory Showroom though, personally I've always liked that album but I understand missing the weirdness, there's something not quite right about a TMBG album with only 13 songs on it

after relistening to all their albums I don't think they ever really had a 'down' period - even The Spine, which I complained a fair bit about upthread (many years ago), has revealed itself to be a pretty great and consistently enjoyable power pop album

i mean, John Henry is a pretty huge pivot in sound and direction, even if there are a few pointers in that direction on Apollo 18. it's not surprising that some people just aren't gonna be on board for a band doing that.

personally: i like a lot of songs on it, but I don't love the sound of it, just on a "what the guitars, drums and vocals sound like" level. and i miss the sense of sonic variety and surprise they'd packed into every song before that. they were clearly feeling the possibilities and relative ease of recording these cuts with a live band, and i don't begrudge them that, but i don't think the bass-drum-guitar-organ arrangements always serve the songs. that's just a personal taste thing. i'd probably love "Dirtbike" if it were a little more lo-fi and sounded like an Elephant 6 record.

it's also really really long! and a lot of tracks wear out their welcome, with too many repeated choruses for not enough ideas. "Why Must I Be Sad" repeats the entire first verse, probably fun for the band because they do change up the rhythm, but i don't find it musically interesting, it doesn't feature a surprise bonus hook or anything, so it's like, why is this 4 minutes long? "Spy" had the long noodley free-jazz conclusion which is a nice idea, but ends up feeling like a signifier of a noodley free-jazz section, the way the rest of the song is a signifier of a revved-up 60s surf-rock spy theme.

honestly, delete Extra Savoir-Faire, Spy, and Sleeping in the Flowers and the album would jump way up for me.

Not knowing who Robert Quine was at the time, my initial reaction to the biggest change on John Henry was "who is this guy they've got wailing over the place that clearly is not Flans"

Within a couple of months it briefly became the overall favourite

Wooooooooah, I had no idea Quine was on John Henry! Did he tour with them or was it just studio stuff?

honestly, delete Extra Savoir-Faire, Spy, and Sleeping in the Flowers and the album would jump way up for me.

― Mighty Morphin Is The Subject of My Sentence (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, 29 April 2026 22:43 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Poor Flans. As I say, this is where he really started to find himself as a songwriter for me!

Robert Quine did you say? Must listen.

Feel like we should have another Quine thread dedicated to listing all his recorded appearances, since they are somewhat difficult to keep track of.

Heh, just found this awesome song that is about him. Check out the first (and only?) reply: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ00GZTP93c

I agree John Henry is too long, seems the band realized this which is why they've never eclipsed the 45 minute mark since. Dunno which songs I'd delete, I like all 3 songs Doc mentioned (some of Linnell's do irritate me though) - I just think some of the songs could stand to be shorter, particularly "Sleeping in the Flowers" which would've been killer at the 3 minute mark. imo that's why the album got kind of a mixed reception, especially given how much their fans loved "Fingertips"

I've never seen the band live before, but it looks like I'm seeing them ... Sunday?

I was thinking about going to those shows! Luckily they're coming to Milwaukee in a few months.

I've seen them 8 or 9 times already...always a great show, they play a ton of songs (obviously), good mix of old and new, band is super tight and the Johns are surprisingly funny in person...you'll have a great time

re: Flans - I love "Out of Jail" and think "A.K.A. Driver" is cool! Which is a better ratio than Factory Showroom, where I would honestly delete all his tracks except S-E-X-X-Y. I think I just generally vibe with him MUCH more within the confines of the MIDI aesthetic of the first four albums. It's a "me problem."

"How Can I Sing Like a Girl?" is good if you like his moody stuff. I like "Pet Name" too but it doesn't really sound like a TMBG song at all to me. "XTC vs. Adam Ant" is terrible, still maybe my least favorite song on a TMBG album (surely there are worse but the ones I can think of are all pretty short) - though I think it might've been the song that convinced me to check out XTC, so I have to give it some credit. I agree though Flans isn't very good on this album or Mink Car (though I do like "Drink!" a lot), on The Spine I think he figures things out and by The Else he's back to being nearly as good as the other John

I'll also give him "Meet James Ensor," John-Henry-wise.

The Else is a stellar performance by both Johns yes. More 13-track albums please lads!

