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Standard Fare - The Noyelle Beat (LP)

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Album Review

They Might be Giants The Spine
Cooking Vinyl

Article written by Alex M
Jul 7, 2004.

What annoys me about TMBG is the fans who pick up on their gobbledygook lyrics as evidence of the band’s eccentricity and, by implication, their genius. Poppycock! Listening to the meaningless drivel being spewed out here shows that after 20 years of making music John Linnell and John Flansburgh and are still unable to write lyrics that can be quoted without embarrassment. Here’s an example: “Wearing a raincoat is flying around in a plane made of a raincoat”. And this circular style of abstract piffle is found in most of the album’s 16 tracks.

So why did I like it so much? Well first of all we should remember that this is just pop music and that pop lyrics rarely stands up to much scrutiny. At least these guys try to use new ideas rather than just ineptly bolting together rock clichés in the style of Noel Gallagher and so many others. But mainly it’s because the tunes are so enjoyable that the impenetrable twaddle being sung over them can be forgiven. What’s so surprising is that when many bands would have lost the ability or the desire to create music these two can still come up with so many fresh-sounding melodies. The adventurous but undemanding chord changes remind me of Belle and Sebastian’s current output – and that’s a big compliment in my book.

There seems to be an effort to make these songs as diverse as possible, with devices like brass instruments, vocoders or dance beats being used for one track only and then discarded. This gives the collection a slightly gimmicky feel but is not out of place with the overall carefree atmosphere. I’ll even admit that the lyrics sometimes contain occasional notable ideas (e.g. “I’ve got my house surrounded, I know I’m in there”) although these are rarely more than interesting thoughts that the band can’t build into lucid poetry. None of the songs here that stand out quite as strongly as TMBG’s more famous moments like ‘Birdhouse in Your Soul’ or ‘Boss of Me’ but there are plenty of very hummable tunes. Just make sure you don’t do more than hum them, or you may find yourself singing lines like “I was all out of luck like a duck that died, I was all out of juice like a moose denied”. Stupid happy fun.

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