Ha! You know, for the longest time I wanted to write about Weird Al but I could never bring myself to do it. I write about guys like Zappa and They Might Be Giants and I attempt to make cases against the “novelty music” label that plagues these off-the-wall acts and everyone else like them, but what do you do when you think about a guy like Weird Al — a modern day honest-to-God unapologetic novelty act? How is it fair to take him seriously, give critical thought to his albums full of comedy music, and lump him in with actual musicians who make careers out of real, genuine artistry and talent?

Easy. Because, in my opinion, we can and should legitimize Weird Al as a real musician, plain and simple. You might know him only as the annoying accordion-wielding parody guy (influenced and elevated into mainstream success by the annoying Dr. Demento) who turns chart-topping hits like Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” and MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” into goofy songs about food and television. And, for the most part, this is all the casual observer needs to know. Digging deeper reveals a steady and successful career spanning four, almost five, decades; a career just as active now as it was when it started. Albums contain about a 50/50 distribution of full-on parody songs and original material, so it’s not all writing fart jokes over Nirvana songs. His loyal and talented backing band has basically remained unchanged since the beginning (Jim West on guitar, Steve Jay on bass, Jon “Bermuda” Schwartz on drums, adding Ruben Valtierra on keyboards in 1991), and all together they put on one hell of a live show. And, if you’re stubborn in your stance that he’s just one big gag and have nothing else positive to say about him, at least you have to admit he is consistent. And that’s saying quite a lot about an individual who just turned 60 years old this past October and therefore, more than most people in his business, needs to keep his finger on the pulse of pop culture in order to survive. And he’s really good at it, too. Adequacy!

Weird Al appeals to all ages, but the best time of your life to be steeped in his irreverent, nerdy offerings that deconstruct music just as much as embrace it would probably be the pre-teen through teenage years. After that, I doubt newcomers would get much of a religious experience from it, but oldcomers will never ever grow out of it. Living proof right here! *points to self, the smirking loathsome bastard* … still skeptical? OK, fine. How about this approach then: treat Weird Al as a gateway artist. His albums display a generous diversity of musical styles, often but not always coinciding with the times, and at best young enthusiasts may find themselves interested in checking out artists and bands that Weird Al saw fit to pay homage to over the years. Chances are good that if you like a Weird Al album from 2014 you’re also going to like a Weird Al album from 1985 regardless of outdated pop decisions. Longevity!

So let’s get right into “Weird Al” Yankovic, his bright-eyed and bushy-haired self-titled debut! Weird Al’s origin story is as close as you’d get to the early-’80s equivalent of sudden Youtube fame: Dr. Demento speaks at Weird Al’s high school, Al accosts him with homemade bedroom recordings of his accordion-accompanied solo efforts, Dr. Demento not only listens to the recordings but likes them and plays them on his own radio show, invites Al as a guest a few times over the years, Al tours with Dr. Demento’s stage show, Al gets noticed by nightclub managers and various outliers in the music industry that use their connections to get Al some recording studio time. OK, so not “sudden” Youtube fame. This is all over the span of roughly seven years, and in the meantime Al finishes school and goes to college and never really considers a full-fledged music career until it becomes an accidental reality. This whole slow burn to humble fame translates perfectly to his humble debut, a collection of earnestly crafted material that only a humble dork in his early 20s from moderately religious/conservative middle-class, suburban Los Angeles can earnestly craft. 30 minutes of enjoyable and wholesome, albeit amateur and shallow, comedy pop songs.

Out of ten tracks, exactly half are direct parody songs: “Ricky” (“Mickey” by one-hit wonder Toni Basil), “I Love Rocky Road” (Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll”), “Stop Draggin’ My Car Around” (Stevie Nicks’/Tom Petty’s “Stop Dragging My Heart Around”), “My Bologna” (The Knack’s “My Sharona”) and “Another One Rides the Bus” (Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust”). Bonus points to Weird Al for unintentional song-selection longevity, since four of those five are still extremely well-known 25 years later and one of them is kinda sorta well-known enough I guess maybe but probably not. I’ll let you, the humble reader, decide which are which.