Speaking of narratives and bullshit, John Linnell is simply too cool for that other thread isn't he

― imago, Tuesday, 28 April 2026 21:25 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

As the other thread refuses to die, worth restating

Re: The first (to me) disappointing album that was "Factory Showroom"

The best song of that time period (and in the TMBG Top 20 for me) didn't even make the album--"S-E-X-X-Y" b-side "Sensurround." Classic Linnell pop banger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxx5CABtI0M

I'm still baffled by how that didn't make the cut....surely their best B-side ever?? I think the explanation I'd read is that it was too similar to "Spiralling Shape" so one had to go, but that's my favorite song on the album so I for one wouldn't have minded having them both there

yeah it really should be the album opener. i think we've had this conversation before because i can remember championing the Power Rangers soundtrack version as the definitive SenSurround...

haven't listened to John Henry since the poll we did. my feeling is it's too long but it's very consistent, moreso than Apollo 18, so it's hard to know what to cut. a minute of "Sleeping in the Flowers"? axing "Extra Savior-Faire" and "Window" would get a few minutes back. it's a little tiring to listen to the whole thing but the songs are mostly impeccable. I don't think the change to a live band hurt my enjoyment - Apollo 18 already felt like it was inching in that direction

after hearing "XTC vs Adam Ant", I dove into the catalogue of the former and my friend the latter. XTC became one of my favorite bands, and Adam Ant his, but we only ever had a mild appreciation for the other band. which I realize now mimics the rivalry in the song

looking at the track list for Factory Showroom... oof, Flans really fell off. I think I'd rank all of Linnell's songs above all of his, except "Pet Name" is maybe better than "Exquisite Dead Guy"

it would be a good song for Squeeze

I'm sure I gave Nanobots a listen when it first came out, but it must have somehow made zero impression on me at the time. What a fool I was! I revisited it thanks to this thread and I think I've listened to it just about every day for the past week. No skips. Love the songs themselves, but a huge part of what makes it such a great listen is the super clever and varied arrangements throughout. Like, even the straight-ahead rocking parts of "Circular Karate Chop" have those crazy swelling, chopped-up backing vocals and that wild organ sound. (They do great things with backing vocals on a lot of these songs.) And honestly some of the songs just sound beautiful, which isn't something you expect to say about a TMBG album -- vibraphones and bass clarinets are like catnip to me, so I'm mainly thinking of the last section of the album here, "Replicant" especially.

The placement of all the nanosongs in the third quarter of the album makes me think of Lolita Nation, which has all of its shortest, weirdest tracks on side three of four. I have to wonder if LN's sequencing was an influence there, conscious or not.

I've previously noted that they pretty much borrowed Don't Respond, She Can Tell for They Got Lost. I think they've not acknowledged Miller publicly, but...

Linnell has said Sensurround was too stylistically similar to Till My Head Falls Off, so one of them had to go. It had initially been recorded somewhat earlier on, so it appears the newer fast Linnell jam won out https://tmbw.net/wiki/Sensurround

one way to edit John Henry would be to snip out middling songs, but promise yourself that they would have then been improved before showing up on Factory Showroom, to the benefit of both albums.

Part of the joy of the Join Us / Nanobots era, is that Marty Beller really appeared to be channelling drum machine-era TMBG as his biggest influence. The results are wonderful

I never wanted to cut anything from John Henry. Perhaps Unrelated Thing outstays its welcome somewhat. It seems to experiment with what a TMBG album might be like if nearly all the songs were 'normal' length

I guess they have been focusing on a specific album for the first set each night? Friday here was I guess "Lincoln," Saturday was "John Henry" and tonight (when I go) is "Factory Showroom." I admit I don't know that album, but I am not a super-fan or anything.

It's got some great tracks, and some big duds (IMO). Not a horrible balance overall, just a shift away from their earlier standard of 18-19 tracks, making the duds maybe loom larger. But then again, as a youth, I definitely skipped tracks a bunch, and basically thought of it as somewhat slight but consistently satisfying 30-minute mini-album.

But like: Til My Head Falls Off, Spiraling Shape, Exquisite Dead Guy, Metal Detector, Your Own Worst Enemy - those are all canonical TMBG!

It was the last of their four major-label albums, and they’ve released more than twenty since, so the second set might be even more baffling, JiC.

I also love SEXXY, the NYC cover, XTC vs Adam Ant, The Bells Are Ringing, and when they opened shows firing off confetti cannons during James K. Polk it totally ruled. Great pop album!!

I guess they have been focusing on a specific album for the first set each night?

there’s simply no way to tell