They Might Be Giants - Flood

This is one of my wife's all-time favorite albums, and she's not wrong. Flood is fantastic. It was generally received as a joke or gimmick album by most people. A lot of people thought of songs like "Partical Man" and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" as short-lived jokes somewhere along the lines of Ray Stevens' "The Streak" or Bucker and Garcia's "Pac-Man Fever." The TMBG faithful know better. Flood is an album whose odd and sometimes stream of consciousness lyrics belie deeper meanings and multiple layers of understanding.

"Birdhouse in Your Soul" is a beautiful and poetic love song that doesn't just beat you over the head with overt meaning. The aforementioned "Particle Man" is laden with existential ponderings as it attempts an outsider's view of mankind. Either that or these songs are about other things entirely. In many cases TMBG have kept from stating outright that "this song means this and that song means that." There is plenty of room for interpretation and personalization. This is one of many reasons why They Might Be Giants are still going strong decades after their inception. They aren't what they seem. They're smarter than you think and the music itself is better than you remember. Flood is one of the best albums in my collection and it never stops being fun to listen to.

They Might Be Giants - Apollo 18

My older sister had a certain power over guys. I know that's a weird way to start an album review, but I promise to bring it around. Anyway, guys tended to give her things. More than one guy gave her a ring and refused to take it back when the answer was "no." I think one sucker even gave her a car. She wasn't a gold digger, guys just wanted to give her stuff and she spent more than a little time trying to get them to take it back. Anyway, I was introduced to Apollo 18 because one of my sister's guys gave her his CD player and entire CD collection (his collection was also my introduction to The Cure. For a dope he didn't have bad taste). See? I told you I'd bring it around.

Anyway, when my sister first got the collection, she and I were immediately taken by the 21 track oddity that is "Fingertips." It's basically a song cycle comprised of snippets, most of which are under 15 seconds long. You'll get typically weird They Might Be Giants statements like, "What's that blue thing doing here?" or "I found a new friend underneath my pillow" but instead of being the hook of a three minute song, they are 15 second songs with no other parts whatsoever. It's a disjointed roller coaster ride through the minds of two of the most interesting guys in modern music (call the two Johns what you will, but you can't say they aren't at least interesting). "Fingertips" is clearly the biggest reason to check this album out, but there are a couple other decent tunes to round out the album. "The Guitar" is one of the band's best live songs, and "She's Actual Size" is still clever after all these years. Unfortunately, not all the tracks on this disc are great. Some of them are barely clearing the bar at mediocre. As an album Apollo 18 is not the best TMBG can do, but the tracks that work are as good as anything they've ever offered up.

that dog. - Totally Crushed Out

that dog. is a delicious casserole of some of my favorite things. They're friends with Weezer, they're fuzzy 90's rockers, they're a predominantly female band (they have some of the most awesome ladies in music: Anna Waronker as well as both Rachel and Petra Haden), and they write awesome songs. It's as if they were created in a lab specifically for me to like them. Congrats to the guys in labcoats. Your little scheme worked.

Totally Crushed Out is probably that dog.'s strongest album. "He's Kissing Christian" was a minor hit for the band, but I've always been a little confused by that. It's probably my least favorite song on the album but it probably struck a certain chord in 1995 because of the subject matter alone. I think the album opener "Ms. Wrong" is a stronger overall song, but that's neither here nor there. Totally Crushed Out is a nice slice of 90's rock. If you're still crushing on Letters to Cleo or Veruca Salt (I know I am), you need this.

The Telepathic Butterflies - Introducing

I love everything about this album. I found out about this one, oddly enough, at a self-service music discovery kiosk inside Zia's (the second banana of Arizona record stores). The kiosk was broken within a week of its installation in the store, so this may very well be the only disc purchased on its recommendation (I never saw anyone else use it, but then again I wasn't the one who broke it).

I didn't expect much from this album when I bought it. I was going through a phase where I literally could not leave a record store without buying something. This explains abomination known as The Coral. Anyway, The Telepathic Butterflies are a power pop band with a retro vibe. They're like The Kinks circa The Village Green Preservation Society meets The Byrds circa Mr. Tambourine Man. If you can dig Apples in Stereo and other such retro goodness, you can surely make room in your life for this album. It's really really really ridiculously good.

Teengenerate - Smash Hits!

Japan has brought us nearly as much awesome garage rock over the years as Sweden, and that's saying something. Teengenerate is second only to Guitar Wolf when it comes to notoriety and all-out brashness for Japanese garage rockers. If forced to pick between the two, I would actually take Teengenerate because they're further from the line dividing music from utter chaos than Guitar Wolf is (Seriously, Guitar Wolf can be absolutely brutal whereas you don't need a particular mood to be able to listen to Teengenerate).