The other half of the tracks are bona-fide Yankovic originals! Now, as time goes on Al will tend to frame his originals around the sound of other existing artists, so they’re pastiches instead of direct parodies (which have been termed in the canon as “style parodies”). So, for example, “Dog Eat Dog” off of the fourth Weird Al album Polka Party! is a clear Talking Heads style parody that, while maintaining a fully original melody and lyrical foundation, incorporates heavy elements of “Once in a Lifetime” and “And She Was” while aping and exaggerating David Byrne’s desperate, yelping vocal style. Bottom line: come for the direct parodies and stay for the style parodies, I always say! Those are far and above the best parts of the Weird Al catalogue! But alas and oh no! Where are all the style parodies on “Weird Al” Yankovic?! According to the internet, “Happy Birthday” is a Tonio K style parody! But who the fuck is Tonio K?! BOOOOOOOOO! Not impressed! However, “Happy Birthday” is the best song on this album so perhaps that adds credence to my bold “style parodies are always the best songs” claim anyway. The other originals are “Gotta Boogie” (thin post-disco built around a single, weak joke), “Buckingham Blues” (generic harmonica blues about the royal family, inspired by John Mellencamp’s “Jack & Diane”), “The Check’s in the Mail” (the first of many of Yankovic’s jabs at relatable white-collar corporate career shenanigans, something I doubt he can actually even marginally relate to), “I’ll Be Mellow When I’m Dead” (catchy and surprisingly sincere song about Al’s feelings at the time regarding the early ’80s yuppie lifestyle), and “Such a Groovy Guy” (one big, classy, public knock at his then-girlfriend’s ex). None of these are typical style parodies. Further still, none of these are a polka medley! Polka medleys are a Weird Al staple! Early installment weirdness! Aaaaahhhh!

OK, so is it all funny? Kinda sorta. I suppose the whole point of Weird Al’s comedy albums is to get a laugh out of them instead of, you know, dissecting them and appraising them on their musical merits like some basement-dwelling neckbeard. So, hereby and hitherto, all the Weird Al albums will be evaluated based on BOTH the music and the humor. And “Weird Al” Yankovic, the album that started it all…isn’t very musically interesting and isn’t very funny!

Fact of the matter is, Weird Al got much better at this very quickly. The first album is a mess of immature ideas, mediocre lyrical wordplay, and shoddy production. If the rest of his career followed this trajectory then no one would know who he was today. BUT, I gotta give the guy credit for putting himself out there by being no one else but himself and doing nothing but what he wanted to do. As time goes on he will gain the non-ironic respect of everyone from Kurt Cobain to Lin-Manuel Miranda. For all you know Alfred Matthew Yankovic has gotten laid more than Wilt Chamberlain. But, steer clear of his debut album until you’re already a fan, for the love of God.

JUST OK

My very permanent (as it turns out) decision to get a Zappa tattoo this past summer has given me the itch to write more Zappa reviews! An itch that is both literal and figurative. New tattoos are itchy, man. But that’s all in the past! I have the rest of my life now to look back on how I ended the 2010’s by paying someone money to eternally disfigure my perfect body while I hyperventilated nerdily.

Despite my personal, fanatical feelings toward Zappa, I want to make it clear that I don’t consider him to be a genius. I used to think he was, of course, but I don’t anymore. Unless a musician is constantly innovating and inventing, balancing accessibility with challenge, and keeping consistency, I’d be hard pressed to call anybody a genius. Nobody’s that good. In Zappa’s case, the “genius” label likely comes from his adequate mastery of multiple musical styles, which is inherent in his diverse range of interests. People will be quick to confuse a diverse artist for a genuine savant. No one will call AC/DC geniuses because they mastered one style and released the same record 15 times, but these same people may call David Bowie one (who is not a genius either).

Frank Zappa’s modern classical and doo-wop influences weren’t typical of his contemporaries, so his approach to anything would be understandably atypical as well. That’s why this “soundtrack” album of orchestral pieces mixed with rock music exists. If nothing else, Zappa had some instincts and was never afraid to go with his gut…but don’t call him a genius. This album, and the movie that inspired the music, are lauded by some as “genius” level. It’s actually not really that good in the first place! That’s the kind of problem everyone forgets to mention, and why I find it apt to bring it up now. 200 Motels is a deep cut in the catalog, but most hardcore fans far enough down the rabbit hole to come across this album will usually cite it in their defense for Zappa’s “genius” status. Meh. I don’t agree. In fact, if I were attempting to advertise Zappa’s “genius” I’d steer clear of this album entirely. It’s not a good argument for it.

