So, what, the music world didn't already have enough nerds scrambling around by the mid-'80s? Devo, Thomas Dolby, Elvis Costello, Weird Al, the B-52's, fuckin' Rush, did we really need more? Ha! Don't even bother thinking about it. Enter John Linnell and John Flansburgh, unequivocally the two biggest nerds that the music world had even seen up to that point. Subtle, unassuming nerds, of course, but nerds all the same. Nerds who are so nerdy that I doubt they even know, even realize to the fullest extent, how nerdy they truly are. Weird Al's got nothing on the Johns.
I have a personal bias toward They Might Be Giants because I was a big ol' fucking nerd as a teenager, having had their music swirling around the latent areas of my brain for years and years prior, all thanks to that one episode of Tiny Toons where they made music videos out of "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" and "Particle Man". I finally took the plunge and purchased their third album Flood, the FIRST. EVER. NON-COMEDY. ALBUM. that I had ever purchased for myself! It was a big deal. These guys were like messiahs to me, displaying their full-frontal nerdity without any shame and reliably feeding my ears with the most catchy, odd-ball pop tunes to ever be crafted by a couple of young New York dorks with basically just an accordion and a drum machine. Having been influenced by the aforementioned Devo, Elvis Costello, the B-52's, as well as weirdos like Zappa, the Residents, Captain Beefheart, and even Carl Stalling's hyperactive Bugs Bunny music, Linnell and Flansy have an incredible ability to draw from these influences and pool their talents in order to create some whip-smart and highly original output. None of their songs sound like any of those bands or artists, but no one is going to argue against placing TMBG alongside any of them. Overtime their output becomes less impressive and more derivative, but waving off their first few studio albums as novelty music does a disservice to pop music in general.
That goes double for their self-titled debut, which is likely the most impressive and least derivative collection of songs they would accomplish for the rest of their career. Don't confuse that with consistency, since They Might Be Giants is middle-of-the-road in the consistency department. An album just short of 40 minutes, 19 songs total, with only one cracking the 3-minute mark, the Johns don't have time for consistency! They need to get in, get out, and move on! The impressiveness comes from just how absolutely different one song sounds from the next. What's the opposite of derivative? Integral? The integralness comes from unconventional song structures and, let's face it, the completely nutso, wild ideas. People always listen to albums and go "wow, they must have really had fun making this!". Those albums, any album I don't care take your pick, those all seem like church compared to this one, because the sheer earnestness and uninhibited energy that the Johns display comes through in a way that cannot be mistaken as anything other than unbridled love for the sport. Even a jaded piece of shit like me can be convinced. This flurry of quick ideas also means tons of experimentation and genre-bending, and therefore not everything is going to be a slam dunk. You can bet your shiny metal ass, though, that you will absolutely LOVE at least two or three of these tracks and they likely won't overlap with your listening party buddy's favorites. You will also HATE a few tracks too, but such is the price to pay for the full experience. It's like a big emotional roller coaster of annoying, nasally geek voices and accordion jack-offery! Yeah baby. FOR EXAMPLE, I have a soft spot for "Everything Right is Wrong Again", "Hide Away Folk Family" and "Youth Culture Killed My Dog", but you might not! I can't stand "Boat of Car" or "The Day", but you, the idiot moron, may thrive on such banality! It all depends on your personal threshold for general weirdness and off-kilter, uh, "melodies" I guess you could maybe call it? The point is, there's something for everyone!
