They Might Be Giants’ new album, The Else is out now at the iTunes Music Store. I really, really like TMBG, enough that I’m even willing to swallow my distaste for the klunky, unintuitive, and poorly configurable mess that is iTunes in order to purchase their latest album 56 days in advance of its official CD release date. Since purchasing it shortly after midnight on Tuesday, I’ve listened to it so much that, if it were an old vinyl LP, I’d already have worn a hole through the album itself and into the turntable itself. Since I’m now so intimately familiar with it, I feel like sharing a few of my thoughts. It’s not exactly a full review, as such: if you want that, I suggest you head over to Critical Hits. This is a just a few scattered observations and opinions from a dyed-in-the-wool TMBG fan.
To start with, it’s certainly different than I expected. I don’t want to diminish the breadth of John Flansburgh and John Linnell’s impressive catalog, but there’s a definite TMBG “sound” that’s pretty much unique to the band and has remained identifiable for over twenty years. That sound isn’t exactly missing from The Else, but it’s been significantly transformed. While the two Johns remain as lyrically inventive and irreverent as ever, the music itself feels a great deal more polished and, I dunno, mainstream than usual. Which is far from a bad thing, actually, particularly when the result is as rocking as it is here. My experience with the Dust Brothers (who co-produced the album) is limited to their previous remix of the band’s “Snail Shell,” which set my teeth on edge. But they’ve certainly done right by me this time.
There are a number of truly excellent songs on the album: “I’m Impressed” is a nice opener that reminds me a little of “Certain People I Could Name” from their 1999 internet-only album Long Tall Weekend. I’m not as impressed with the second track, “Take Out the Trash,” nor the third “Upside Down Frown,” which are basically by-the-numbers Flansburgh and Linnell compositions, respectively, that bring very little to the table that I’ve not heard before. After that, though, it’s one superb song after another. Climbing the Walls boasts some fairly traditional Linnell-penned lyrics, but sounds like nothing else they’ve done. It’s nothing short of electrifying, and quickly became my favorite song on the album. Running a close second is the next song, “Careful What You Pack,” which may be Flansburgh’s best tune in years. Next up, Linnell’s “The Cap’m” is a fun, if not particularly original, song. “With the Dark” is a bit of an oddity, more of a collection of three one-minute songs than a three-minute song in its own right. But that’s not a knock against it: it goes from moving, to powerful, and back again and is up there with the best of the album. “The Shadow Government” is a bit of a let-down, really: Critical Hits’s review I linked to above described it as the next in an ongoing series of Flansburgh songs with interesting lyrics but a boring melody, and I think that’s pretty much spot-on.
“Bee of the Bird of the Moth” was one of only two songs I was familiar with before buying the album. It strikes me as having a very “Particle Man” vibe, with more-or-less nonsensical lyrics, ostensibly about the Hummingbird Moth. What sets this one apart, again, is the musical arrangement, which is a lot glossier than I expected when I first heard the song performed live in concert a year ago. I’m not sure what to make of the next song, “Withered Hope.” I like it… but it’s hard for me to say why. It’s not that interesting, musically, and the lyrics fluctuate between the clever and the banal. The best I can say is that it’s Linnell’s delivery of the lyrics that really does it for me. “Contrecoup” is the other song I was already familiar with, having heard the demo version performed for NPR on what was basically a bet: take a handful of obscure words from the dictionary (”contrecoup,” “limerent,” “craniosophic”) and construct a song around them. The album version here isn’t fundamentally different from that demo: it’s extended slightly, and more polished, but nothing major. And I still like it. “Feign Amnesia” is a cute throwaway, as, for that matter, is the final song, “The Mesopotamians,” a weird little piece clearly inspired by the theme song to the Monkees about a band comprised of four historical figures from ancient Mesopotamia (where else?).
As I write this, The Else has catapulted right into third place in my personal list of the best TMBG albums, after John Henry and Lincoln. As much as I liked their last full-length studio album for adults (2004’s The Spine), this one has surpassed it in almost all respects. I can’t say with certainty what I’ll think of it once that “new album” glow has worn off in a few weeks, but the initial signs sure look good. And I can’t wait for the official CD release in a month and a half, complete with a full-length bonus disc of new recordings. If you’re not already a fan, The Else might not win you over, but it should, dammit….
