They Might Be Giants Albums (16)
'Here Comes Science'
Release Date 9/22/2009
Tracks 57
Label Disneysound
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Any inkling that They Might Be Giants had a future in crafting educational kids' songs came with 1994's "Why Does the Sun Shine?," so it's only fitting that after Here Come the ABC's and Here Come the 123's' success, John Linnell and John Flansburgh return to the subject that started it all: science. Here Comes Science covers everything from astronomy to evolution, mixing time-tested facts like the color spectrum with newer frontiers like electric cars. These songs are aimed at a slightly older audience than They Might Be Giants' previous Here Come... albums, since concepts like DNA are considerably more complicated than letters or numbers. At times, this complexity feels like it hinders the band's musical creativity a bit. Though the band sticks mostly to charging rock, a few songs are more expressive: "Cells" uses layering and repetition to wittily depict cellular reproduction; "Solid Liquid Gas" communicates different states of matter with its tempo, moving from lumbering to swinging to frenetic; and "Speed and Velocity" breezes through basic physics with aerodynamic new wave. Here Comes Science also spends nearly as much time with the thought process behind scientific developments as it does with facts, and puts importance on teaching kids how to think: "Put It to the Test" is as much about thinking for yourself as it is about the scientific method. A punk-poppy reprise of "Why Does the Sun Shine?" is followed by the jazzy "Why Does the Sun Really Shine?," which introduces plasma as the fourth state of matter and refutes the previous song's science cleverly: "Not gas, not liquid, not solid/That thesis has been rendered invalid!" The album also finds fun in science-related jobs; few things appeal to kids as much as dirt, digging, and dinosaurs, and "I Am a Paleontologist" has all three. The DVD portion is charming, with standout videos by Feel Good Anyway ("Meet the Elements"), Divya Srinivasan ("The Bloodmobile"), and Pascal Campion ("What Is a Shooting Star?"). Here Comes Science closes with "The Ballad of Davy Crockett (In Outer Space)," a space age update of Fess Parker's classic theme song that adds a little science fiction to these playfully presented facts. Here Comes Science is another fun, educational triumph. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Here Come the 123's, the numerically inclined sequel to They Might Be Giants' winning CD/DVD set Here Come the ABC's, presents more fun and unexpected ways to learn from John Flansburgh and John Linnell. The album begins in mathematically precise fashion, starting with the bouncy bossa nova of "Zeroes" before hitting one through ten and then onto fancier numbers like 12 and infinity. "One Everything"'s funky rock is one of TMBG's typical brain-twisters, a little bit zen ("there's only one everything") and a little bit urgent ("please clean your room/we share the same omniverse"). Many of the other songs are just as fun, but feel more like standard kid's fare than Here Come the ABC's did, and need to be experienced on the DVD for their full, quirky impact. That said, story songs like "Triops Has Three Eyes" and "One Dozen Monkeys," and movement songs such as "Ooh La! Ooh La!" are never less than adorable. However, as Here Come the 123's' numbers get higher, the album builds momentum. After getting basics like "Ten Mississippi" out of the way, on songs like "Nonagon," the Johns get down to the kind of smart kookiness and purposeful silliness that fans of all ages have come to expect. Seven gets two songs: "Seven Days a Week" is an anti-reveille full of laziness and trumpets, and is a singalong favorite in the making. "Seven," meanwhile, imagines a world where number sevens can ring the doorbell and hang out for awhile eating cake. "Nine Bowls of Soup"'s bowl-balancing ichthyosaur makes that song a standout too, and things get literally loopy on "Figure Eight"'s action-packed, figure-skating rock, and on "Infinity," a tribute to eight's sideways sibling. Even if it's not quite as brilliantly clever as Here Come the ABC's, Here Come the 123's never talks, or sings, down to its audience. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