Let’s talk about the movie first. Gotta give the music some context, no? Not just for you, but for me as well! I’ve never fucking seen it and I don’t wanna. Wikipedia here I come…ok, 200 Motels (the movie) is a film that “...attempts to portray the craziness of life on the road as a rock musician, and as such consists of a series of unconnected nonsense vignettes interspersed with concert footage of the Mothers of Invention.” OK, I’m going to stop right there because it’s not going to help clarify anything further. On paper it sounds an awful lot like the Uncle Meat movie, which was a thinly veiled life-on-the-road documentary wrapped with a bizarre sci-fi narrative. I think these young fresh fellows assumed their lives were much more interesting than reality and decided that everyone else wanted to know about it, so Zappa tried once more with 200 Motels and, since history repeats itself, failed again.

Now that’s not a huge loss, right? The Uncle Meat movie was supposedly a garbage turd from shit hell and the accompanying album was nearly perfect, right? Surely the same applies in this case??? Ha! No! In its favor, 200 Motels (the album) is not a life-on-the-road documentary. That will come 20 years later as the (sorta shitty) Flo/Eddie-era archival double CD Playground Psychotics. What this actually is, it’s about 90 minutes of surprisingly sophisticated orchestral arrangements woven into a mix of rock and comedy music. And what that actually means, it’s a tapestry of weak and mildly interesting orchestra music surrounded by low-brow butt rock and juvenile humor. So if you loved the Fillmore East – June 1971 album…you may actually like this even less due to the orchestra music, honestly. There’s an awful lot of it.

The orchestra music in of itself isn’t bad, but it’s certainly not too exciting and within the context of the final 200 Motels product it almost feels like it’s in the way of the rest of the music. I can’t think of many other albums that intersperse rock and roll tracks with orchestra music, but if this is THE BEST EXAMPLE IN THE WORLD then it falls flat anyway because the orchestral bits suck the life out of the project. Now, mind you, if these bits were as interesting as the odds and ends that made up the Burnt Weeny Sandwich album then I’d be whistling a different tune, but I’d be a filthy fucking liar if I elevated any of this stuff to Burnt Weeny Sandwich levels of output. Sorry.

And the rock songs? Flo and Eddie, of course, means you can knock off 150 points, but a lot of this stuff isn’t as overtly bad as the material on Fillmore East – June 1971. “Mystery Roach”, “Lonesome Cowboy Burt”, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy”, “What Will This Evening Bring Me This Morning” and “Magic Fingers” all sound like solid Chunga’s Revenge outtakes, and where some of the subject matter gets revoltingly crass it gets made up for with, like, actual good melodies. The bad stuff is bad though, like “Shove It Right In”, which is yet another song about groupie fucking but sung all slow and sophisticated like it’s not about groupie fucking. And then there’s stuff like “Penis Dimension” and “Dental Hygiene Dilemma” that continues the Flo/Eddie and Co. suck-ass comic routine that goes on for too long, the former being a small dick joke and the latter being one big convoluted in-joke about Zappa’s bassist Jeff Simmons complaining about being in the band because Zappa actually did record him complaining about being in the band for real once and then he made Simmons complain about being in the band for his movie, and then Simmons “quits” but he doesn’t really. Sounds hilarious, doesn’t it? I can’t stop laughing.

And then there’s the stuff that’s less orchestral bits and rock songs and more stage antics translated to audio, which doesn’t work quite well as you might imagine. This is mostly segregated to the last half of disc two, starting with “The Lad Searches the Night for His Newts” and ending with “Little Green Scratchy Sweaters & Courduroy Ponce”. I’m not even going to pretend I know what the hell is going on with any of it, and I won’t waste any further time talking about it!

The finale is a Zappa staple: “Strictly Genteel”. It’s one of the very few arrangements Zappa ever made with some actual heart, and it would make the rounds here and there at live shows up until Zappa’s death. This version, however, is the worst one, as it begins with a monologue by Thoedore Bikel of Fiddler on the Roof fame and then continues on with lyrics that future versions would omit completely (“Lord have mercy on the hippies and the faggots/And the dykes and the weird little children they grow” ….yeah…). After the tune is properly over, though, a blues breakdown occurs with more Flo and Eddie filling your ears with their wiseguy garbage that goes on for five minutes.

A few bonus tracks of radio advertisements for the film are tacked on to the end of the album, followed by a radio edit for “Magic Fingers”.

