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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
1992's Apollo 18 is quite possibly They Might Be Giants' strangest set of bite-size pop tunes. Let me say this about "Fingertips": I thought it was madly inspired as one unbroken four-and-a-half-minute track on the Dial-A-Song anthology (2002), but it's even cooler as 21 separate tracks. Just play this disc in "shuffle" or "random" play mode and see what I mean; you can also play the song straight through (tracks 17-37) and skip over any parts you don't like. And the most accessible track here is "The Guitar," a funky jam which features sweet-voiced Laura Cantrell crooning nonsense lyrics set to the tune of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," and John Flansburgh chirping an entirely different set of nonsense lyrics. Speaking of Flansy, he pretty much rules on this disc (as he did on TMBG's idiosyncratic self-titled debut). In addition to "The Guitar," he turns in some of his finest performances on the power-poppish "My Evil Twin," the '60s-style pop confection "Narrow Your Eyes" (a bitter breakup song leavened with lovely Beatle-esque harmonies), and the urgent, psychedelic rocker "See the Constellation," a rather moving breakup song wherein an abandoned and spiritually depleted fellow identifies with a figure he sees in the stars: "No cigar, no lady on his arm, just a guy made of dots and lines." (On that last one, dig the opening line, a deliberate echo of Warren Zevon's "Poor Poor Pitiful Me": "I lay my head on the railroad track"!) To a lesser extent, I also enjoy the snarling "He's a Hypnotist of Ladies" ("You won't remember why you liked him!") and the campy "She's Actual Size." (However, I'm a little disappointed in "If I Wasn't Shy"; I can buy it when he finally sings "I'd ask you, if you don't mind, to kiss you a hundred times," but when he asserts that he would "burn all the uniforms" and "steal somebody's Cadillac," it sounds forced.)
Bandmate John Linnell turns in a couple of very strong performances, as well: "I Palindrome I" is a disturbing song about a grown man at odds with his mother, leavened with cheeky wordplay and a cheery melody; and the rousing "The Statue Got Me High" is about a man so affected by a work of art that he explodes (he may mean it to be a metaphor, but the lyrics do get a little graphic...). He also contributes a pair of cute, "educational" songs, "Dinner Bell" -- about Pavlov's experiments with dogs -- and "Mammal" ("So the warm blood flows with the red blood cells, lacking nuclei, through the large four-chambered heart, maintaining the very high metabolism rate they have...").
The bulk of these tracks are pretty slight -- the aforementioned "She's Actual Size," "If I Wasn't Shy," and "Dinner Bell;" Flansburgh's punkish "Dig My Grave," Linnell's too-brief "Which Describes How You're Feeling All the Time," the silly, supernatural cuts "Hall of Heads" and "Turn Around" -- but only the instrumental "Space Suit" (a wee afterthought following the tour-de-force that is "Fingertips") and the spoken bit "Spider" (unlistenable even at 50 seconds) are utterly skippable. Nice work, otherwise!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
from the two shy guys of They Might Be Giants. Uncompromising, yet attempts to function as a normal pop album. It fails, much to everyones delight. Released when the "Shuffle" button on your CD player was a novelty, they invite you to shuffle it so that the 20 or so little odd five to twenty second snippets comprising "Fingertips" pop up around the regular three minute ditties. In this case, youll be listening to say, "Narrow Your Eyes", a relatively straightforward song, and then suddenly,"...whats that blue thing, doing here?" issues from the speakers only to continue on innocently with the next song as if the part about the blue thing was a hallucination. So, it's fun in that sense. Doesn't quite have that classic feel of "Lincoln" or "Flood", but still a very good, of course clever installment in the TMBG catalog. However, it should be noted that this was the last TMBG cd I ever bought. Im still not sure why.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
All hail Apollo 18! The first time I sat and listened to this album, every other word that came out of my mouth was "What the heck was that supposed to be? " I, unfortunately, was listening for appealing beats, nice instuments, etc...not the thing to do when listening to these guys. After getting a bit more into it, though, I saw that this CD was a gift from the heavens (or Brooklyn, at least). The lyrics are witty and intelligent, the music, once gotten used to, is catchy, and the subjects sung about are so strange and utterly obscure that no one can help but love Apollo 18. Fingertips, though seeming to be a jumble of babbling having nothing to do with anything, actually tells an interesting little story that, of course, you can make up (and I have yet to make use of the shuffle-and-listen). Perhaps the best way to describe this album is to allude to one of it's songs-"The Statue Got Me High." This statue will get you very high, and once it gets you into full swing, human company shall pale before this monolith...most likely because you won't want to leave your stereo system.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Excellent Transaction
My purchase arrived promptly as expected and as described. Excellent transaction. I first listened to this album 18 years ago when it was available as a cassette only. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Happy Customer
TMBG peak with the amazing Apollo 18 before our very ears.
Ahh, 1992. The year in which they were "Musical Ambassadors for International Space Year". You've gotta love it. It was with this album that I became a full-on TMBG fan. Read more
Published on January 25, 2009 by Bill Wikstrom
...ah...memories...
...when I was younger my dad would play music that I would deem as...strange and weird...from awkward sounds of electronica...to this...but this really is something special... Read more
Published on March 21, 2008 by OMNIGOSS
Help Me, I'm Stuck in 1992 (and Loving It)
I recently discovered 4 Non Blondes "Bigger, Faster, Better, More!" from 1992 (check out my review in here for the backstory). Read more
Published on January 15, 2007 by David Zimmerman
Everything is catching on fire
This cd is beyond belief. Beyond all known things. Beyond imagination of the imaginable imaginative. Read more
Published on November 15, 2005 by Mark Twain
funny stuff
The only way to explain this c.d. is that it is like a strange adult version of children sing-a-longs. Read more
Published on July 14, 2005 by Kipahni
They Write Theme Songs Good, Unfortunately, That Doesn't Count For...
All this is iis a bunch of 1:00 long songs that are all crap. They should have put This Might Be A Wiki or at least Boss of Me on here. But, unfortunately, it's a FLOP! FLOP! FLOP! Read more
Published on June 30, 2005 by Local Crazy Monkey
Oh, Dem Golden Fingertips!!
My best friend in high school, who actually was a huge John Williams/Weird Al fan (as mentioned in the review of "Flood"...weird! Read more
Published on June 7, 2005 by Chief Quimby
I Just Don't Really Like It
The reason I bought Apollo 18 is because I liked the Oblongs and the Malcolm in the Middle theme songs they did. But, I just think this disc is incomplete. Read more
Published on May 6, 2005 by Boxy The Turtle
Not their best
Although this is an alright album, I definately think it came at the time when TMBG started to go downhill. Read more
Published on March 29, 2005 by Kristofski
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