I'm Impressed: Underappreciated Pop Giants
By ALAN SCHERSTUHL
Between touring, their TV work, and peddling CDs and MP3s to as loyal a fanbase as exists in what's left of the music industry, They Might Be Giants hardly needs me to defend them-- especially considering the fact that they've achieved their 25 plus years of success without ever sacrificing vision or integrity. Still, too many smart people I know lump these cheerful nonconformist pop pros in with laff-acts like “Weird” Al or those folky Canadian shitboxes the Barenaked Ladies.
TMBG play twice in town this weekend (tonight at 8 at the Beaumont, and then a kids show at 6 p.m. Saturday at Crown Center's not-as-dirty-as-it-sounds Jiggle Jam). Here, then, for the unconvinced, are three Giants-related shoulda been hits for your (re)consideration, all from the pen of John Linnell. (His partner, John Flansburgh, is no songwriting slouch himself, but I'm being picky, here.)
1. "I'm Impressed"
By the time of their most recent “regular” release, 2007's The Else, the band had chucked the accordions and much of the whimsy. More than usual, they seemed energized by the world (and the sounds) around them, with the prevailing mood an itchy, late-Bush paranoia evidenced in songs about shadow governments and how to pack for homeland security. They even hired the Dust Brothers to Beck up a couple of tracks, but it's the self-produced “I'm Impressed” -- a tart, electric, moody bugstomp march based on a killer descending progression and a disaffected vocal -- that best nails the uncertain times. Even without the bloody, robot-Caesar video, this account of gorillas, generalissimos, and politicians with torpedoes in the vest would make “Particle Man” sit down and cry.
Like the glory days of Mad or The Simpsons, They Might Be Giants has always Trojan-horsed an adult skepticism and wit into candy-colored material. Sometimes, they're even personal.
2. "South Carolina"
Take the bike-crash epic “South Carolina” (heard here, for some reason, as accompaniment to Cartoon Network bullshit) a highlight from Linnell's 1999 eccentric solo project State Songs. His goal at the time: 50 fresh state anthems, each more impressionistic than factual, for a personal, musical atlas of the country. His “South Carolina” is a marvel of fractured storytelling and circular musical structures.
At first, it comes on like a musical-theater gloss on “Lady Madonna”: an exciting repeated piano figure topped by a series of interlocking melodies. But it quickly grows more complex, wheeling through six seperate melodic sections in its first minute-forty. Even as it headlongs through an album's worth of choruses, it always makes sense, fulfilling the toughest criteria of pleasurable pop songwriting: the changes in a song should be both surprising and inevitable.
“South Carolina” is a grand example of the tumbling, roll-along melodies that are Linnell's greatest gift. The best of his songs unspool with a rare and natural ease, each chord sprouting from the previous with all the pleasurable rightness of the flowers blooming open in those old time-lapse films.
3. "Can You Find It"
Such a knack may result in a long career and many satisfied fans, but it doesn't buy a lot of hits these days. It makes a perverse sense, then, that the band might toss the stately, gorgeous melody of “Can You Find It” not only on to one of their children's records (in this case, 2005's Here Comes the ABCs) but into a song actually encouraging kids to pick the hidden letters out of a video. (This isn't that video; this, for some reason, is a series of police chases.) Picture Pages nonsense notwithstanding, “Can You Find It” is as sweet and swelling a pop song as you will ever hear.
Admittedly, not all TMBG songs are this inspired. Or this serious. Or this grown-up about being kids' stuff. Sometimes, they're just as goofy as the uninitiated assume they are. But if you can hear John Flansburgh's “Never Go to Work” without wanting to play it a second time, you've got something wrong with you.
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Television producer to Picture Pages theme composer: "We want something brief ... and creepy."
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