Anyway, Smash Hits is exactly what it sounds like: a greatest hits compilation. I don't know if there are any glaring omissions on this compilation. I only know that it's some nice hard-hitting undecipherable garage rock and that suits me just fine.

Teenage Fanclub - Grand Prix

Grand Prix finds Teenage Fanclub maturing into a sheer songwriting force (which is not to say they weren't freakishly good at it on their other albums). "Verisimilitude" and "Neil Jung" are among the best in the Teenage Fanclub catalogue, and the latter of the two is one of the cleverest song names I have ever heard. Grand Prix is solid as Sears and I can't imagine anyone not liking it.

Teenage Fanclub - Thirteen

The only difficult thing about reviewing Teenage Fanclub albums is coming up with new ways to describe their highly consistent awesomeness. You could stack their first album up against their most recent album and not only will they compare favorably to each other, they will sound like they could have both been recorded in the same year. There's something awe-inspiring about Teenage Fanclub's consistency.

Even though I tend to see Thirteen as a fitting follow-up to Bandwagonesque, this was apparently not the prevailing opinion when Thirteen was released. I don't know what everyone else was listening to because "The Cabbage" sounds just as good to me as "The Concept" does. I think Thirteen hangs around a little too long, but I don't think it represents a big dip in quality.

Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque

If you like power pop, you are contractually obligated to like Teenage Fanclub. If you like Teenage Fanclub, you are contractually obligated to like every album they've ever made because they are all amazing.

Legend has it that this very album caused Kurt Cobain to declare Teenage Fanclub the greatest band on earth, so far be it from me to disagree with the voice of my generation.

Bandwagonesque takes pop songcraft to a whole other level. It's hard to even describe Teenage Fanclub's impeccable pop proclivities to the uninitiated. I'll just say that out of all the bands which have cast themselves in the Big Star mold (and there have been several), Teenage Fanclub is far and away the very best. Just listen to the album's opener "The Concept" and you'll know what I mean.

Taj Mahal - The Best of Taj Mahal Volume I

I bought this album after seeing Taj Mahal open for Dave Matthews Band in 1998. I remember being the only guy in the Dave Matthews crowd that felt like anyone should be paying attention to the dude on stage who clearly knew how to play some blues.

This disc of Taj Mahal hits features some very fine down-home folksy blues. My favorite track is "Fishing Blues" because Taj's raspy vocals carry the track better than any other version of the song I've ever heard. I believe it was this album and a little research that introduced me to Howlin' Wolf. Although Howlin' Wolf is superior to Taj Mahal, I still have a fondness for the man that started my serious interest in the blues. This album is always a fun listen, and it'll spin again before a lot of things in my collection.

Taylor - The Fill

Taylor Sorensen is basically a Christian version of Coldplay with a more bluesy vibe. Yup. That's pretty much it. This is a decent EP, especially for Christian music, but "Red Fone" is an especially nice song that made its way onto a few mixes right after I picked up this EP in the free stuff section of Hoodlum's.

The Swingtips - Let's Play Some Ball

I bought this album at Tower Records on Mill Avenue back before Tower went belly-up and Mill became a corporate schlocky thing where fun has been outlawed and looking down your nose at everyone you meet is the order of the day. So yeah, although I don't think much of this album, it does remind me of simpler times.

Let's Play Some Ball is a swing jazz album from Arizona's own Swingtips, a band I was completely unaware of despite getting into the swing jazz scene at precisely the time this album came out. Let's Play Some Ball is okay. It has some decent moments, but it also sticks to the whole re-imagined 1940's thing that Royal Crown Revue and others are guilty of. Anyway, let's throw some stars down and not get too sidetracked.

Sugarcult - Start Static

I saw Sugarcult at their first big show ever. Tim Pagnotta announced to the crowd that he had just quit his job at the mall so he could devote his life to the band. My brother and I stopped by their booth after their set, met the band, ate cheerios with them, and picked up copies of their 3 track promo. Later that summer they released Start Static and started getting some radio play as well as love from 13 year old girls. I don't know how I do it, but I've jumped onto a lot of bandwagons only to find that the wagon is manned basically by me and a bunch of barely teenaged girls. I think my interest in doom metal is a direct response to this connundrum.

