After a few years releasing albums designed for children, THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS return with a release aimed specifically for grown ups. This being They Might Be Giants however, this is a selection of wonderfully geeky songs for wonderfully geeky adults.
Time spent producing educational children’s songs has clearly left its mark on the group. Never ones to be inhibited by accusations of nerdiness, 'Join Us' contains an element of childish wonder that sees the Giants return to the quirkiness of their earliest material. This is emphasised by the brevity of the music on offer here. Obviously influenced by trying to hold onto a toddler’s wandering attention span, there’s barely a song here that reaches the three minute mark. 'Join Us's eighteen tracks stretch to little over forty-five minutes and cover an abundance of styles and ideas.
Occasionally the album veers close to sensory overload. It’s almost too hyperactive for its own good: buzzing around like a bee on a lemonade and sherbet bender. But this is an album that embraces its peculiarities to such an extent that your defences soon falter.
From the enchanting Beach Boys go Post Punk opener CAN’T KEEP JOHNNY DOWN and its glorious line “all of the dicks in this dick town can’t keep Johnny down” it’s clear that 'Join Us' isn’t holding anything back. We get a song about a talking raindrop, a heartbroken lament that intersects the protagonist’s yearnings with chanted stage directions (“a gloved hand spins a combination dial quickly opening a large wall safe”) and a track that contains two simultaneous melodies: one expressing the thoughts of a truck driver, the other expressing the thoughts of the truck. It’s all as bonkers as a jellyfish riding a scooter.
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But whenever the album appears in danger of floating off with its own light whimsy it hits you with a killer blow. JUDY IS YOUR VIET NAM is an eighty second guitar wind-milling smash chronicling a twenty year tempestuous relationship. Its humour and succinct story telling sounds like a peculiar off-cut from The Who’s 1967 album SELL OUT. The real highlight though is album closer YOU DON’T LIKE ME. Here the song’s character imagines approaching a woman before he manages to convince himself that they will have nothing in common. He then reels off an almost never-ending list of things they’ll disagree on (“you like cigarettes, swimming lengths, potato chips, reading in the bath, Nirvana, baseball caps…”). It’s like Morrissey if he grew up watching The Simpsons instead of reading Oscar Wilde.
With the core duo of They Might Be Giants both now in their fifties, 'Join Us' oozes the carefree abandon that comes with realising the kind of person you are and being entirely comfortable in your own skin. It’s delightfully eccentric but never feels overly forced or contrived. Every now and then the wackiness of it all can have you craving a moment of relief but if you need to let your inner geek out, you could do far worse than join them.
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