hedgpam harald adalard
Walberto Kennedy
I've discovered that if you Google my name and click on "omitted search results," you'll be given seven or eight pages of links to archived They Might Be Giants email discussion lists that I contributed to during my middle and high school years. Typed excitedly at lunchtime on state-of-the-art UNIX terminals, these eternal reminders of some painfully awkward times feature discussions on the latest Giants' releases and arguments as to the meaning of lyrics like "put your hand inside the puppet head." TMBG were the first band I ever became obsessed with, acquiring any and all singles, bootlegs, and videos I could find. To an eighth grader in the age of grunge, they were the only known alternative to "alternative," and offered a musical safe-haven for anyone who might have thought that wearing a "Normal People Scare Me" t-shirt was a good idea.
Because of my history revering the band, it's hard to face the fact that TMBG's output is gradually becoming less consistent and inspired. Their newest release, The Spine, is, like so many of their other recent releases, not a bad album, yet contains too many mediocre tracks to be comforting. The most disappointing aspect of The Spine is its musical conservatism. John Linnell's prowess at arrangement and instrumentation, on full display in his excellent solo album State Songs, seems to become increasingly buried by walls of heavily produced guitars upon each release. This wouldn't be so bad if the duo were still writing hooks that left you singing for three days upon a single listen, but there are only a few truly memorable melodies here.
Much as the eighth grade girls would usually squint at me and say "you're so random" after I'd attempted a joke, TMBG have long suffered the upsetting label of "quirky." Like fellow lyrical innovators the Talking Heads, they've tended toward the topics of household appliances and sinister characters rather than life's emotional highs and lows. Because their lyrics have reveled in puns and surrealist wordplay, they've usually been dubbed "silly" rather than "arty," though neither term really encapsulates the evil robots and grinning skulls at the core of the Giants' imagery. Thus, while TMBG have been no stranger to Dr. Demento over the years, a dark tone or manic absurdity has always kept their humor slightly shy of straight-ahead novelty territory.
Increasingly, such complexity is lost in TMBG's output, and on The Spine, the attempts at humor are spotty. "Au Contraire" fully succeeds at humor, featuring Jodie Foster and Mahatma Gandhi playing a contentious game of cards; similarly, "Wearing a Raincoat" contains the streams of nonsensical associative thought at the center of the band's earliest work. Then again, the songs "Prevenge" and "Some Crazy Bastard Wants to Hit Me" are no wittier than the basic premises of their titles.
It is readily apparent that The Spine was produced by Pat Dillett, who helped TMBG craft 1990's hit-heavy Flood. Both Flood and The Spine have a smooth, session-musician production quality that tempers the Giants' more experimental musical tendencies. Yet, where Flood made a successful approach at greater accessibility, The Spine's radio-friendly sound goes way overboard. The rampant vocal manipulation and techno-inspired turns are ridiculous against the Johns' matter-of-fact singing tones, resulting in tracks that sound more like Flansburgh and Linnell at a Karaoke night than on an album of their own songs.
There are successful tracks here, though they're usually reminiscent of past hits. The anthemic opener "Experimental Film" nearly replicates the lyrical conceit of Severe Tire Damage single "Dr. Worm", both sung by excitable but inarticulate narrators with minor artistic ambitions. John Flansburgh has spoken of his love for Sinatra, the influence being particularly evident on "Kiss Me, Son of God", and here, he croons on the excellent track "Trapped in a World Before Later On". "Stalk of Wheat" also manages a distinctly 1930s tone in its big-band style call-and-response. And TMBG do up the intensity on the energetic and catchy "Damn Good Times", a poppy piece with a klezmer-style ending.
Over the last five years, TMBG have involved themselves in an array of exciting projects. Like Danny Elfman and Mark Mothersbaugh, they're headed down the route of heady rock musicians turned soundtrack composers. Currently, they're working with Dave Eggers and director Spike Jonze to release a Moveon.org benefit album featuring Elliott Smith, R.E.M. and David Byrne. By all accounts, they're still putting everything they have into their live shows. With all this going on, it seems like their real creative energy is being turned elsewhere, as The Spine doesn't give me the sense that the Giants particularly wanted to make it or had much fun in the process. Still, as long this band's output continues to offer middle schoolers out there some kind of alternative to Hoobastank, I really can't complain.
