Salutations and Greetings fair reader. Apparently i am the music man around these here parts, as i have a gargantuan and varied collection of music at my disposal with which to bore you. To start i am going to give y'all a review of a recent release and then after that we will see what comes.

"i'm leaving out the whistles and bells so the room must listen to me filibuster vigilantly."

If you have not figured out who the quote is from then i will entreaty to enlighten you. They Might Be Giants has just released their 12th studio album entitled "The Else" which has been produced by The Dust Brothers, Pat Dillet and They Might Be Giants. It is available through Amazon.com as well as the iTunes store. The first run of the album comes with a bonus CD so it is worth buying it through Amazon. There are 13 songs on The Else and 23 on the "Cast Your Pod To The Wind" bonus CD. Now on to the main attrition.

Though the album is a solidly good one i find it lacking in a few areas. The album was billed by Flansy (John Flansburgh) as "All Killer, No Filler." To which i must disagree with the following correction, "Some Killer, No Filler." As there does not seem to be any tracks that were put on as an afterthought.

By far the best song on the album is track 2, "Take Out The Trash" which is a very Top 40 friendly piece that seems to be a Girl Power styled anthem. The other four songs that i liked were very much in the vein of what TMBG is known for. Odd songs with catchy tunes that make you wonder and think. The stand out track of these is "The Mesopotamians". This is very reminiscent of their earlier work circa the John Henry album. When they moved from a Duo to an actual Band.

Now to more of my gripes, with all of the fanfare on TMBW.net (a They Might Be Giants fansite/Wiki) about them working with The Dust Brothers i really do not hear them much. This seems like a solid TMBG album with The Dust Brothers beats prominent on two or possibly three tracks. Those tracks sound like the whole band not just John OR John. It makes the album less cohesive. i really do not like how one track sounds like TMBG and the next one sounds like John or possibly John. Sadly this makes the Bonus disk far more cohesive an album than the actual album! More on that later.

Lastly i would like to complain about a visual aesthetic. i absolutely HATE the album artwork. Not because it is something weird or strange, but that it is so amateurish. It really looks like something i could do with some paper, glue and a camera. My rule is this, "If it looks like i can do it then it is not very good." If you need to know more about what i can do then go here. Even though TMBG may happen to like Marcel Dzama's work, i have not seen much of his that i really like. He did the artwork for the TMBG story book "Bed, Bed, Bed". i merely tolerate it so that my progeny will sleep.

Now on to the bonus disk "Cast Your Pod To The Wind". This is supposedly only coming in the first run of the album so get them while you can (and NO you cannot have mine Archibald! So there!). This Bonus disk contains the most popular songs from the various TMBG Podcasts and sadly this makes for a more cohesive album than the studio album. Mainly due to the content having already been put into a radio styled format.

So in closing The Else is a three and a half star album. Hopefully their next album "Here Come The 123's" will rate better (it is a children's album, Hooray!).

--the god of atheism.
"My heart is human, my blood is boiling, my brain IBM."