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The Spine | 
 enlarge | Artist: They Might Be Giants
Label: Zoe Records
Category: Music
List Price: $17.98
Buy New: $3.00
You Save: $14.98 (83%)
New (36) Used (23) Collectible (1) from $3.00
Rating:  79 reviews
Sales Rank: 95250
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 431041
UPC: 601143104121
EAN: 0601143104121
ASIN: B0002ANQTK
Release Date: July 13, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New, still sealed! Has our in store price tag on it.
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| Tracks:
| • | Experimental Film | | • | Spine | | • | Memo to Human Resources | | • | Wearing a Raincoat | | • | Prevenge | | • | Thunderbird | | • | Bastard Wants to Hit Me | | • | The World Before Later On | | • | Museum of Idiots | | • | It's Kickin' In | | • | Spines | | • | Au Contraire | | • | Damn Good Times | | • | Broke in Two | | • | Stalk of Wheat | | • | I Can't Hide from My Mind |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
If ever they gave out Grammys for mule-minded consistency, then Sting would have a lot more awards in his villa. But coming in a close second would be They Might Be Giants. Keyboard player John Linnell and guitarist John Flansburgh have a sense of focus that would put even the Ramones to shame. From the Brooklyn duo's first demo tape in 1985 up to its frenzied latest, The Spine, the same ingredients remain at the fore: effortlessly catchy choruses, songs that smear the line between novelty and being novel (new ones include ""Memo to Human Resources" and "Museum of Idiots"), and musical backing that sounds like a cross between a polka party and someone throwing silverware down the stairs. It's a quirky approach that's not going to easily win over any new converts but the will certainly drive the dedicated legion of old ones to smile with familiar-yet-fresh material like "Experimental Film" and "Au Contraire." --Aidin Vaziri
Album Description
With their unique blend of catchy melodies and inscrutable lyrics, They Might Be Giants have lived a twenty-year frenzy of creative output, selling over three million albums and winning a Grammy in the process. The Spine is TMBG's new release, and has been heralded as their most rocking album ever.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A spine that grows on you November 9, 2007
Brian A. Schar (Menlo Park, CA United States)
I have been a longtime fan of TMBG, since the "Flood" days, and I've seen the Johns in concert more than any other band. A curmudgeonly older fan, as another reviewer put it. After I bought "The Spine," I listened to it a couple of times, and put it back on the shelf. I just didn't care for it. I did the same thing with "Mink Car." Then, after a year or so, I picked it up again, and discovered that I really loved it - just like I did with "Mink Car." As with all of TMBG's albums, the songs are distinctively and uniquely TMBG's, but manage to be fresh and new at the same time. If you like TMBG, buy this album. If you're new to the band, you might start with "Flood" to see what all the fuss is about. Or just buy this - if you like good music with some quirkiness and intelligence, you will like this.
Another Rich Tapestry October 11, 2007
Grimnebulin (Atlanta, GA United States)
`The Spine' is another wonderfully eclectic offering from TMBG, with rich musical arrangements and extraordinary lyrics. Many tracks seem simultaneously familiar and new. From the ingeniously heartrending `Museum of Idiots' to the alienation of `Memo to Human Resources' to the infectious bounce of `Damn Good Times' and the jangled sing-song of `Wearing a Raincoat', the music instantly draws the listener in to the pondering, the sadness, the amusement, and the sheer joy in turn.
Meta-music July 24, 2007
Ivan Yager (Illinois)
TMBG keep getting better--and even way better. The Spine exceeds my expectations. I fell in love with spines.
I hadn`t listened to any TMBG since "Factory Showroom". I loved "Factory Showroom" and "John Henry" so much. I guess I didn't want to be disappointed. I've been listening since "Ana Ng" was on MTV. I took in "The Spine". I'm falling into "Mink Car" now. And there'll be "The Else" to absorb.
"The Spine" is rich and expert, rockin', optimistic, and bittersweet.
TMBG had some great, clever stuff early on. I don't think any of the early records can compare to the objective mastery of every genre and style on their latest work, and especially the musicality apparent on every single song on "The Spine". These guys know more types of music, more forms and idioms than any other band I know. They observe more obscure conventions. Sometimes, copying--or--paying homage to something or someone else, they do things more interestingly than they've ever been done before.
The Johns are recording studio maestros. They use more technology more inventively than any band I can think of. There's always a new twist. It's cerebral but it's viscerally appealing, especially lately. They don't seem so hyper-catchy on "The Spine" as always sumptuously catchy. They are touching or disturbing; when they're humorous anymore, it's not quirky, but darkly or ingeniously humorous.
It's usually a full mix these days--lush production. It's been a while since TMBG were a jittery, minimalist polka-punk band.
The songs are sometimes not instantly likeable to me. They're often deceptive. I'd think a lot of people over 35 would feel that way. When I was a kid and a young man I was developing lots of pre-analytic good and bad associations with the sorts of music they're always mimicking. (I can`t tell you how intensely the song "Mink Car" hits me with vaguely distasteful sensations.) Sometimes I feel like I could name moments or parts in particular songs one after another during these songs. That's not to say that all they MBG do is paste bits from other songs together.
