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

[(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...