Apollo 18

They Might Be Giants

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 24, 1992)
• Original Release Date: March 24, 1992
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Elektra / Wea
• ASIN: B000002HA4
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (83 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #39,816 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential recording

Genuinely clever, profoundly sophomoric -- this NYC duo carry on tweaking pop songcraft in fine Bonzo Dog Doo Dah tradition. "The Statue Got Me High" is the zippy standout; other winners include "Narrow Your Eyes," "Guitar" (a smarmy remake of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight") and the cut-and-paste dementia of the 21-part "Fingertips." --Jeff Bateman

Amazon.com essential recording

Genuinely clever, profoundly sophomoric -- this NYC duo carry on tweaking pop songcraft in fine Bonzo Dog Doo Dah tradition. "The Statue Got Me High" is the zippy standout; other winners include "Narrow Your Eyes," "Guitar" (a smarmy remake of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight") and the cut-and-paste dementia of the 21-part "Fingertips." --Jeff Bateman

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible, July 30, 2004

By	Morgan Phillips (Savannah, GA United States) - See all my reviews

This album stands out as one of TMBG's finest. The music is just brilliantly written, with their trademark lyrics that venture somewhere between profound and confounding. Straight from the get-go, you jump right into the fast and thunking "Dig My Grave" and from there into the incredibly fun "I Palindrome I". The masterpieces that really stand out here, however, are "Statue Got Me High", "Fingertips"- the absurdist collection of seconds-long songs, and "Guitar"- a witty parody of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" that is very popular live.

Every song in this album is a keeper- I find it very hard to skip from track to track. The sounds never jump around inappropriately- you glide from song to song without question of its location. Somehow you start in the thrashy sounds of "Dig My Grave" and end up in the glorious instrumental masterpiece that is "Spacesuit" (my personal favorite). This is an album that all people must have- some of the best music ever written is on this album. The rest of the best music ever written is on TMBG's masterpiece "Flood".


1. Dig My Grave- 4/5
2. I Palindrome- 5/5
3. She's Actual Size- 4/5
4. My Evil Twin- 4/5
5. Mammal- 5/5
6. Statue Got Me High- 5/5
7. Spider- 4/5
8. Guitar- 5/5
9. Dinner Bell- 4/5
10. Narrow Your Eyes- 5/5
11. Hall of Heads- 4/5
12. Which Describes How You're Feeling- 4/5
13. See the Constellation- 5/5
14. If I Wasn't Shy- 4/5
15. Turn Around- 5/5
16. Hypnotist of Ladies- 4/5
17. Fingertips- 5/5
38. Space Suit- 5/5 (#1 song on the album)

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Flansburgh rules on this oddball effort, January 12, 2003

By	Gena Chereck (Nebraska, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Oh, Dem Golden Fingertips!!, June 7, 2005

By	Chief Quimby (Berkeley, Ca) - See all my reviews

My best friend in high school, who actually was a huge John Williams/Weird Al fan (as mentioned in the review of "Flood"...weird!) tried to get me into this in high school, and i didn't quite bite. But 8 years later i found myself thinking about the masterpiece "F I N G E R T I P S ! ! " and had to buy it. I was not let down, amigos! This album is a little disjointed, sort of hit and miss (although even the 'misses' are quite nice), but the sheer weirdness and effort put into Fingertips is worth it. Totally bizarre and wonderful.

And yes, I am over the age of 13.