TMBG: Join Us Vs. The Else

8.3.11

7:17 pm

First off, I'm sorry to keep harping on this, but it's been harping on me.

So, feel free to skip this if you don't want to see me debate myself out loud about whether or not They Might Be Giant's "Join Us" is a good album or better than "The Else" and why or why not.
Fair warning. 

The whole catalyst behind this foray into esoterica came from two bits in some recent interviews with the Johns of TMBG.

The first was Flans recounting that, while listening to their 2007 album, "The Else", during mastering, Linnell turned to him and said, "Well, this is the least-coziest record we've ever made". Flansburgh remarked to the interviewer, "I don't think it's our goal to make cozy albums, but there's a little bit of cozy in "Join Us", in a good way."

This got me to thinking...

The second bit was also Flans, who was asked which of their records he has a specific fondness for.
He goes on to say while recording their 2004 album, "The Spine", "there was a real overabundance of spiderwebby, Halloweeny kind of songs. Some were manic, and some were more pastoral -- but as a group, it seemed like a bit much to put them all on the album, so we left a lot off, and the overflow became the EP The Spine Surfs Alone. When I listen to it now, the EP is wonderfully, if unintentionally, cohesive and so damn paranoid -- it's a real song cycle."

That also got me to thinking...

The result of this thinking is as follows:

From first listen, "Join Us" has struck me as a bit beige, if you catch my meaning.

The songs aren't bad; several are good and a few are great, but, as a whole, there's no rock.
You'll never have to turn down the bass on this album, you know?
All the instruments are there, and, for the most part, they're played with skill, but there's a lack of feeling.
Everything is set to "4" rather than "8", especially when compared to "The Else".
The most obvious reason for this is because "The Else" was produced by the Dust Brothers, who have worked with bands 1,000 times more "rock" than They Might Be Giants will ever be, and they added a lot of touches that Pat Dillett (TMBG's producer and friend for almost thirty years) and the Johns wouldn't have thought to.
When I first heard "The Else", the difference was immediately noticeable: it was still a They Might Be Giants album, no question, but it sounded so fresh.
The bass wasn't just something dropped on the track, you could feel it driving the songs.
Miller's and Flansburgh's guitars were crunchy and fuzzy and other adjectives that should be applied to animals or food.
Beller was actually drumming as opposed to playing the role of human metronome.
Let me put it another way: "The Else" has a sense of space being filled by the whole band working together whereas "Join Us" sounds like everything, the vocals, drums, keys, are all, for the most part, dead center on the same track.
There's no dynamism on "Join Us".
Maybe this was a simple as moving the bass a little off center or putting a dollop of distortion on the guitars or hiding some hand claps in the mix, but it worked wonders. 

In one of the above mentioned interviews, Flansburgh complained that "The Else" has "kind of a relentless quality" and that, on "Join Us", they didn't want that. That struck me as odd for artists who are trying to sell a full length album in this world of randomized mp3 playlists and listeners who only want the most downloaded tracks from an album. I would think you'd want a relentless album, one that makes people want to keep listening, as opposed to stopping after two tracks to go do something else.

And, as for Linnell's remark about "The Else" being their least-cozy album, well, "cozy" isn't really why I listen to They Might Be Giants. I'm not saying that TMBG should take a page from Slipknot, but I will say that "The Spine Surfs Alone" is amazing and not one of those tracks is "cozy".
In fact, I kept thinking, as I listened to "The Spine" and then "The Spine Surfs Alone" that the former should have had more flavor from the latter.
I would listen to something bland and uninteresting from "The Spine" like 'The World Before Later On' and think how great something frantic and compelling from "The Spine Surfs Alone" like 'I'm All You Can Think About' would have worked better.
On one hand, I was just grateful, as a fan, to know that TMBG could still make the weird-ass shit that populated "Surfs", but, on the other hand, I wondered why "The Spine" didn't have more stuff like that on it, why it was all relegated to an EP you had to seek out; it almost seemed like the band was embarrassed by these intriguing oddities.
Flans also mentioned in an interview that, originally, the band recorded about 30 songs for "Join Us", the last 15 or so which actually became the album. He described the first half as "just the most mutant songs". If someone asked me to pick between the words "cozy" and "mutant" to represent what I'd like to see in a They Might Be Giants album, guess which one I'd pick.

The strange thing is, as much as John and John seem to not like the relentless nature of "The Else", they certainly enjoyed playing eleven of the thirteen tracks live for a period of several months on their nationwide tour.

At the moment, they're only playing eight of the eighteen tracks off their new one.
In the end, I think that, while Flansburgh and Linnell might not have liked the album the Dust Brothers helped them create, they knew it was good.
I also think that "cozy" can be replaced easily with "sleepy" or "dusty" and that "relentless" can be just as easily replaced with "intriguing" and "compelling". 

So, I guess what I'm saying is that They Might Be Giants should work with the Dust Brothers again.

Seriously though, TMBG have been working with the same person as their producer for decades and they've gotten very comfortable. Based on their last few albums, it doesn't seem like their really challenging themselves much anymore.

When Trent Reznor feels comfortable (musically speaking), he knows he's done something wrong, something boring. It's when he's most unsure about something that he follows that thread to its end, usually with some interesting and unexpected results.
It might not always be gold or even good, but at least it isn't something you've heard before.