Blue canaries and lightswitches

[matgb]

Hmm, this might be of interest to more than a couple of you, 0ct0pus argues that "Birdhouse In Your Soul" by They Might Be Giants is a stupid person's idea of a clever song. Is he right?

Comments

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

I'm replying to you here rather than in your own journal because here's where I saw this...

I can see your objections to Birdhouse In Your Soul - the song put me off the band for *years* because it's really not very good. All your criticisms are true. BUT - it's the most insanely catchy piece of music I've ever heard. I had the line 'not to put too fine a point on it/Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet' going round, in a loop, in my head, for eighteen months...

But as for TMBG being a 'stupid person's idea of a clever band', that's true, sort of, but is equally true for Waits and Costello (both of whom I love, but come on - your description applies perfectly to them), and much more true for Tori 'I've read a Neil Gaiman book and heard a Kate Bush album' Amos.

It's true that TMBG are much favoured by a particular kind of rather smug American middle-class student types, but they've actually done a few rather excellent tracks. Older is a great song, as is World Before Later On, and their children's album No is possibly the best music I've ever heard aimed at pre-teens. They also have excellent taste in cover versions.

[0ct0pus.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this - will check out a couple of the tracks you mention. Over here in the UK "birdhouse" is the entire of TMBG so I guess (like yourself) that the song had put me off investigating the rest of the bands work.

Tori made the list simply because she is an amazing piano player and I can listen to amazing piano players all day. To be honest I prefer it when she sings other peoples songs but a lot of people disagree and I can kind of understand where they are coming from.

And - yes - agree on Waits and Costello, though there is something to engage with there.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, Waits and Costello are both superb songwriters, two of my favourites, but they do both think they're cleverer than they are ;) (see also: Frank Zappa, Randy Newman, REM).

I totally dismissed They Might Be Giants until I started dating an American, and there's still something about them I find offputting - they're not a band I *want* to like - but at the same time they've done some really excellent stuff. At their best they're something like a cross between REM and Flanders & Swann, with a little XTC thrown in, but at their worst the whimsy and 'whackiness' overwhelms everything, and they become almost Weird Al Yankovic (right down to the accordion playing).

The best thing to check out is probably the compilation Dial-A-Song or the children's album No! - all their albums are patchy, but they all have a few great moments...