So, yeah, that’s it. And this is all coming from me, the guy who thinks Zappa shat gold during his lifetime. Go listen to 200 Motels and try, just try as hard as you can, to make a case for “genius” using this album as your only frame of reference. Luckily for all of us, the Flo and Eddie years are almost over. Just one more shitty album left to go.

KINDA BAD

After “dominating” the rock culture for about two or three good years in the early ’70s, progressive rock had rightfully, and for its own good, receded back into the shadows and stayed put. Nearly 45 years later the forgotten genre continues steadily on a rolling boil, maintaining its niche status among the throngs of rock geeks, budding musicians, fantasy/sci-fi fans, and other degenerate outliers of the greater music-listening population. A great compromise if you ask me! Progressive rock is bloated with garbage, but it’s the kind of garbage that people who are the target audience for that kind garbage will spend the time seeking out that kind of garbage because they enjoy that kind of garbage. God knows I’m guilty as hell about this. But, aggghhhhh, here’s the eternal problem!: once in a while something will be released in this niche-ass genre by a very unknown band from a part of the world known for releasing music in this niche-ass genre, that, tragically, deserves to be hoisted out of the shadows and into the spotlight…but never will just by virtue of its prog association.

Go ahead and read my reviews on the last two Major Parkinson albums in order to catch up on my feelings about the band’s unfortunate obscurity. Their third release, Twilight Cinema, is where it begins to start hurting a little. I can tell that the band is nowhere near slowing down as they currently work on their fifth album. Their fourth album was developed entirely upon donations by their loyal fans, of which I’m proud to consider myself a contributor. Very little backstory exists on Twilight Cinema, which I imagine was a similar low-budget fan-funded situation, but clearly this is a band that loves what they’re doing and are willing expend the effort to put out product with little monetary return. It makes it all more frustrating that Twilight Cinema, from beginning to end, is an incredible piece of music by anybody’s standards. The decade isn’t completely over and I will already confidently put it at the very top of my list of the best albums of the 2010s. No major music publications acknowledged it, because why should they? Virtually zero independent or minor music publications acknowledged it, because of the prog genre. As far as I’m concerned, this is Major Parkinson’s magnum opus. No one will ever know about this album, and that’s a sad fact.

The upside for me is that albums like these can be reviewed entirely from the gut, since no historical context or critical reception surrounding the album exists to impair my judgment! Allow me to begin by explaining why, exactly, this particular album deserves to be elevated above the vast, tepid bog of niche prog rock: 1) it avoids nearly all the worst pitfalls of overwrought prog while maintaining impeccable consistency, originality, and diversity, 2) it’s intellectually challenging without sacrificing mental or emotional accessibility, 3) it’s not overlong for fuck’s sake , and 4) it has a high replayability factor. In my travels it’s extremely rare to find modern progressive rock albums that hit all four points, and doggone it I’ll excuse it almost every time. Even Steven Wilson, the modern prog messiah himself, falters in nearly every instance (usually with #3, occasionally with #1). But to hit all four points effortlessly, or least with perceived effortlessness, that’s something special. No question about it.

The first track of Major Parkinson albums tend to feel like extended intros, and Twilight Cinema is no exception with “Skeleton Sangria”. Even at 2:50 it feels like a lead-in to the much more substantial and assertive “Impermanence”, especially since it’s easy to wave it off completely due to the immense strength of the next seven tracks. Hell, it’s my least favorite song here. Good to get it out of the way early. However, I have now been forced into actually, like, sitting down and critically listening to the song and evaluating it on its own merits. And you know what…yeah, ok, it’s good. I’ve come to appreciate the surprise of the happy-go-lucky (synthesized organ?) solo that pops in at the end after the rest of the acoustic and stripped-down cabaret waltz, but many other bands could (and do) base an entire album around this particular sound.

