They
Might Be Giants: Then: The Earlier Years
Reviewed as part of Addison Godel's Desert Island Collection
They Might Be
Giants were, before their deliberate transformation into a passable but
forgettable goofy rock band, the world's greatest abstract pop band.
Pulling themes of doomed love, paranoia, and general misery into an
unmistakably catchy pop formula, they dodged, possibly by pure dumb luck, all
the pitfalls of their imitators. Pop
culture references appeared, but only as skewed, half-forgotten bits of
obscurity in the midst of other, equally abstract passages.
The music was quirky, but it didn't coast on its quirkiness - all of
TMBG's tracks would sound as sturdy (if not as unique) if recorded by a
straight-ahead rock band. Perhaps
this was the motivation between the band's later decision to become
such a rock band, but all that is still in the distant future on the wonderful
collection Then: The Earlier Years,
which pulls together TMBG's first two LPs, as well as a pile of contemporary
B-sides and some buried gems from the band's legendary "Dial-A-Song"
service (an answering machine whose outgoing message tape would occasionally
feature fragments of songs in progress).
The
Dial-A-Song material is certainly interesting from a fan's standpoint, but what
makes Then essential are the complete
contents of the albums They Might Be Giants and Lincoln,
and the b-sides formerly collected on Miscellaneous
T. All of what made TMBG famous
is here - the bouncy, screwy pop songs ("Don't Let's Start,"
"Stand On Your Own Head"), the grim ballads ("She's An
Angel," "I"ve Got A Match,") and the just plain
unclassifiable oddities ("Mr. Me," "Chess Piece Face"). Any individual track could probably be discussed in some kind of concrete
terms; but virtually no two songs on this double-disc collection sound alike, so
trying to create a sense of any "sound" that TMBG were defining is
missing the point.
The second disc is arguably the stronger of the two; by the time of their second album the band were more comfortable in the studio and had a firmer sense of what they could do with their various drum machines, samplers, and keyboards. That the band almost never sounded like two guys playing around with a computer is astonishing (considering how many wannabe TMBGs sound like exactly that); that they managed to produce masterpieces like the "They'll Need A Crane" EP (all three B-sides are included here, including the crown jewel "Nightgown of the Sullen Moon") is humbling.
At a time when post-punk and hip-hop were struggling to pull together what could be done with the fragments of music left after the explosions of the late 70s and early 80s, They Might Be Giants crafted a vision of music that was unlike anything heard before, or after. This collection captures that singular, idiosyncratic moment and allows it to stand outside time forever.