I had always ALWAYS died laughing when I heard that single by Cher where they put her voice through a vo-coder or some kind of processing. In "Bastard Wants to Hit Me", the band put John's (?) voice through the same effect. It sounds a lot like some sort of sappy up-tempo Top 40 dance song from about 1978. It's not that simple, of course: an ingenious parody to the most hilariously juxtaposed lyrics of all time! I actually thought of half of this song on my own before the record came out.
Disco and 70s-pop take center stage pretty regularly on the record as they did on "Factory Showroom" and as I'm learning they do on "Mink Car". As a former disco-hater, I'm happy to have finally come to terms with the genre, especially when it's done with such ultra-cool.
"Wearing A Raincoat" to my ears sounded at first like a soul-less laconic psychedelia parody. By the time it's drifting into the bridge, though, it's become so searching and sad. By the time it's built to the key change line, "And once they have that attention/they use it to ask for attention", it's a locomotive of only partly associated sentiment. The music plays back in my head when the day is done and it's time to enjoy a little melancholy.
"Au Contraire" is another example. It came off as just another flip TMBG character song at first. But it develops so surprisingly. It's meta-ratpack music. This time a mad jazz movie moment with flute twangs some string in the heart and sets it vibrating.
"Prevenge", "Damn Good Times", and "Experimental Film" are instantly likeable. "Experimental Film" is such an affectionate treatment of such a cool thing. It's such a cool thing to be affectionate about naive creative enthusiasm.
"Kickin' In" is so Elvis Costello he should sue.
Er. The lyrics: some of them you understand; others you know generally what they're about. I can tell you roughly what "Ana Ng" is about, or "Museum of Idiots", but some references seem intended to remain private. In some songs, the boys just seem to be playing with rhymes, cliches, figures of speech. The Johns love irony, paradox, and word-play. They are enthralled by ideas, by personalities in history; moments, monuments, and myths of history. It is in some part due to them that my 6 year-old has become a little scholar of the American presidency. I don't think TMBG are anything like demented as some reviews make them out to be. (Not since "Pencil Rain".)
The mature lyrics of the last few records I know of give up more the more you listen and learn. They have higher pay-off than most of the earlier work.
(Now that I said that, though, I read the lyrics over again and they remind me of "Lincoln".)
Gonna make you fall in love again. March 16, 2006
Johnny Heering (Bethel, CT United States)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This was TMBG's 2004 release. It's pretty much what you expect from a TMBG album. Short songs with catchy melodies and absurd lyrics. While it may not rank up there with their best albums, it's still a solid effort. "Thunderbird" is my personal favorite song on the album (not that you asked). Not likely to win the Johns many new fans, but most of their regular fan base should enjoy it (although there are some curmudgeonly older fans who seem to hate anything new that TMBG puts out).
So much better than these reviews would suggest. February 25, 2006
moviejonny (Minneapolis, MN USA)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I've been a TMBG fan for a lot of years - about 16 actually, as I was introduced to pieces of their debut and "Lincoln" shortly before buying "Flood" in '89. Listen...I know all about different strokes for different folks, and all about to each his/her own. But (imho) those who pine for "Lincoln" and "Flood" and the pink album are sentimentalists - from everything I've heard, TMBG has gotten steadily better, more lyrically interesting and musically sophisticated, with every album.
Whereas early albums were filled with word salads like "Rabid Child" and "Hot Cha," successive albums contain songs with actual emotional resonance - "Museum of Idiots" on this album stands out as possibly the most emotionally complex song on any TMBG album. Don't get me wrong; it's still TMBG, and clever/jarring lyrical juxtapositions still trump heart-on-the-sleeve confessionals. But when Linnell sings "Chop me up into pieces / If it pleases, if it pleases / And when the chopping is through / Every piece will say I love you," it's a surprisingly moving testament to romantic fatalism. Combine those lyrics with a circus-like brass accompaniment and you've got a vastly more fully-realized song than anything on the pink album (with the possible exception of "Don't Let's Start"). To top it all off, both of the Johns are much less tied to the nasally vocal style of their early days. Linnell has become an especially evocative vocalist, and even John F. opens up a little on "Damn Good Times."
When they do revisit the absurdism of past work, the results are generally richer and more suggestive - "Stalk of Wheat" is a fun house cacophony whose main point seems to be that the writer is out of ideas. This theme was addressed on their debut in the song "Number Three," but where that song was a bumpkin parody with a banjo on its knee, "Stalk of Wheat" employs a novel call-and-response rhyming scheme (I had a thought bubble / OF TROUBLE / Of trouble and strife / And I'll have it for the rest of my life) and manages to provoke bemused fascination. "It's Kickin' In" has plenty of nonsense, but here it takes the form of a fake foreign accent utilized to annoy a waitress as mischief-enhancing substances take effect.
I feel a little guilty writing this review. In the end, TMBG's songs are clever little genre smash-ups that probably don't need all this high-falutin' analysis. I do think, however, that people should be careful not to canonize the Giants based on two or three early albums - they continue to grow, and not get stuck in the past, which is all we can (and exactly what we should) ask for.
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