For their twelfth full-length -- and first "rock" album in three years -- They Might Be Giants recruited the Dust Brothers as co-producers, a combination nearly as intriguing as the fact that the duo released The Else digitally via iTunes more than a month before it was issued on CD. Pairing the Dust Brothers' sonic invention with John Linnell and John Flansburgh's winning ways with words and melodies should be a dream collaboration; after all, the producers' work with Beck was just as witty and playful as it was funky and innovative. Nearly every time They Might Be Giants has ventured into territory that might be considered strange (Apollo 18's "Fingertips" mini-songs, their foray into children's music), they've pulled it off with flair. However, The Else is surprisingly -- and at times, a little disappointingly -- straightforward, particularly on its first half. While "I'm Impressed"'s distorted beat reflects the Dust Brothers' influence on the album (though this track isn't one that they produced) and "Take out the Trash" is a brassy, winning admonition to a girl to dump her loser boyfriend, The Else begins with a string of songs that are fun but not especially memorable. Fortunately, the album's second half is much stronger. "With the Dark" rambles playfully from a ballad about a girl who hates sunlight to a lumbering section about a pirate tired of his "nautical dreams" and then into much more surreal territory; likewise "Withered Hope" tells the tale of a sad sack yet sounds like anything but. With its circular wordplay, "The Bee of the Bird of the Moth" feels like a classic TMBG track, as does "The Mesopotamians," which marries one of the album's hookiest melodies with the antics of "Sargon, Hammurabi, Ashurbanipal and Gilgamesh" and ends up sounding like the theme song for a show about a Monkees-like band set in ancient times. "Contrecoup," which deals with phrenology and other obsolete sciences and words, is another in a long line of They Might Be Giants songs that uses your head for thinking as well as bobbing it to the beat. Indeed, the second half of The Else is so good that it's a little frustrating that the entire album isn't this solid. Still, there are more than enough good moments to keep longtime fans happy. [The CD version of The Else comes with "Cast Your Pod to the Wind," a bonus disc of podcast highlights. For die-hard fans who don't already have the podcasts, this disc is worth the price of admission -- the loungy cover of Joe Meek's "I Hear a New World" and songs about mysterious beards and other TMBG-like phenomena capture the band's most adorably off-the-cuff moments.] ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
They Might Be Giants have always had a flair for educational songs. More than a decade after its release, the refrain of "Why Does the Sun Shine" ("The sun is a mass of incandescent gas/A gigantic nuclear furnace") still has a pesky way of lodging itself in the brain. And, as the band's wonderful first children's album, No!, demonstrated, They Might Be Giants' music speaks to kids in a way that few other bands' work can; they never sound like they're talking (or singing) down to their smaller fans. Here Come the ABCs makes the most of the band's ability to teach and reach children, and more than delivers on its promise to "learn ABCs the fun way!" Since this is a more educational enterprise than No! was, Here Come the ABCs is a little more straightforward and like a traditional children's album than its predecessor. Several songs, like "E Eats Everything," are more or less recitations of the alphabet, albeit with a few twists: "Z Y X" brings the album to a close with a dramatic backwards reading of the alphabet, and "The Alphabet of Nations" is a mini-atlas, spanning Algeria to Zimbabwe. This is still a They Might Be Giants album, though, and the band's catchy melodies and smart wordplay haven't been dumbed down. "Flying V," with its charming, Vince Guaraldi-like pianos and images of migrating geese and electric guitars, is another of John Linnell's seemingly effortless but brilliant songs, and "C Is for Conifers" offers an extra-credit lesson in botany as well as the alphabet. Here Come the ABCs brings personality to the alphabet's characters, with some letters sharing songs and others getting songs of their own. The bouncy "Go for G!" is an immediate kid-pleaser, while "Q U" casts these letters as pals that "make a cool sound together" -- much like Linnell and Flansburgh themselves. F gets "Fake-Believe," a celebration of imagination so good that they had to include it on the album twice. Other songs are more conceptual: "Pictures of Pandas Painting," which is all about alliteration, lives up to its psychedelic title, while "Who Put the Alphabet in Alphabetical Order?" gets downright meta. Amidst all the learning, there's still plenty of room for plain old fun, as shown by the squiggly synths on "Letter Shapes"; the self-explanatory "Clap Your Hands"; and "Rolling O," which celebrates the joy of making silly mouth noises with scat-like babbling. Though some of the songs feel a little incomplete without the dazzling visuals of the DVD version, Here Come the ABCs is still a delight. It might be slightly less magical than No!, but it's a far cry from a by-the-numbers (or letters) children's album. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
'The Spine'
Release Date 1/1/2004
Tracks 16
Label Idlewild/Rounder/Universal
