They Might Be Giants

They Might Be Giants

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 1, 1993)
• Original Release Date: 1986
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Restless Records
• ASIN: B000003BIR
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #32,603 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential recording
The self-titled debut from alternative music's favorite dork-rockers launched a career based on absurd lyrics planted in wildly diverse musical garden. Songs like "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head" and the New-Wavish tributary "Youth Culture Killed My Dog," are sung with an Andy Kaufman-like sensibility that leaves one questioning their sincerity. In contrast, the tune "Don't Let's Start" is relatively sweet and earnest. Musically, TMBG stray from the country honker "Number Three" to the glam-rocker "(She Was a) Hotel Detective," adapting accordion, fuzz-boxed guitar, and electric piano to suit their purposes. Perhaps the most subversive mockery of all is how TMBG write extremely catchy melodies that "serious" musicians would love to claim as their own. "His shoes are laced with irony" goes a line from "Hide Away Folk Family." That pretty much ties it up. --Beth Massa

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cut your teeth, October 5, 2001

By	"antiphilosopher" (Cincinnati, OH United States) - See all my reviews

I remember the first time I was forced to listen to this album - a friend of a friend brought it over to my place one night and forced me to listen to it. After the disc ended I threw him out of my pad and told him that he had no idea what good music was supposed to sound like. He left so quickly in tears that he left the disc in my stereo. The next day while I was doing dishes, a tune popped into my head AND WOULN'T GO AWAY. I ransacked my apartment for the cd that this maddeningly oddball riff had come from, but I had no luck. Finally, after hours of frustration, I just hit random play on my changer and there it was. "32 Footsteps." I was amazed. Listened to the album over and over again, and TMBG's first album sank its mischevious little hooks into my soul. Bouncy, catchy, upbeat psychosis in musical form! Oh, the joy! My friend never got the CD back, and to this day TMBG remains one of the most beloved bands in this punk's musical arsenal.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Meet John Flansburgh, lovable crackpot..., January 10, 2003

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

Funny and fresh, ebullient and eccentric, bubbly and bursting with ideas (though perhaps too restless to dwell on them for very long), Flansy's personality is all over this disc. The bespectacled, guitar-playing half of They Might Be Giants sounds (and looks!) like a cross between Elvis Costello and Marshall Crenshaw, but his contributions to this 1986 debut are stylistically all-over-the-map, and he reveals himself to be a surprisingly versatile vocalist. The self-deprecating "Number Three" ("There's only two songs in me, and I just wrote the third!") is ersatz country; the tough-but-funny "Alienation's for the Rich" ("...and I'm feeling poorer every day") is bluesy country-rock. "Chess Piece Face" is hilariously fey art-rock, and "She Was a Hotel Detective" is stomping glam-rock. "Absolutely Bill's Mood" is a pulsing, pounding ode to insanity (dig that Dylanesque title); "Hide Away Folk Family" is sweet pop balladry with truly disturbing lyrics (about a family whose house is about to be torched). "Rabid Child" (about a kid hooked on CB radio) and the surreal "Youth Culture Killed My Dog" ("Bacharach and David used to write his favorite songs ... But the hiphop and the white funk just blew away my puppy's mind") are pure, upbeat pop. The best of the lot is "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head," with its infectious New Wave bounce and clever, thoughtful lyrics ("As your body floats down 3rd St. with the burn-smell factory closing up, yes it's sad to say you will romanticize all the things you've known before / It was not-not-not so great ... and as you take a bath in that beaten path, there's a pounding at the door;" "Ads up in the subway are the work of someone trying to please their boss / And though the guy's a pig we all know what he wants is just to please somebody else").

That's not to say that John Linnell, the boyishly handsome, accordian-playing half of TMBG, doesn't have his moments. On the exuberant opener "Everything Right is Wrong Again," the furious closer "Rhythm Section Want Ad," the brassy "Nothing's Gonna Change My Clothes," the gorgeous "She's an Angel," and the classic "Don't Let's Start" ("No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful / Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful!"), he offers hints of things to come on albums like Lincoln (1988) and John Henry (1994). (I must also mention "Hope That I Get Old Before I Die," his polka-flavored duet with Flansy featuring the line, "I think about the dirt that I'll be wearing for a shirt.")

Plus, I'm pleased to report that the filler quotient is rather low on this 19-track album; "Boat of Car" (featuring Margaret Seiler on lead vocals and, inexplicably, a sample of Johnny Cash's "Daddy Sang Bass"), Flansburgh's "Toddler Hiway," and Linnell's "32 Footsteps" are amusing at first but don't hold up to repeated listens. And the Flansy-Linnell duet "The Day" is notable only for its opening line, "The day Marvin Gaye and Phil Ochs got married" -- how could the rest of the song possibly live up to that, anyway?

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Review by a Music Fan, December 1, 1999

By A Customer

I lost a few of my other TMBG albums in a fire, and a few other have been loaned out to friends permanently. Luckily, I still have their self-titled album, which is one of my favorites of all time. It's also a good place to start listening to John and John, surpassed only by Flood, the most friendly of all TMBG efforts. Severe Tire Damage, which is a live-ish showcase of their talents, would also be a good first buy.