Anyway, Start Static is a nice pop punk album that actually doesn't sound like it plopped out of the Drive-Thru Records cookie cutter. It leans a little more toward straightforward rock, which is fine by me. I remember this album came out pre-9/11 and the band had to issue a statement about not hating America with the song "Stuck in America." It's similar to what Jimmy Eat World had to do with Bleed American. Of course it all seems silly now. I'm pretty sure 4 white dudes who play pop punk in dress shirts and skinny neckties are not Al-Qaeda material. At any rate, this is a solid pop punk album and another fine example of how I very well may be a teenage girl at heart.

Sugar - File Under Easy Listening

I've always been a fan of bands that mix heavily fuzzed-out loud guitars with sweet pop melodies. Sugar figured that formula out from the start, and File Under Easy Listening is adequate proof.

Sugar is a post-Hüsker Dü Bob Mould group, which is just awesome. I've always loved the Dü (I think I love their name almost as much as their music) so Sugar was an easy sell. My favorite track on the album is "Your Favorite Thing," which is admittedly the most radio-friendly track on the album. I couldn't find a link to it anywhere, so just buy the dang album and listen to it your own dang self. It's worth it.

The Stooges - s/t

I was introduced to The Stooges by one of my college professors. I introduced him to The Black Keys and The Stooges were his return of the favor.

At the time I was very big into punk, so learning about the bands that gave rise to punk (Stooges, MC5, New York Dolls) was a fun and interesting experience.  The interesting thing about the fact that The Stooges were by repayment for The Black Keys is that The Black Keys cover a Stooges song ("No Fun"). I think the music I have introduced people to and the music they've introduced me to would form an endless intertwined spirograph.

Anyway, The Stooges are raw and wild in a motor city mode. I don't know what it is about the greater Detroit metropolitan area (The Stooges actually hail from nearby Ann Arbor) but they have a longstanding proclivity for loudness and grittiness. Go all the way back to Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and fast forward to all the stuff Jack White has done (not to mention all the other great modern garage bands like The Dirtbombs and The Detroit Cobras) and you can see that the city itself is built on loud and gritty. The Stooges fit perfectly with the Detroit mold. They're every bit as wild as you'd expect (think of how crazy Iggy Pop is now as an old man, and project that backward to the time when he was young and unpredictable) and the tunes are great slices of proto-punk. The Stooges is a great album, and an absolutely necessary one in the grander view of the evolution of modern music.

First 10 - Amazing Spider-Man

I went into the first 10 issues of Amazing Spider-Man fully expecting to love it, and I was right. One of the most amazing things about Stan Lee and Marvel comics of the 1960s is that they were constantly churning out iconic characters. In his interview with Kevin Smith, Stan Lee says he created Spider-Man because the Amazing Fantasy series was going to be cancelled and he wanted to try this Spider-Man idea he'd been kicking around for a while. Of course Amazing Fantasy #15 (pictured on the left) sold like hotcakes and fans clamored for a dedicated Spider-Man series.

I tend to love Marvel comics of the 1960's because Stan Lee wrote such fun and exciting stories and his artists (most notably Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby) were all top notch. When I read the first 10 issues of Amazing Spider-Man (starting, of course, with Amazing Fantasy #15) I found I couldn't get enough. One of the things I really love about Marvel is that their continuity tends to be a little more static than DC's (not that I dislike DC, it's just that DC has to deal with 30 more years of continuity than Marvel does, so things get a little convoluted. In another 30 years it'll pretty much be a wash). Everything you know and love about Spider-Man is all laid out in those first 10 issues. His early costume is not so different from his current one (especially when you consider the changes that have come over the years with a character like Iron Man). Many of his classic villains make their first appearance in the early issues (Vulture, Sandman, Doc Oc,  and The Lizard). Peter Parker is still the awkward teenager than can't catch a break, and his escapades in the Spider-Man persona don't make his personal life any better. He has exactly the sort of character depth that can carry multiple titles as a solo superhero character. He's Marvel's Superman and I don't see him running out of interesting stories anytime soon. I loved the First 10 issues of Amazing Spider-Man. From now on I'll keep a running tally of the standings of my First 10 series. When my First 10 series is done, the comic on top will be the next comic I read...assuming I'm done with X-Men (I've caught up to the present day with Uncanny X-Men, X-Men Legacy, Wolverine and the X-Men, Astonishing X-Men, and X-Men Forever. Now all I need to read is X-Men Unlimited, X-Men Vol. 3, X-Treme X-Men, and Ultimate X-Men). Anyway, here are the first ever First 10 standings:

1. Amazing Spider-Man
2. Fantastic Four
3. The Punisher
4. Golden Age Green Lantern

I am currently working on my next First 10 series and I can already tell you we'll have a new slot on the bottom of the totem pole. Look for that in days to come.