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Since 1983, They Might Be Giants had been recording several backing tracks to use as the rhythm section for their live performances around New York. By 1985, the band had written, demoed and performed most of the material heard on They Might Be Giants, and had accumulated enough recordings to create a self-released cassette-only album[1], the 1985 Demo Tape. The cassette was made with the help of Bill Krauss, who had been working with the band since 1983 as soundman and producer[2], and engineer Alex Noyes, who had granted the band access to record new material after hours[3] at Studio PASS from as early as January 1985[4]. The self-titled cassette was released on July 4th, 1985 and was distributed by the band at live shows[5], as well as through mailing order[6]. A copy of this tape eventually ended up in the hands of Michael Small, a reviewer for People magazine, who reviewed the tape in the magazine's June 30th, 1986 issue.
Sometime in late 1985, future Bar/None Records partner Glen Morrow was introduced to They Might Be Giants through Margaret Seiler, and had gotten the band gigs at the Peppermint Lounge and Danceteria[7]. He was contacted by the band in 1986 after Tom Prendergast had established Bar/None, with the label's first release being a record from Morrow's band, Rage To Live[8][9]:
They Might Be Giants and its demos were recorded on 4-tracks at the apartments of John Flansburgh and John Linnell[11] and on 8-track at after hours sessions at Studio PASS[12] with Krauss as producer and Noyes as engineer. The album contained a majority of the songs previously featured on the 1985 Demo Tape, as well as new songs ("Hide Away Folk Family", "She's An Angel") recorded in 1986. Certain songs previously featured on the self-released cassette were not re-recorded ("Alienation's For The Rich", "32 Footsteps", "Number Three", "Toddler Hiway", "Rabid Child"), and received new mixes instead. Regarding "Toddler Hiway", John and John said: "We repeatedly failed to improve upon [it] using fancier equipment." Songs on the album from the band's repertoire that had not been previously released on the 1985 Demo Tape included "Rhythm Section Want Ad", released on various promotional demo tapes from early 1985, "Everything Right Is Wrong", released on the Wiggle Diskette in 1985, and "Absolutely Bill's Mood", which had been performed at the band's early shows under the title "I'm Insane"[13].
Some of the recording equipment used for the album included the Casio CZ-101 and Micromoog synthesizers, a mix of Yamaha RX11/15 drum machines and a Farfisa organ[14]. The Micromoog was used for the basslines[15] of various tracks, while the CZ-101 was used for "Chess Piece Face" and the whistling sounds in "Hide Away Folk Family"[16]. Drum patterns were sequenced on the RX machines directly, with Flansburgh detailing the recording process behind mixing and mastering the rhythm tracks for the album[17]:
Two other synthesizers owned by Studio PASS were the Fairlight synthesizer and a Yamaha TX816, which Flansburgh described as 8 DX7s stacked upon each other to try to get away from the glassy thinness of the single instrument"[18]. Either one or both of these synthesizers were used to record "Rabid Child", while the Fairlight had previously been used by the band for "The Biggest One" and "Become A Robot" during sessions for the 1985 Demo Tape. For the band's final recording sessions for They Might Be Giants, they had moved to Dubway Studios[19], where the full album would be mixed. The studios were owned by Al Houghton, who had previously worked with the band to engineer the Wiggle Diskette with Noyes and Krauss. One of the later recordings at Dubway was a new re-recording of "Don't Let's Start". Flansburgh would recall recording the song on Tumblr in 2014:
Guests on the album included Margaret Seiler, who provided the lead vocal on "Boat Of Car", Peter Pearmain Thomson on backing vocals for "(She Was A) Hotel Detective", and musician Eugene Chadbourne, whose guitar solos for "Absolutely Bill's Mood" were recorded over-the-phone directly from Dubway's answering machine. Flansburgh explained the story behind getting Chadbourne onto the album in a 1997 interview:
Two songs known to have been left off of They Might Be Giants were "Fake Out In Buenos Aires" and "They Might Be Giants". Although the latter song had previously appeared on the 1985 Demo Tape, the band did not include the song on the album "because it seemed too weird"[20], while "Fake Out In Buenos Aires" was left off because the band "thought it would have appeared indulgent."[21] "They Might Be Giants" would later be re-recorded for Flood, while the original recording for "Fake Out In Buenos Aires" would be released on Then: The Earlier Years.
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