But the real star here is “Impermanence”, which actually sets the dark tone of the rest of the album in a way that renders the “Skeleton Sangria” intro POSITIVELY SUPERFLUOUS. Throw away “Skeleton Sangria”! “Impermanence” is an unbelievable display of everything good about progressive rock in four minutes and twenty-six seconds. They channel Porcupine Tree a bit here, to their favor. Atmospheric and skewing towards darkness, but with warmth dragging you down back down to earth thanks to the lush piano punctuating the driving beat. Crescendos and decrescendos are used to excellent effect, bringing tension to a head and providing satisfying release several times (yeah baby). The verse that starts with “Raindrops dripping from a parasol/Making bubbles to collect the blue skies…“, the one with several measures awash in low-range piano, the one that chillingly crescendos to the next verse, those are the best consecutive seconds of music in Major Parkinson’s entire discography. And it just keeps building, weaving in perfectly-balanced electronic Tangerine Dream-esque krautrock rhythms while Kollbotn gives a mellow, restrained, even beautiful vocal performance…and just when you think the song can’t possibly evolve further, the breathtaking coda starts chugging along with bongo-style drumming over acoustic strumming…and just when you think this sudden new melody can’t possibly evolve further, the breathtaking male/female vocal climax brings everything to the peak (yeah baby). I guess, in the end, you have to hear it, right? This song was my obsession in 2014 and I haven’t heard a track that has grabbed me quite the same way since. Merging talented rock performance with natural pop instincts will always win points in my book. Never the ‘twain shall meet for highfalutin prog snobs, but fuck those stuffed shirts. This track will make a believer out of anyone.

And then from this point forward the consistency is maintained. “Black River” is a rollicking, menacingly energetic song about…uh, I don’t know. You’ll need a thesaurus handy, but the lyrics are so abstract anyway that you might as well just enjoy the music and treat the vocals like another instrument (hmm…déjà vu…). You can pretend that the song is about pirates! It’s hard to listen to that chorus melody without picturing Captain Jack Sparrow sauntering up and down the Black Pearl – and see, that’s very close to the name of the song! I think the song is actually about a drowned woman, but I gleaned that only from the first two lines and the rest is just muckity muck anyway. “A Cabin in the Sky” is also menacingly energetic and a pure carnival horror show, so me likey! It’s a clever juxtaposition of schmaltzy waltzy old-timey three-ring circus music and modern big city…but still old-timey…illustrative lyrics (that I still can’t comprehend but the DO mention things like “bright lights on 42nd street” and convertible cars!). This is also Twilight Cinema‘s most infectious earworm and the in-your-face brashness of the horns during the chorus is fuckin’ cathartic. “A Cabin in the Sky” is surely a Top 40 hit in some twisted alternate clown dimension.

“Beaks of Benevola” is gorgeous and I believe that the band should really start employing more of the male/female vocal interplay. Oh wait, they will! On the next album! Excellent! The lush smoothness of the female voice (I can’t find any info on the vocalist; probably some Norwegian chick from Stjørdalshalsen!) works remarkably well with Kollbotn raspy, shitty, piece-of-shit, 1930s cabaret child-molestin’ voice, resulting in the first truly successful ballad the band has attempted (I love the noodly instrumental ending). The titular track “Twilight Cinem” wraps it up with a goofy and bouncy pop number that harkens back to the band’s earlier oddball material (“Epitaphs and pornographic literature!“). The final track also serves to unintentionally showcase just how different the first two albums could have sounded with crisper production. Let’s get some remasters going.

So I skipped “Heart Machine”, which is my second-favorite track behind “Impermanence”, only because it’s the most…underwhelming. More than any other song it sails under the radar because it’s not TOO weird or TOO different, but with its doom metal riffs and fast blast beat drumming (especially at the end) it’s undeniably the heaviest song on the album, at least part of it. The heaviness is tempered by some very pretty, ethereal piano passages and hushed vocals. My favorite bit is the instrumental bridge that starts with a tense, vibrating hum that follows with a piano breakdown into a bendy, echo-y, dreamlike guitar solo. These guys are good at tension-and-release! Yeah baby.

And I skipped “The Wheelbarrow” because, and I’ll fess up, it turns out that this album isn’t completely perfect. This one is the obligatory 8-minute epic suite right in the middle of the record, and it’s the closest they come to falling into the prog wankery trap. Freshness is kept throughout with some catchy melodic phrases and some repeated verses (“She can do anything/She can love everyone/Doing the same routine over and over“), and it wouldn’t be Major Parkinson without throwing in some gypsy accordion! But, other than that, being somewhat lengthy and inaccessible and, on the surface, similar to any other cookie-cutter 8-minute prog rock song released since 1969, this would be the most likely turnoff for the prog hater. Since I’m a prog lover I’m just going to end this paragraph with a hearty “fuck you, it’s good” and move on! Fuck you, it’s good.

