They Might Be Giants: Idlewild

In Your Speakers, May 28, 2014
by Janis Neon

Make way! Make way! On May 27, They Might Be Giants released Idlewild, a seventeen-track compilation spanning their prolific thirty years as an adorkable and intellectually-insightful alternative pop group. Quirk kings and childhood friends John Flansburgh (singer-songwriter, guitarist) and John Linnell (singer-songwriter, saxophone, clarinet, accordion, keyboard) are the pioneers of mainstream musical satire and the reason successful acts like Barenaked Ladies, Flight Of The Concords and Bo Burnham have a market today.

Idlewild is not a greatest hits album or “Boss of Me” (theme song for Malcolm in the Middle) and “Birdhouse in Your Soul” (their first mainstream hit) would have been included. Instead, it is an ultra-vivid illustration of the band's last fifteen years. We strongly recommend this album for the casual and novice TMBG listener who missed such gems as “Cloisonne,” “The Lady and the Tiger,” and “The Mesopotamians.” For this band's loyal followers, we are sure they've heard it before, as Idlewild does not include new music.

Songs reliant on satirical erudition packed into simple catchy choruses launch TMBG into a league of their own. This band is the musical embodiment of Indiana Jones because they make it cool for audiences to research and decrypt the meaning between the verses. It is not enough for the listener to identify a Quonset hut, like in “Cloisonne.” The recipient must know these structures are associated with clandestine affairs and government secrecy to decipher the song's subject matter.

“The Lady and the Tiger” takes its titled from the famous short story about a man who must open a door to decide his fate. One door has a starving man-eating tiger while the other door contains a woman he must marry on the spot, regardless of his affections. TMBG sings the song from the tiger and lady's point of view. This out-of-the-box approach to writing is trademark and the reason fans come back for more.

They have irony to spare too. In “The Mesopotamians,” the band humanizes famous Mesopotamian legends by highlighting one of the god's pettiness when he gave gum to everybody except Ashurbanipal (Mesopotamian king famous for preserving a vast library of documents in cuneiform script) because Ashurbanipal made fun of his haircut.

From a musical standpoint, it is fun listening to TMBG act as musical water, taking on whatever flavorful genre suits their mood. They feature electronica in “Electronic Istanbul,” draw on jazz tones for “Cloisonne,” and dally with folksy pop in “Tesla.” Whatever style they choose, as long as there are lightheartedly cheeky and proudly nerdy clowns who think research is a way to have fun, TMBG might outlast us all.

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