1) Minimum Wage; 2) Meet James Ensor; 3) Particle Man; 4) Don't Let's Start; 5) She's an Angel; 6) Cyclops Rock; 7) Istanbul (Not Constantinople); 8) Purple Toupee; 9) James K. Polk; 10) Birdhouse in Your Soul; 11) Ana Ng; 12) The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight); 13) Bangs; 14) The Statue Got Me High; 15) New York City; 16) Doctor Worm; 17) Boss of Me; 18) Your Racist Friend; 19) Why Does the Sun Shine? (The Sun Is a Mass of Incandescent Gas); 20) They'll Need a Crane; 21) I Palindrome I; 22) Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head; 23) John Lee Supertaster; 24) Older; 25) We're The Replacements; 26) Dr. Evil; 27) No!; 28) Clap Your Hands; 29) Spider
An eclectic compilation for an eclectic group.
Key tracks: "Particle Man", "Ana Ng", "Birdhouse in Your Soul"
They Might Be Giants falls into the category of artists where I can understand why people love them so (they seem to be the one band that everyone in my social circles likes to some degree and who inspire a lot of adoration even among people who otherwise don't get geeky over music), but I can't necessarily relate to that myself. Compilations are my way of meeting halfway with artists like these, and for a part-time appreciator the benefit of A User's Guide to They Might Be Giants is that it really does hammer down how there's a lot more to John and John than just the affectionally nerdy twee pop ditties about obscure historical figures and events that they're arguably most associated with.
That desire for comprehensiveness is also what somewhat lets A User's Guide down, just to tackle the downsides first. They Might Be Giants wear many hats and this compilation wants to showcase them all: the ingenius pop wizards, the nerdy folk historians, the style experimenters, the soundtrack stars, the children's edutainers, the whole lot. I'm normally all for this kind of comprehensiveness, but some of these categories are stronger than others and so I just question the need for the barely-recognisable-as-TMBG "Dr. Evil" (from the Austin Powers OST - did anyone really think this was in any way essential to the film?) or four different entries from their children's music side adventures to be included here, particularly when really only "Why Does the Sun Shine?" feels substantial enough to merit inclusion. The compilation's tracklist has been organised to run according to Gaussian distribution based on the track lengths so that the shortest songs start and finish the disc, which works disturbingly well for most parts ("Minimum Wage" as a cold open kick is probably the best way to open this potpourri), but it hasn't stopped the compilers from oversaturating the end of the disc with a whole load of the collection's most inessential parts: meaning that in effect everything after "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head" is complete filler and it spoils the mood. They Might Be Giants songs aren't particularly long for most part and this is one of these cases where 29 songs on a disc seems perfectly appropriate, but it's an album that still manages to outstay its welcome. It ends up rubbing in exactly why my dabblings in the band's studio albums have been less than successful, because there's always a throwaway novelty peeking its head around the corner. "Spider"? On a best of? Really?
On the plus side, the delight in A User's Guide is the recurring realisation of what a pair of sharp indie pop craftsmen lie behind They Might Be Giants. Underneath all the twee singalongs, TV features and the reputation as the ultimate nerd musical act, the fact that John & John are an incredibly talented and imaginative songwriting pair gets unfairly lost in the noise, and so the comprehensiveness of A User's Guide equally puts this in the spotlight. They're a duo who can more or less tackle anything through their sheer imagination on how to approach even the strangest ideas, and then pull it off via genuinely cunning writing. The marvellously smart and impeccably charming "Birdhouse of Your Soul" is obviously the perfect showcase for that - its cavalcade of layered vocals, sharp lyrics and heck of a load of hooks making it the most perfect and honest pop song the duo have ever pulled off and even then it sounds completely unique - but there's a lot here that matches its strengths. "Ana Ng", "Don't Let's Start" and "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head" are brilliant pieces of quirky 80s art pop, which is the side of They Might Be Giants that tends to slip past the public consciousness the most, and certainly surprised me as someone who was mainly aware of their 90s catalogue and beyond. The later reinterpretations of the same ideas also work just as well, such as the delightfully unhinged "Cyclops Rock" (with a great Cerys Matthews cameo) or "I Palindrome I" which has so much more to it from a purely musical perspective than just its titular gimmick. A User's Guide keeps catching by surprise and it does it in a myriad of ways: whether because something is unexpectedly earnest, affectionate or direct ("New York City" is all three and could be a Magnetic Fields song), or you simply encounter a curveball you didn't see coming such as the cheeky interpolation of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" on "The Guitar". And of course, like any millennial who grew up with Tiny Toons, I too have a lot of love for "Particle Man" and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" - the former a razor-sharp ditty jam-packed with wit and hooks in its 1:50 length, the latter a superbly fun cover that fits the They Might Be Giants brand so perfectly that it may as well have been theirs to begin with. Overexposed as they may be, they are genuinely great and evergreen, and a very good reason to keep hold of the compilation as-is.
The good absolutely outweigh the bad. There are probably better compilations of They Might Be Giants' collected works out there - real fans of the duo can answer that - but for a willfully casual listener this makes for a good selection of the songs that everyone mentions and the deep cuts you’re glad to get to know better. It is also, I think, sufficient to my needs. I'm not certain what the takeaway here is when I say that owning this, I've little desire to resume with my efforts to listen to more of the actual albums and I'm satisfied with that complacency - as much as there's a lot of quite frankly excellent material here, it feels like it's enough. A User's Guide does make a strong case of why They Might Be Giants could be someone's favourite band and I'd genuinely love to adore a group with such a witty writing pen (both lyrically and musically), but the first 22 songs here will do for me for the occasional revisit to their intriguing world.
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