33 rebellions per minute
"The TV's in Esperanto, you know that that's a bitch"
1994
They Might Be Giants, JOHN HENRY
It is a truism that every lasting band did its greatest work when the person doing the evaluating discovered
it, then went steadily downhill. In TMBG's case, JOHN HENRY was the album that most shook the faith
of the existing base, and if I intellectualize enough, I can almost understand. It has lots of horn charts; some
people don't like horn charts. It's by far their most rock record, and many people do not regard Flansburgh
and Linnell as prototypical rock singers, but as geek-only singers. On the rock songs, the drums pound
hard, fast, foursquare, which is un-TMBG. The guitars, angular with a distorted trebliness, recall the arty
XTC/ Pere Ubu wing of New Wave. The album lasts 57 minutes, and the unexpected 15 extra are filled
with tossed-off lyrics ("Hey, Nyquil driver, it's Nyquil driving, Nyqil driving time!"); TMBG fans listen to
lyrics. So.
That said, not only is JOHN HENRY my favorite of the band's work, it's also an album that, if you
delete the full-on rock songs, leaves 35-40 minutes that should've fit nicely within everyone's expectations.
The Linnell/Flansburgh melodies lilt and soar and tease with the usual casual mastery. The rhythms retain
their herky-jerky standards. The gimmicks flow profusely as ever: the percussive banjo and bassoon-led toy
brass of "Extra Savoir Faire"; the superb guest barbershop quartet on the basso profundo "O Do Not
Forsake Me"; "Meet James Ensor"'s guitar solo sonically processed halfway between bagpipe and kazoo;
"Unrelated Thing"'s almost deadpan pedal-steel C+W; "Subliminal"'s preposterous vocal harmonies; the
cheery TV-jingle delivery of Allen Ginsberg's "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving, hysterical" and its truthful reprise as "I saw the worst bands of my generation applied by
magic marker to drywall"; the two dozen fake endings of "Spy". And "Sleeping In The Flowers", even with
the charged dixieland brassiness and my 2nd-favorite 1-note-repeated electric guitar solo in history (behind
Guided By Voices's "I Am A Tree"), is the epitome of everything TMBG stands for, as the halting
mock-doomy verses ("I took a ride/ from a drunk guy/ how ungrateful I must have seemed. He taught me
how/ to spin my head round and round") and the joyous chorus sitting next to it ("We should be sleeping in
the flowers, we should sleep all afternoon, I declare that I'm an island, you declare that you're one too, I
declare that I am England, you declare that I have drowned") skirt logic but preserve meaning while
purveying a giddy subversiveness ("Tell the boss that I've been fired").
Liking their rock-band style should therefore be completely optional. But I like New Wave guitar, I think
well-written horn charts are fun to hear played, and so "a Self Called Nowhere", "Destination Moon",
"Spy"'s pre-coda (also known as the "song" part of the song), the blistering "Stomp Box", and the more
mainstream rock "AKA Driver" are excellent bonuses. "Snail Shell" is skeletal funk, part Sly Stone, part
Gang Of Four, part themselves. "Why Must I Be Sad?" double-sins by power chords _and_ by making a
serious lyrical attempt to empathize with a loser teen seeking wisdom in Alice Cooper songs, which is a
weak joke, just as Colin MacEnroe's Lose Weight Through Great Sex With Celebrities (the Elvis Way) is a
weak Shakespearean historical drama; it succeeds, on its _own_ terms. "End Of The Tour", the album's
final statement, doesn't rock, doesn't have a gimmick; it is a pop song. It relies on its melody. And as long
as TMBG continue to draw tunes from their apparently endless magical bag of them, I recommend putting
up gladly with whatever else they try.
1996
They Might Be Giants, FACTORY SHOWROOM
TMBG made the mistake of being too brilliant, too early. I have never seen any great humorist--- not Douglas Adams, not
Doug Marlette, not Gary Larson, not Colin MacEnroe--- stay able to generate dada like "the TV's in Esperanto, you know
that that's a bitch" and "I remember the year I went to camp/ I heard about some lady named Selma and some blacks/
Somebody put their fingers in the President's ears/ It wasn't too much later they came out with Johnson's wax" for more
than a few years, but the fans always expect it. And sometimes they ought to--- Doug Marlette's cartoons stopped being
otherworldly, and it turned out there was nothing else he had to offer. But when Douglas Adams went from
HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY to his Dirk Gently novels, he was trading up from (admittedly wonderful) cosmic goofs into
literature, and making a good show of it, fat lot of thanks he got. And TMBG, on FACTORY SHOWROOM, just about
completed the transition to creatively but smoothly produced greats of melodic power pop, with often quite intelligent lyrics (I
especially like the proposed life motto "This could lead to excellence or serious injury. Only one way to know: go, go, go!").
If you want to reject the Loud Family's INTERBABE CONCERN as a pop album, "too confusing" or some excuse, then this here is the 1996's
best pop record. And it's stunning how many of the band's enthusiastic fans went "Ucch"; in the smarter quarters (twentieths? hundredths?) of the
critics' community I can cite glenn mcdonald, Ira Robbins, and (a less sharp anti-conversion) Dave Thompson, and I feel
sure they would have loved it had it been a debut, because the "it's not _funny_" setting of their brains would have been in its
normal off position. Here we've the propulsive rock of "Til My Head Falls Off", the rather convincing faux-jazz stylings of
"Pet Name", the brief xylophone song "Exquisite Dead Guy", the Big 80's synth-pop of "Metal Detector" and "New York
City", the (very funny) backwoodsiness of "James K. Polk", the shockingly likeable Christmas carol "Bells Are Ringing" (a
song about advertising or Nazism or both), and the authentic 1890's ambience of "I Can Hear You", recorded in a musuem
on Edison's old wax-cylinder recording equipment, and sounding it. Smart and goofy, this record should be irresistable.
Unfortunately, some people enjoy resisting.
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