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Arriving just a few months after their very enjoyable Indestructible Object EP, They Might Be Giants' The Spine is relatively disappointing, with fewer memorable moments spread out over its 16 songs. Perhaps tellingly, two of the album's best moments already appeared on Indestructible Object: "Memo to Human Resources" is a brief, bittersweet tune from John Flansburgh that, with witty lyrics like "then the people came to talk me down/but I don't need advice/I'm down" and gently weary harmonies, really captures the feeling of being a perpetual underdog. "Au Contraire," by contrast, finds a who's who of history and pop culture ranging from FDR to David Bowie getting a comeuppance. Unfortunately, most of The Spine's other songs just aren't as memorable or fully developed as these tracks; while "Prevenge" has a clever name and "Damn Good Times" is a fun, bouncy throwaway, they sound more like B-sides or more fully developed Dial-A-Songs than album tracks. Though the album has been touted as one of They Might Be Giants more rock-oriented albums, The Spine doesn't really rock out any more than previous releases such as Apollo 18. Indeed, the album has a few other similarities to Apollo 18: the short, snippet-like songs "Spine" and "Spines" (which finds the band subverting the tight, dry production style of contemporary R&B for their own warped purposes) feel a little bit like an update of Apollo 18's "Fingerprints" tracks. "Experimental Film," meanwhile, is one of John Linnell's typically circular riddle songs à la "I Palindrome I." The vaguely psychedelic "Wearing a Raincoat" is similarly loopy, both in its backwards guitars and brain-twisting turns of phrase like "Sleeping is a gateway drug to being awake again." But references to drugs and "Thunderbird"'s homage to dirt-cheap wine aside, a good portion of The Spine sounds like it was fueled by pop rocks and Kool-Aid, particularly the merry, brassy waltz of "Museum of Idiots" and "It's Kickin' In," one of the band's best rock songs in quite a while. Still, many of the album's high points are on the mellow side, such as Flansburgh's oddly poignant "The World Before Later On," a lament for the flying-car, food-pill future that we've been promised since the Jetsons and still hasn't arrived yet. Because many of The Spine's most interesting moments are also its quietest, the album has an off-kilter feel that goes beyond They Might Be Giants' usual quirkiness. The album's penultimate track, "Stalk of Wheat," is a song about being out of ideas, an idea they already covered on They Might Be Giants' "Number Three"; however, they've never written a song about a creative drought that's sounded so much like a creative drought before. Nevertheless,They Might Be Giants have bounced back from worse dry spells, and even if The Spine is decidedly uneven, it still has enough good songs to please diehard fans and keep them around for the next album. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
While They Might Be Giants' clever, playful melodies and lyrics make their music nearly ideal listening for kids anyway, their first children's album, No!, is one of their most dizzying and delightful in years. If Mink Car found They Might Be Giants reclaiming some of the sounds and ideas they pioneered on albums like Flood, then No! is both another step backward and forward, featuring some of their weirdest material since their left-of-center debut in 1986. Tweaked vocals, sound effects, and songwriting abound on "I Am a Grocery Bag," a stream-of-consciousness meditation that could double as the band's shopping list ("Juices, muffins, pasta, and cheese/Milk and biscuits and cocktail sauce/I am a grocery bag"); "I Am Not Your Broom," a declaration of independence from John Flansburgh's broom; and "Bed Bed Bed," an anti-lullaby that mixes stomping rock, dissonant jazz, ticking clocks, and mooing cows. At times, No! is so unusual that it recalls the work of famously weird children's artists Bruce Haack and Lucia Pamela, if they had access to modern recording equipment. Like both Haack and Pamela's best work, They Might Be Giants' music -- and No! in particular -- celebrates being different, an invaluable message for children of all ages. It's not just the album's crazy moments that make it a joy, though. "Four of Two" is another of John Linnell's charming love songs gone wrong; Flansburgh's "Lazyhead & Sleepybones" is a lullaby so adorable that it would be a shame to sleep through it. Perhaps the best thing about No! is that it never patronizes its audience -- songs like "Fibber Island," "Where Do They Make Balloons?," and, especially, the wonderfully circular "The House at the Top of the Tree" are just as good, if not better than, the material on They Might Be Giants' other albums. Ultimately, No! is one of the group's most creative albums in years, and undoubtedly one of 2002's best children's releases, because it says yes to fun and individuality. