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After taking a few years off from making music for grown-ups to record a couple of albums for kids, alternative rockers They Might Be Giants finally released their witty and wacky .nightsandweekends.com/articles/11/NW1100337.php>Join Us earlier this year. Clearly, though, they had so much fun writing and recording and playing around with new songs that they ended up with more than just one album’s worth of material. Instead of tossing everything out and moving on, they decided to share the extra stuff with their fans by releasing an album full of overflow material, called Album Raises New and Troubling Questions.
This follow-up release is like a crazy companion piece to Join Us—a kooky, quirky collection of live recordings, B-sides, and other stuff that didn’t make the cut. While bands have often been known to release albums full of nothing but live performances and rehashed old songs, though, that’s not the case here. The 20-track album includes plenty of new music—like the catchy (and super-short) opening track, “O We,” or easy-going instant favorites like “Now I Know” and “How Now Dark Cloud?” It definitely isn’t without its share of TMBG-style oddities—like the grand and dramatically nonsensical “200 Sbemails.” And the band members even question their own drummer’s true identity in “Marty Beller Mask.” Just wait till you find out who’s lurking behind the mask!
The album also includes a handful of new versions of old (and new) favorites—like a live version of “Cloisonné” and a funky remix of “You Probably Get That a Lot.” Long-time fans, meanwhile, are sure to appreciate fun updates like “Electronic Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” and the alternate version of “Particle Man,” which was recorded with TMBG’s Other Thing Brass Band and previously released on vinyl (and as a fan club exclusive). There’s one cover, too: the band’s A.V. Undercover version of Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping.”
Because of the style of its content—its live tracks and reworkings and short snippets of silliness—Album Raises New and Troubling Questions feels more haphazard and less polished than a more traditional release like Join Us. But perhaps that’s a part of what makes it so much fun. It feels more intimate than the usual album—as if the band members decided to welcome fans into their garage for an impromptu jam session. It’s definitely an unconventional release, but it fits the band well. And if you love TMBG’s music, you’ll enjoy exploring the toe-tapping musical delights of this overflow album.
