Customer Reviews

Holidayland

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This Christmas EP is an appealing package, with cute cover art and a good title. The main problem is that the CD itself contains only five songs, all of which had been released before. Granted, some of them were slightly difficult to come by (most of them were on eMusic's TMBG Unlimited service, but I don't know how many people actually signed up for that), so most people will probably be getting something new, but when two of the tracks are readily available on studio albums, it seems like TMBG could have given us a little more. It's not like they exhausted their supply of holiday songs; there's always "Christmas Cards," as well as "We Just Go Nuts At Christmastime" (never officially released at all) and "Olive The Other Reindeer" (although there might have been copyright restrictions forbidding them from using that last one). This is something that a TMBG fan will probably want to listen to during the holidays, but it isn't an essential release by the band.

Holidayland is a compilation of five songs recorded at different times- 1. a cover, Santa Claus; 2.Santa's Beard, from the album "Lincoln"; 3.Feast of Lights, a bittersweet Hannukah tune; 4.Careless Santa, from Mono Puff's first album and 5. O Tannenbaum, sung in German.

All are done in TMBG's signature style, and have happy sing-along goodness for all your festive occasions.

Before you buy this you should realize what your getting for your [money]. Five songs, most of which aren't very good, and one of which (Santa's Beard) you almost certainly already own. All this amounts to just over 10 minutes of music. I'm as much of a TMBG fan as the next guy, but this simply isn't worth more than a buck or two.

Okay, so you've got a five-song EP here. As of this writing, there's no discount for buying the album as opposed to buying the MP3s individually, so you're better off picking and choosing. This advice assumes that you're already a big fan of TMBG and have most of their stuff, as well as some side projects like Mono Puff. If that doesn't describe you . . . well, honestly, you're better off starting with almost ANYTHING ELSE that TMBG has released. If you own all of TMBG's stuff, go buy some Mono Puff. Seriously. Don't start here.

1. Santa Claus = Worth Buying. It's a totally new song (well, it's a cover from several decades ago, but you know what I mean). It's not one of their most exciting ones, and it's a LITTLE bit repetitive at times, but it's worth a buck.

2. Santa's Beard = Don't Buy. You already own this song. If you don't, then go buy Lincoln. Seriously. Buy it NOW. Freakin' great album.

3. Feast of Lights = Worth Buying. This is the best new song on this EP. Of course, if you own Festival of Light 2, you have this already -- but if you don't, I'd recommend just buying this MP3. In my opinion, it's not worth picking up Festival of Light 2 as a whole album if you're really just a TMBG fan. If you only have one dollar to spend, spend it here.

4. Careless Santa = Don't Buy. You probably already own this song, and if you don't, you should just grab Mono Puff's debut album Unsupervised and then you WILL own it. Seriously, if you're a TMBG fan who hasn't picked up any Mono Puff, you're really missing out.

5. O Tannenbaum = Don't Buy. Okay, yes, this is a new song. But it's also just "O Tannenbaum," which you probably know better as "Oh Christmas Tree." Yeah, that song. It's really slow and draggy, and it just features boring music and Linnell singing slow, ponderous lyrics in German.

So that's it. Don't waste the money on this EP as a whole -- just drop $1.98 to get tracks 1 and 3, and you'll come away with a wonderful Holidayland experience!

It's one thing for a CD like this to be short--obviously one look at the tracklist and you know that you're buying a special edition CD that won't have a full-length album on it. But the fact is, the quality of these tracks is just not up to the TMBG standard, which makes it an even harder pill to swallow that many of their great holiday songs don't make the disc.

This is a fun, but short, compilation of They Might Be Giants holiday songs. I like all the songs here, but some people might feel that it's overpriced (at ten bucks for five songs). But it's nice to have these holiday songs all on one CD.

I think that this is a really good album, but isn't the price a little bit high? I mean five songs, it's not that much and it's being sold for almost ten dollars. They should at least half the price. But it's got five songs on which aren't unbelievably great, but a good listen to at Christmas time. I wouldn't reccomend this because it just isn't worth the money.

all of the songs on this single are wonderful - i truly think it's a great holiday collection, and an important thing for any true they might be giants fan to have. however, ten dollars is quite a bit for five songs. also, i already had all of these songs before getting the cd. i do realise that this probably isn't the case for the average tmbg listener, so i'd say get it, if only for the cute sticker and fun liner notes/drawings, but the songs do truly rock.

This EP came as part of a bundle off TMBG's official site, so I can't complain about its price. Anyway, I'm a fairly new fan of TMBG, having just recently made my first purchase: "Dial-A-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants". The "Holidayland EP" is not bad. I like all the tracks on it, my favorite being "Careless Santa", an unbelievably weird tale about (I'm assuming this) a guy hiring Santa to help him rob a bank. It's also got "Feast of Lights", the second song I've ever heard about Hanukah (the first being Adam Sandler's song, of course). I also enjoyed their covers of "Santa Claus" by the Sonics and "O Tannenbaum" in its original German.