Album of the Week: They Might Be Giants- John Henry

Radiohead's OK Computer was the album that really got me into the idea of appreciating music as a serious art form, searching for new and interesting sounds and styles, but it was John Henry by They Might Be Giants which originally showed me a world beyond that of the pop music, hip hop, and post-grunge/alternative rock that dominated the radio in the early 90s. Truth be told I only borrowed it from the library because I was trying to find the songs that the children's show Tiny Toon Adventures made into music videos in one episode. It turned out they weren't on John Henry (they were from Flood), but it didn't matter. It blew my fragile little mind that people could write songs about dirt bikes and obscure painters; unlike Weird Al, it wasn't case of someone taking other songs and substituting funny/clever words it. Yeah, these songs weren't totally serious, either, but They Might Be Giants wrote their own tunes. The word play and odd point of view of They Might Be Giants was every bit a formative experience as similarly youthful/odd things like the TV show The Adventures Of Pete & Pete and Weird Al. All of those are surreal, bizarre, intelligent, and have a unique worldview that is very different from the rest of the culture at large. If people are the products of what they 'consume' then I can thank/blame John Henry, Pete & Pete, and Weird Al as much as anything else in my life for the mentality and personality I have.

John Henry seems to be a controversial point in this band's discography. Let's pause and consider what it means for the controversial moment of a band's career to be when they add a full 'rock' band and rely less on accordions and violins. Hmmmm. OK. Perhaps if I was familiar with the entire discography of They Might Be Giants or John Henry wasn't the first thing of their's I had heard, I might be a bit upset at the professional rock band backing the two Johns on this one. But as it is, I feel like the arrangements and "new" instruments add to the music rather than detract. 'AKA Driver' wouldn't have the same punch without the guitar solo. Certainly 'Stompbox'--an ode to guitar effects pedals, I think--would be a bit sillier than it already is. John Henry isn't monochromatically 'rock' though. The band just as often sound almost ska like with horn sections as they do 'rock' with guitar solos, not to mention that subtle but excellent use of organ.

What makes this album so brilliant isn't about the music. It is ultimately the magic gift that They Might Be Giants have for writing addictive pop songs that evoke so many images and ideas, twisting words and phrases into fascinating new shapes. On paper, 'I Should Be Allowed To Think' is a childishly stupid concept: a song about how the titular character isn't allowed to think but should be, subsequently lamenting such things as "I should be allowed to glue my poster" and, after quoting the "I saw the best minds of my generation..." line by Ginsberg, re-working it into "I saw the worst bands of my generation applied by magic marker to dry wall." Listen to this album in your formative years, as I did, and their lyrics and music seem odd and oddly funny--'O, Do Not Forsake Me' was a personal favorite--but some of it becomes, well, oddly profound as much as it is oddly funny when you're older. 'No One Knows My Plan' seems to be about a prisoner planning an escape but manages a reference to the famous philosophical 'allegory of the cave.' And after all these years I finally noticed that 'Dirt Bike' refers to a literal dirt bike but also uses 'dirt bike' as a name for other things, including a band and a fearsome group of bandits. I think...

Flood is the They Might Be Giants album that will live forever but I've got to go with my gut. There are songs on Flood that I like a lot more than the songs on John Henry, but John Henry means more to me and is more consistent. I always end up skipping songs on Flood but I listen all the way through John Henry. It takes something special for an album that's 20 tracks and almost an hour long to keep me in the audience all the way through. Flood is an attractive woman that everyone likes; John Henry is a real, flawed woman who I personally hold dear and adore. I'm not sure what that says about the 10 year old version of me who also loved John Henry but I feel like They Might Be Giants have probably written a song about how the 10 year old version of someone and an adult version of them are both in love with the same woman, so everything is peachy.

Album of the Week: Ween- The Mollusk

If you were a young nerd in the late 80s and early 90s, you probably really liked Weird Al and They Might Be Giants, bands that were themselves nerdy but incredibly intelligent and with a keen ear for pop music (or in Weird Al's case, a keen sense of turning pop music into something that was clever and/or funny). They had a knack for reproducing various genres of music and their humor bordered the lines between PG and PG-13 while often having obscure references you didn't get until years later--I remember hearing They Might Be Giants's 'Meet James Ensor' and assuming he was some character they made up, like 'Mean Mr. Mustard' by the Beatles.

Well, Ween are kind of like the band you get into when you're old enough to think about and experiment with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. You never outgrow They Might Be Giants or Weird Al, but they also belong to a younger version of you in many ways. But Ween, now here's an older version of what you had. They're equally witty and equally adept at covering musical genres and writing brilliant pop songs. But Ween are like the R rated version of the above bands, juvenile while at the same time very adult in nature. Ween tow the line between absurdity and sincerity so often you're never sure if a song like 'It's Gonna Be (Alright)' is for real or not. And while they wrote about adult things like sex or drugs, they wrote about them in a decidedly immature way.

The Mollusk is Ween's answer to questions about sincerity vs. parody and originality vs. genre pastiches. Yes, it's a vague concept album about nautical things; yes, it has a song called 'Waving My Dick In The Wind; yes, it borrows heavily from psychedelia, art rock, and prog rock. But no it's not a joke; it is a masterpiece.

The reason Ween can pull of this album is that they are utterly committed to the music they make even if some of it is just a joke to them. You don't record music you hate to make fun of it. Ween may be goofy and immature at times, but they are serious about their love for music. Album opener 'I'm Dancing In The Show Tonight' is a goofy musical number complete with silly voices and a spot-on piano melody. The title track is a transcendent ode to the creature itself, complete with a cheap synthesizer chorus of flutes and brass. 'I'll Be Your Jonny On The Spot' combines a superfast drum machine with crunchy guitars and deadpan vocal delivery. Then there's 'The Blarney Stone', a Scottish bar sing-along with appropriate ambient/crowd sounds. And the instrumental 'Pink Eye (On My Leg)', with its cheesy and cheap sounding drum loop...and dog barks...and what sounds like a guy burping or saying "uhhhhh" slowed down. Of course I would be remiss if I didn't bring up 'Ocean Man', which is so pleasant and catchy that it was used in the Spongebob Squarepants movie.

And so we come full circle: Ween, a band who can write about very R-rated things (one of their classics is a track called 'L.M.L.Y.P.';you might be able to guess what that stands for) but still retain a child-like whimsy. Even when Ween are spinning a style of music or some genre to their own means--sincerely or otherwise--you never doubt their love of music and their way with both songwriting and instrumental chops. Anybody can write lazy, simple joke songs but it takes a truly skilled band to pull off 'Buckingham Green', which is like a trip from Syd Barret-style mid 60s psychedelia to early 70s prog rock and back.

While the rest of their albums might be funnier, weirder, more interesting, more profane, more populist, or more varied, The Mollusk simply and neatly demonstrates everything that makes Ween such a great band. You might wish they took things more seriously. You might wish they took things less seriously. But you could hardly wish for a better and more consistent album from them.