They Might Be Giants, BOOK

The TMBG formula still holds in 2021 — an inexplicable cover, an opaque title — but for a late-career record it's a relief this one's not purely by the numbers. Reflective of quarantine sensibilities the tracks are longer and (at least for this band) more meditative, especially my favourite track "I Can't Remember the Dream," the backwards echo of "I Broke My Own Rule" and the mesmerizing "Wait Actually Yeah No," though their tilted college rock feel is alive and well in tracks like "Moonbeam Rays," closer "Less Than One" and "Brontosaurus" ("It had been going so well/and then I broke my eggshell") with even a bit of dance music in "I Lost Thursday." Longtime fans may decry the lowered weirdness quotient, with the possible exception of that farty foghorn thing in "If Day for Winnipeg" and the album's best lyrics "Put on the cuffs/I've broken Godwin's law," maybe the subtle sly snark of "Super Cool," and in a like fashion some of the songs are uncharacteristically downright conventional (even with the lyrics "Darling, The Dose" could practically be a lost Beach Boys session; the boring "Lord Snowden" comes off like Al Stewart in a bad way). But other than the unnecessary lead-in "Synopsis for Latecomers" which absolutely fails to set the proper tone at all, there's really only two serious things wrong with this disc: first, dammit, why are there no track names in the CD gatefold, and second, why do we have to pay so much to get your baffling too-big-for-liner notes companion book? Don't tease me with that title if there's not gonna be one. (Content: no concerns.)

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They Might Be Giants, Lincoln

On the back of the CD is a hand-drawn diagram of, um, "something" that if you sit down for a moment and compare the dimensions would yield something slanted, silly and slightly unstable if anyone actually tried to build it. It's a good analogy for the album, in fact: eighteen tracks of quickly tossed-off off-kilter word play ("life is a placebo/masquerading as a simile") set to a bunch of styles thrown into a hat and shaken around a bit, with no particular reason other than fun and no dwelling on them for very long. If you tried to take a serious seat on that, you'd slide off and hurt yourself, so don't. Like much of their output the babble for its own sake means they miss the chance to matter, but the spare production is clean and appealing, and they still get in some witty social commentary now and then (particularly the terminally snarky closer "Kiss Me, Son of God," but also to a lesser extent the unapologetically nonsense "Shoehorn With Teeth") and even some warped musical references ("Where Your Eyes Don't Go" interpolating bizarro snippets of Bach). Best pun on the album: "Everyone looks naked when you know the world's a dress." With such platitudes on offer, who can resist? (Content: no concerns.)

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They Might Be Giants, Apollo 18

More sophisticated and musically daring than Flood, their immediately preceding crossover hit, the darker tone and more inscrutable songsmithing will be simultaneously more delightful to TMBG fans desiring a less FM-friendly feel yet less appealing to that album's residual casual interest. Not that they care, I suspect. The lyrics are their usual amusing doggerel, though "I Palindrome I" gets particular points for its actual palindromic vocals; it's more the variety of their musical dressing that distinguishes this album especially. In that vein particular standouts along with said tortuous example of wordplay include "My Evil Twin," "Turn Around" (delightfully ghoulish), "The Statue Got Me High" and my personal favourite "Dinner Bell," a joyful bounding ode to Pavlovian overindulgence. (I would also be remiss not to mention "Spider," in a whole new category of weird, with bass-heavy crushes and vocals like the dub from some long-lost Toho monster flick.) If you don't like a particular track, just wait, because they're all pretty short -- and this is taken to a rather startling extreme with the album's damnedest feature "Fingertips," an end-to-end gapless collection of tracks 17 through 37, all just a few seconds long, each unique and distinct like some tantalizing clip from a DJ cart before your dad switches stations to something else. The album cover will be your guide: if you are puzzled, nay, repulsed, by its juxtaposition of a lunar lander, a giant squid and a sperm whale then you should take it as representative of what you're about to hear and move on. But you'd be missing out, madam. (Content: mild language in "I Palindrome I"; a couple songs might be a little too ghastly for very little ones.)

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