In Which I Express a Great Admiration for a Band With a Long, Odd Name

I've been listening to the new They Might Be Giants album, Join Us, for a couple of months now -- in fact, through the magic of iTunes, I can say that I've been listening to it since 10:42 AM on July 23rd -- and I have to admit that my initial opinion of it has undergone a 180-degree change.

(This isn't uncommon with TMBG, but I seem to have forgotten about it during the last half-decade, when they mostly made pleasant but more surface-y music for young people. When they're officially working for adults, they make the kind of music that often takes some listening to get used to, and I generally end up liking that better than material that's catchy on the first listen. Come to think of it, the new Okkervil River record this year, I Am Very Far, had almost exactly the same pattern.)

At first, I thought Join Us was a bit of a mess, with songs all over the place that didn't quite click, and very little of the really punchy stuff. Of course, I can also remember when "the really punchy stuff" -- the full-band rock TMBG that started with 1994's John Henry -- was the new TMBG music that I wasn't sure that I liked. (I've been a fan since they showed up on late-night MTV in the mid-80s; I'm pretty sure I bought an EP or two even before They Might Be Giants came out, so I've had a long history with not being quite sure if I liked the new record until I decided I loved it.)

There are still songs on Join Us I don't entirely love, of course -- that's always the case -- and I do wish there were more real barn-burners like "Stomp Box" or "AKA Driver" or "Till My Head Falls Off" or the live version of "Why Does The Sun Shine?" or "Cyclops Rock" or "Am I Awake?" or "Vancouver" or "Vestibule" or "The Shadow Government" (or even "See the Constellation" or "Ana Ng"). Only "You Probably Get That a Lot" really goes in that direction.

But there are some really fun, quirky songs on Join Us, like "Cloisone" and "When Will You Die" -- which is nearly as good, and along the same lines, as "Turn Around" and "Older" -- and "2082." I think it's mostly that TMBG has been in an aggressively quirky period -- at least for their adult records -- for most of the last decade, after finishing out their "rock" period with Mink Car in 2001. (And I am much too old, because I can remember listening to that record a lot walking to and from work that year.)

So, to celebrate a band that's been making fun, goofy, weird, unique music for nearly thirty years, without ever becoming a parody of themselves -- and because I like making widgets, and haven't done one in a while -- here's a widget with (almost) all of the TMBG songs I just mentioned.

And, just because, here's a random TMBG video as well -- "I'm Impressed," from their 2007 record The Else: