Options:
1. Libertango-Yo-Yo Ma--Soul of the Tango
2. Bitch-Rolling Stones--Sticky Fingers
3. A Moment of Unity-Changeling Season 4: The Frontier of Twilight(disc 1)
4. Get Back-The Beatles--Let It Be
5. Absolutely Bill's Mood-Eugene Chadbourne/They Might Be Giants--They Might Be Giants
Let's talk about They Might Be Giants. I'm not going to say they are my favorite band, because I don't know that I could even say I have a favorite band. But I will say that if I had to choose five bands and could have their entire discography and nothing else for the rest of my life, TMBG would be on that list(Radiohead, Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Dead Can Dance would probably round out the five, but overall that's a misleading statement, because there are many individual songs and albums that I like from all sorts of artists. Wait, why am I justifying a partial answer to a rhetorical question I posed myself?).
TMBG is one of my favorite bands because I know few groups who seem to genuinely be writing music that is specifically intended to be fun. Also, I love their clever references ("we're like the people chained up in the cave/ in the allegory of the people in the cave by the greek guy") and use of peculiar instrumentations. Basically, they fit a peculiar niche in my mind in terms of performers that I listen to in order to feel happy.
And the eponymous debut album has a few gems, even if it feels like they are just a couple of guys from Brooklyn trying to figure out this music thing. A few standout tracks from this album are "Everything Right is Wrong Again", "(She Was a) Hotel Detective" and "Don't Let's Start", but there's a pair of songs that I think really highlight the everyman nature of TMBG that I find so particularly appealing. "Number Three" and "She's an Angel". "Number Three" is a song about a peculiar premise summed up by the opening lyrics "There's only two songs in me/ and I just wrote the third" It's about the peculiar feeling of artmaking, the way creativity and flow aren't some organized thing but something that sometimes just kind of happens to you(I don't believe Art is magic, I believe Art requires hard work, but a lot of that work is just showing up, materials at hand, so when you get in the flow state, you can put stuff on paper).
"She's an Angel" is one of my favorite love songs, mostly because it captures the absolute confusion of young love so well. "These things happen to other people/they don't happen at all in fact" Long before Nathan Rabin coined the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl, TMBG described the effect that falling in love with one must have.
That said, this album isn't 100 percent good. There are some songs that are a little...wacky? No, not just wacky, wacky and not very musically inventive. TMBG will always have some wackiness, but in later albums it gets much better. Overall, this is an album with a few gems and many tracks you'll just skip.
Recommended Context for Listening: TMBG is good road trip music, specifically for the point when you are starting to realize how wide Ohio really is
What Playlists has this made it onto? TMBG sometimes makes it onto seasonal playlists for Spring or Summer
Who Should Buy This Album? TMBG completists.
