Music Review: The Spine

This album contains 16 songs from everyone's favorite duo of John and John, better known as They Might Be Giants. It starts off with the catchy "Experimental Film," already performed on Conan O'Brien and probably college radio stations across the country. I also like "Wearing a Raincoat" containing some classic TMBG lyrics: "Wearing a raincoat is flying around/in a plane made of a raincoat/But when you think of that you hurt your mind/and you'll need a friend to talk you down." Also, there's this one part in "Raincoat" that sounds like "She's an Angel." Coincidence or premediated? Who knows?
"Prevenge" and "I Can't Hide from my Mind" are also clever (or strange) titles common among TMBG albums. "Thunderbird" has that pop-like sound that makes you think it belongs on their Factory Showroom album. "It's Kickin' In," and "Damn Good Times" are guaranteed to get your feet moving and your head banging. "Au Contraire" and "Memo to Human Resources" are both from the delightful single, "Indestructible Object," which was released earlier this year. Though "Memo" seems to be exactly the same version, the album version of "Au Contraire" has a slightly different instrumental arrangement than the one on the single. Which one is better? You decide!
Overall, The Spine offers a lot of fun and light listening BUT TMBG is really not covering any real new ground with this album. Their last album, Mink Car, had combined TMBG's classic lyrics with new, cool sounds, and while The Spine flows better, it does not have Mink Car's ingenuity. There's only about 36 minutes of music on the Spine, so I wonder how much effort they put into it. "Stalk of Wheat" is a song about being out of ideas, but they already wrote a better song about being out of ideas a long time ago. So, John and John, let me say this: while fans of other bands like hearing the same music over and over with new album covers, we TMBG fans expect you to do diverse and crazy things for all of your albums. Make the next one even better, okay? B-