Album of the Decade. Not much else to say.

VERY GOOD

So, what, the music world didn’t already have enough nerds scrambling around by the mid-’80s? Devo, Thomas Dolby, Elvis Costello, Weird Al, the B-52’s, fuckin’ Rush, did we really need more? Ha! Don’t even bother thinking about it. Enter John Linnell and John Flansburgh, unequivocally the two biggest nerds that the music world had even seen up to that point. Subtle, unassuming nerds, of course, but nerds all the same. Nerds who are so nerdy that I doubt they even know, even realize to the fullest extent, how nerdy they truly are. Weird Al’s got nothing on the Johns.

I have a personal bias toward They Might Be Giants because I was a big ol’ fucking nerd as a teenager, having had their music swirling around the latent areas of my brain for years and years prior, all thanks to that one episode of Tiny Toons where they made music videos out of “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” and “Particle Man”. I finally took the plunge and purchased their third album Flood, the FIRST. EVER. NON-COMEDY. ALBUM. that I had ever purchased for myself! It was a big deal. These guys were like messiahs to me, displaying their full-frontal nerdity without any shame and reliably feeding my ears with the most catchy, odd-ball pop tunes to ever be crafted by a couple of young New York dorks with basically just an accordion and a drum machine. Having been influenced by the aforementioned Devo, Elvis Costello, the B-52’s, as well as weirdos like Zappa, the Residents, Captain Beefheart, and even Carl Stalling’s hyperactive Bugs Bunny music, Linnell and Flansy have an incredible ability to draw from these influences and pool their talents in order to create some whip-smart and highly original output. None of their songs sound like any of those bands or artists, but no one is going to argue against placing TMBG alongside any of them. Overtime their output becomes less impressive and more derivative, but waving off their first few studio albums as novelty music does a disservice to pop music in general.

That goes double for their self-titled debut, which is likely the most impressive and least derivative collection of songs they would accomplish for the rest of their career. Don’t confuse that with consistency, since They Might Be Giants is middle-of-the-road in the consistency department. An album just short of 40 minutes, 19 songs total, with only one cracking the 3-minute mark, the Johns don’t have time for consistency! They need to get in, get out, and move on! The impressiveness comes from just how absolutely different one song sounds from the next. What’s the opposite of derivative? Integral? The integralness comes from unconventional song structures and, let’s face it, the completely nutso, wild ideas. People always listen to albums and go “wow, they must have really had fun making this!”. Those albums, any album I don’t care take your pick, those all seem like church compared to this one, because the sheer earnestness and uninhibited energy that the Johns display comes through in a way that cannot be mistaken as anything other than unbridled love for the sport. Even a jaded piece of shit like me can be convinced. This flurry of quick ideas also means tons of experimentation and genre-bending, and therefore not everything is going to be a slam dunk. You can bet your shiny metal ass, though, that you will absolutely LOVE at least two or three of these tracks and they likely won’t overlap with your listening party buddy’s favorites. You will also HATE a few tracks too, but such is the price to pay for the full experience. It’s like a big emotional roller coaster of annoying, nasally geek voices and accordion jack-offery! Yeah baby. FOR EXAMPLE, I have a soft spot for “Everything Right is Wrong Again”, “Hide Away Folk Family” and “Youth Culture Killed My Dog”, but you might not! I can’t stand “Boat of Car” or “The Day”, but you, the idiot moron, may thrive on such banality! It all depends on your personal threshold for general weirdness and off-kilter, uh, “melodies” I guess you could maybe call it? The point is, there’s something for everyone!

