They Might Also Be Midgets

Kurt's back tomorrow, but for today, you'll just have to wait.

They Might Be Giants

Flood

Weird never felt so good. It almost sounds like children's music more than "adult album contemporary", but I prefer to think of TMBG as the sort of music that classic folk artists would be making now if the genre had survived Bob Dylan. It's funny, it's rich with harmonies, the lyrics are sometimes truly, truly depressing, and if you think too hard about any of it, your brain just hurts.

Flood is has some of TMBG's best-known works, including Particle Man, Birdhouse in Your Soul, and Istanbul (Not Constantinople). From it's self-aware beginning to its Road-Movie ending (a song called Road Movie to Berlin), Flood is like that guy at the party that doesn't care what anyone else thinks about his dancing and just goes for it in a way that's laughable but sort of admirable all at once.

The normal standards of criticism don't apply. You can't really discuss the production quality--the arrangements are too off-the-wall to really be scrutinized (the wall being, apparently, where scrutiny happens). That said, Flood is well-written, fun, and never ever boring. My complaint: what the hell is Triangle Man so uppity about?

Favorite Lyric: "We were once so close to Heaven, Peter came down and gave us medals, declaring us the nicest of the damned." (from Road Movie to Berlin).

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