There's so much to unpack that I'd write 30 pages if I had to go through each track on its own. The Johns are mostly doing it all themselves armed with a small arsenal of instruments and a drum machine for nearly all the drum and bass tracks. Musical styles employed include new wave electronica, synthpop, polka, college rock, American folk, country, hard rock, gothic rock, bluegrass, industrial, post-modernist avant-garde, and everything in between. Many at the same time, usually. Sometimes you can't even tell. Take "She's an Angel": it's one of the more stylistically and lyrically grounded songs, perhaps perceptibly normal only after comparison to the ten weirder tracks before it. TMBG are well known for their cryptic, allusion-filled lyrics, but this one is uncharacteristically straightforward and clearly a love song. Deeper probing reveals strange songwriting decisions anyway. Like, what's with the monotone vocal delivery over minimalist, gothic single-note one-measure bursts between the choruses? What's with all the fluid slide guitar snaking around Linnell's twangy, heartfelt singing during the chorus? How would one even classify this? In the end, why does it really matter? No other song in existence sounds like it. It's beautiful. They nailed it...whatever "it" is, of course. Or how about *closes eyes and points to a random track* ..."Chess Piece Face", with its bold and sneaky synth notes, and Flansburgh singing like some grizzled, rejected medieval bard about God knows what. Sources say that the titular individual, the one with the face like a *checks notes* chess piece, is based on a boss Flansburgh had. But that's all the information available about this bizarre song, and the mystery makes the song more intriguing than it has any right to be, just like the other 18 tracks. In fact, I'm pretty sure I think the vocals sound medieval because I'm associating the music with chess pieces! Got me again! How about one more..."Don't Let's Start" is the one, if any, most people may recognize off their debut. It lays low as far as weirdness goes, but it's easy to miss the fact that this song has at least three distinct and memorable melodies fused together in a seamless display of synthpop wizardry. As awkward and clunky as a verse like "D, world destruction/Over and overture/N, do I need/Apostrophe T, need this torture?" reads in print, the flow is beautiful and the transition into the main chorus is as natural as could be. Try not to sing along after inevitably hitting repeat on the track a few times in a row.
Man, ok, I love "Hide Away Folk Family" so I need to talk about it for a second. Creepy lullaby music, punctuated further by Linnell's naturally off-putting whinging voice of course, but no skimping on infectious melody so it's a perfect recipe of catchiness and uniqueness for this song to stick in your head for days. The Johns still seize opportunities where they can to have fun and experiment as their whims demand, and there's a certain charm to their brazenness. Perplexing choices in this song include an oddly unsettling spoken-word horoscope delivered during the bridge section, and an incredibly fake backmasked vocal ending. So fake, in fact, that it's hilarious!
The "bad" songs are really a matter of personal preference. There's something to offer from every track on here no matter how short, or simple, or offensive to one's personal aesthetics. I think "Boat of Car" sucks because of the plinky 8-bit Atari-style bloops and beeps, but I can see the appeal for those who, say, enjoy a composition cooked up by a Speak & Spell. And, in spite of myself, I find the repeated "Daddy'll sing bass" Johnny Cash sampling amusing. I don't like "The Day" because I don't have much appreciation yet for slow soul-folk, even if satirical. The idea of Marvin Gaye and Phil Ochs' marriage, however, is funny, and I can't knock the song too hard. Like a I said before, something for everyone. Scanning through the tracklist I can't find too much more to criticize.
Let's end on a objective high note anyway. How about the closer "Rhythm Section Want Ad": barely-intelligible slurried and oddly-inflected/cadenced vocals at slacker-lightning speed that protest mainstream musical expectations while still throwing in an accordion solo lifted note-for-note from that one ancient Raymond Scott composition they play during factory sequences in Bugs Bunny cartoons (you know the one). Not even taking into account the unassumingly catchy pop rock music and vocal delivery, there's so much more going on in those 2 minutes and 21 seconds: constant references (both overt and subtle) to cartoons in general, self-deprecating remarks masked as clever turns of phrase ("In a world we call our home there's lots of room to roam/Plenty of time to turn mistakes into rhyme"), and goddamned multilayered PUNS ("There's a place for those who love their poetry/It's just across from the sign that says 'Pros Only'").
OK, I have to throw a few more nuggets of lyrical genius. It's not They Might Be Giants without a scattering of puns everywhere you step. After all, it's unequivocally the factor that separates them from every other band of its kind, and they further embrace the shit out of it as time goes on:
"And sadly the cross-eyed bear's been put to sleep behind the stairs"
"A poor man once told me/That he can't afford to speak"
"The words I'm singing now/Mean nothing more than "meow" to an animal"
Nurture the inner geek within and listen to this album. 1986 was arguably the worst year in history for pop music, so spend some time with a record that is not only exceptional for its year but also an underappreciated benchmark for DIY indie pop. Without TMBG, there might not be any Ben Folds, Weezer or Barenaked Ladies...so depending on your feelings about those three I might have just argued against 1986 even further. Sorry.
GOOD
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