There’s so much to unpack that I’d write 30 pages if I had to go through each track on its own. The Johns are mostly doing it all themselves armed with a small arsenal of instruments and a drum machine for nearly all the drum and bass tracks. Musical styles employed include new wave electronica, synthpop, polka, college rock, American folk, country, hard rock, gothic rock, bluegrass, industrial, post-modernist avant-garde, and everything in between. Many at the same time, usually. Sometimes you can’t even tell. Take “She’s an Angel”: it’s one of the more stylistically and lyrically grounded songs, perhaps perceptibly normal only after comparison to the ten weirder tracks before it. TMBG are well known for their cryptic, allusion-filled lyrics, but this one is uncharacteristically straightforward and clearly a love song. Deeper probing reveals strange songwriting decisions anyway. Like, what’s with the monotone vocal delivery over minimalist, gothic single-note one-measure bursts between the choruses? What’s with all the fluid slide guitar snaking around Linnell’s twangy, heartfelt singing during the chorus? How would one even classify this? In the end, why does it really matter? No other song in existence sounds like it. It’s beautiful. They nailed it…whatever “it” is, of course. Or how about *closes eyes and points to a random track* …”Chess Piece Face”, with its bold and sneaky synth notes, and Flansburgh singing like some grizzled, rejected medieval bard about God knows what. Sources say that the titular individual, the one with the face like a *checks notes* chess piece, is based on a boss Flansburgh had. But that’s all the information available about this bizarre song, and the mystery makes the song more intriguing than it has any right to be, just like the other 18 tracks. In fact, I’m pretty sure I think the vocals sound medieval because I’m associating the music with chess pieces! Got me again! How about one more…”Don’t Let’s Start” is the one, if any, most people may recognize off their debut. It lays low as far as weirdness goes, but it’s easy to miss the fact that this song has at least three distinct and memorable melodies fused together in a seamless display of synthpop wizardry. As awkward and clunky as a verse like “D, world destruction/Over and overture/N, do I need/Apostrophe T, need this torture?” reads in print, the flow is beautiful and the transition into the main chorus is as natural as could be. Try not to sing along after inevitably hitting repeat on the track a few times in a row.

Man, ok, I love “Hide Away Folk Family” so I need to talk about it for a second. Creepy lullaby music, punctuated further by Linnell’s naturally off-putting whinging voice of course, but no skimping on infectious melody so it’s a perfect recipe of catchiness and uniqueness for this song to stick in your head for days. The Johns still seize opportunities where they can to have fun and experiment as their whims demand, and there’s a certain charm to their brazenness. Perplexing choices in this song include an oddly unsettling spoken-word horoscope delivered during the bridge section, and an incredibly fake backmasked vocal ending. So fake, in fact, that it’s hilarious!

The “bad” songs are really a matter of personal preference. There’s something to offer from every track on here no matter how short, or simple, or offensive to one’s personal aesthetics. I think “Boat of Car” sucks because of the plinky 8-bit Atari-style bloops and beeps, but I can see the appeal for those who, say, enjoy a composition cooked up by a Speak & Spell. And, in spite of myself, I find the repeated “Daddy’ll sing bass” Johnny Cash sampling amusing. I don’t like “The Day” because I don’t have much appreciation yet for slow soul-folk, even if satirical. The idea of Marvin Gaye and Phil Ochs’ marriage, however, is funny, and I can’t knock the song too hard. Like a I said before, something for everyone. Scanning through the tracklist I can’t find too much more to criticize.

Let’s end on a objective high note anyway. How about the closer “Rhythm Section Want Ad”: barely-intelligible slurried and oddly-inflected/cadenced vocals at slacker-lightning speed that protest mainstream musical expectations while still throwing in an accordion solo lifted note-for-note from that one ancient Raymond Scott composition they play during factory sequences in Bugs Bunny cartoons (you know the one). Not even taking into account the unassumingly catchy pop rock music and vocal delivery, there’s so much more going on in those 2 minutes and 21 seconds: constant references (both overt and subtle) to cartoons in general, self-deprecating remarks masked as clever turns of phrase (“In a world we call our home there’s lots of room to roam/Plenty of time to turn mistakes into rhyme“), and goddamned multilayered PUNS (“There’s a place for those who love their poetry/It’s just across from the sign that says ‘Pros Only’“).

OK, I have to throw a few more nuggets of lyrical genius. It’s not They Might Be Giants without a scattering of puns everywhere you step. After all, it’s unequivocally the factor that separates them from every other band of its kind, and they further embrace the shit out of it as time goes on:

“And sadly the cross-eyed bear’s been put to sleep behind the stairs”
“A poor man once told me/That he can’t afford to speak”
“The words I’m singing now/Mean nothing more than “meow” to an animal”

Nurture the inner geek within and listen to this album. 1986 was arguably the worst year in history for pop music, so spend some time with a record that is not only exceptional for its year but also an underappreciated benchmark for DIY indie pop. Without TMBG, there might not be any Ben Folds, Weezer or Barenaked Ladies…so depending on your feelings about those three I might have just argued against 1986 even further. Sorry.

GOOD