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Perhaps it's no surprise that following 1996's Factory Showroom, They Might Be Giants began a prolonged recording absence, releasing only the Internet-only album Long Tall Weekend in 1999. Factory Showroom suggested that the band had backed themselves into a corner, as the humor of their early records had waned and even the band's trademark hooks were confined to a few tracks. Mink Car, however, symbolizes a radical shift in direction -- backward -- into some of the same stylistic territory covered on their landmark 1990 album, Flood. Nowhere is this shift more evident than in the choice of Flood producers Langer and Winstanley on several cuts, particularly the Flood sound-alike "Bangs." Mink Car is far from a retread, however, as the band takes lessons that they've learned since 1990 -- like that they sound really, really good when they play with a full band -- and incorporates them into that classic sound. That means that Mink Car is in many ways the beginning of a new part of They Might Be Giants' career. Much like on Factory Showroom, the band does recycle a few cuts, including "Older" and "She Thinks She's Edith Head" from Long Tall Weekend and the non-LP single "Working Undercover for the Man" for the disc. But of the cuts, there's a healthy mixture of old-school TMBG humor in strange, short songs like "I've Got a Fang" and "Wicked Little Critta," and fairly straightforward pop/rock like "Another First Kiss." That track and the mock-Euro-disco-based first single, "Man, It's So Loud in Here," both sport the trademark radio-ready production of Fountains of Wayne's Adam Schlessinger, who pops up in one of many cameo spots on the album. Former Soul Coughing vocalist M. Doughty also stops by to sing on a track, and Catatonia frontwoman Cerys Matthews screams one frightening verse in the stomping "Cyclops Rock." All this may sound like a mess, but the band seems to have realized that they're often loved because their sound is all over the place, not in spite of it, and in response to that revelation they've released one of their strongest batches of songs. ~ Jason Damas, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Live trims off the fat from Severe Tire Damage and delivers a fine pulp of sweaty, full-band TMBG goodness. The ten selections on this budget-priced mini-album really do represent the highlights from its parent album, including the infectious (and underplayed) 1998 studio single "Dr. Worm." "Why Does the Sun Shine? (The Sun Is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)" would have, however, made a much better choice than "Ana Ng," which sounds a little off-key in this rendition. ~ Christian Huey, All Music Guide
'Long Tall Weekend'
Release Date 1/1/1999
Tracks 15
Label They Might Be Records
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
This album proves that They Might Be Giants closed out the vigor and quirky songwriting ability to equal the unparalleled days of "Don't Lets Start" (Bar/None, 1987). Along with comparable originals as "Token Back to Brooklyn" (featuring Soul Coughing's Yuval Gabay on drums) and "(She Thinks She's) Edith Head" they offer up their unique versions of such material as Lesley Gore's "Maybe I Know." They Might Be Giants continue a tireless tradition of factory-style, creating one-after-another, the world's best novelty alternative pop songs. All 15 tracks are new studio recordings, and some of these songs have already lived in the group's live set or on their dial-a-song service. The Dilbert-spin on office boredom in "Operators are Standing By," the light handling of the serious in "Reprehensible," and the humorous observations on the Samurai movie genre in "Samurai" are unforgettable and entertaining. But, all things evolve. As the accordion becomes less prominent, the guitar is more so. More jocular than hip, more crazy than cool, They Might Be Giants groove fresh in their comedic relief as other guitar bands work a deeper rut. ~ Tom Schulte, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
On their very first live album, Severe Tire Damage, intellectual rockers They Might Be Giants offer a best-of set, which contains mostly radical reworkings of fan favorites. The reason for the emergence of a live album came about when TMBG played a successful radio session for the Spin Radio Network, where the duo was joined by its touring band as well as horn players and a rhythm section. They were so impressed with the results that they almost immediately went back and picked out versions of songs that sounded totally different live when compared to the original studio versions (especially the songs "She's Actual Size" and "Why Does the Sun Shine?"). Included are the "hits" "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" and "Particle Man," as well as the brand new track "Doctor Worm." To prove that they haven't lost their quirky edge, the album ends with seven unlisted tracks that were written on the spot, in front of their audience. ~ Greg Prato, All Music Guide
