‘Lincoln’ provides
ingenious lyrics;
good diction
By Mark Lage
Staff Reviewer_
They Might Be Giants
“Lincoln”
Bar None/Restless Records
If, as it was written in this paper
not too long ago, Game Theory’s
songs would be radio hits in a
perfect world, then They Might Be
Giants could surely be callea upon
to provide sitcom themes for this
imaginary land.
“Lincoin,” their second album,
is full of songs, which, similar to
“Don’t Let’s Start” from their debut
album, will often make you forget
you’re listening to a band, but are
instead ignoring the opening cred
its to this week’s adventures of
your favorite TV family. It probably
has a lot to do with the Giants’
bubble gum pop sound, and their
twerpish sense of humor.
They Might Be Giants are John
Linnel and John Flansburgh, and
these kinds of surface qualities to
their music may actually deflect the
listener from making more impor
tant observations. Like the fact that
they employ pop chord structures
often resembling the Beatles, or
even early Elvis Costello. Or the
iau u lai iiiwii iy ii eo aic iiwi winy
consistently funny, but also have
bunches of ingenious word plays,
and will give you plenty to think
about. Although you won’t neces
sarily get veFy far by doing that.
Thankfully, They Might Be
Giants is an aberration from the
current underground tendencies to
call long, overblown exercises in
aura and style good songs. The
songs on “Lincoln” are short —
there are eighteen of them on the
album - ana the focus seems to be
on interesting music, words and
thoughts.
Their basic sound features
chopped up, chunky bursts of
power chords, laced together with
a wide variety of keyboard and
horn swirls, mostly simple bass
lines, and some form of makeshift
percussion, topped off by the
slightly off-key, detached sound
ing vocals. With just two members,
and a little modern recording stu
dio technology, They Might Be
Giants manage to mix up rhythms,
tempos and textures more often
and more effectively than just
about any band with a real live
rhythm section.
The results of this vary from the
fairly straight-forward pop of “Ana
Ng,” and "Purple Toupee,” to ee
rier songs like “Where Your Eyes
Don’t Go,” to the simply bizarre,
LINCOLN
\
Courtesy Bar None Records
like “Cowtown.”
On a few songs they add more
familiar sounds, like polka or
night-club music, into tneir mix.
On "You’ll Miss Me,” they adopt a
style which might be described as
nightclub-power-bubblegum-rap.
They Might Be Giants make
some bizarre lyrical connections as
well. "PurpleToupee” begins "I re
member the year I went to camp/I
heard about some lady named
Selma and some blacks/Somebody
put their fingers in the President’s
ears/lt wasn’t too much later they
come out witjh Johnson’s Wax."
This is typical of their lyrics, as
some of it very definitely makes
sense, while some of it just seems
like silly weirdness.
They also often create lines of
lyrics in which the words and
meanings seem to actually swirl
around. “Lad’s gal is all he has/
Gal’s gladness ha ngs upon the love
of Lad,” from "They’ll Need a
Crane" is just one good example of
this. Another is found in "Mr. Me"
-- "So take the hand of Mister Me
and Mister, make him glad to swim
the Mister Misty sea and cease the
Mister Mystery that Mister, made
him sad.”
In “Where Your Eyes Don’t Go,”
one of the album’s best songs,
Linnel sings that "Every jumbled
pile of person has a thinking part
that wonders what the part that
isn’t thinking isn’t thinking of.”
One of the amazing parts of their
music is that Linnel is able to sing
lines like these fluidly, and they
can create musical structures that
can contain them. Linnel actually
uses the word “arborealily” in one
song, without sounding awkward
at all.
One thing that the lyrics of just
about every song will do is to make
the listener laugh out loud. But
often you’ll immediately feel as if
you maybe shouldn’t have. “Kiss
Me, Son of God,” the final song of
the album, begins with “I built a
little empire out of some crazy
See GIANTS on 10
OaEFf .< (sevJteft
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