They Might Be Giants – The Else
John Linnell and John Flansburgh, collectively known as They Might Be Giants, could have been giants if they’d been born 25 years earlier. Imagine the competition these two melodically rich and verbally clever songwriters could have given to Goffin/King or Mann/Weill. Really, it’s not impossible to imagine the Monkees doing “Don’t Let’s Start”, or the Ronettes tackling “Birdhouse In Your Soul”.
But we live in an era when songwriters have to sing their own songs, which means They Might Be Giants come with a giant disadvantage. Despite a penchant for melodies that swoop and swoon, the two Johns deliver their songs with a nasal and entirely dispassionate pair of voices.
Still, after 21 years, I’ve gotten used to the way they sound, and find this two-man band to be a consistently enjoyable brand name. The new album could be switched with virtually any of their previous twelve without a noticeable stylistic variance in approach. As per usual, we’ve got pop delights such as “Take Out The Trash” or the marvelous “Climbing The Walls” (the mode of worrying one turns to after walking the floor has become tiresome) plus more ambitious arrangements on songs such as “With The Dark”.
Best of all is “The Mesopotamians”, which once again reveals the key influence of early ’70s Saturday-morning cartoon theme songs. How can anybody resist bouncing along with a lyric such as “Sargon, Hammurabi, Ashurbanipal, and Gilgamesh”? Come to think of it, maybe these guys wouldn’t have fit in with the Brill Building teams after all.