Mink Car

6.0/10

  They Might Be Giants used to release a new album every other year like clockwork.  This was the case from their debut in 1986 all the way through Factory Showroom, which came out in 1996.  Thus it was a bit of a surprise that it took five long years for Mink Car to come out in 2001.  To be fair they did release an mp3 only album called Long Tall Weekend in 1999, which was actually a pretty innovative thing to do back then.  That was the days before Napster, and as far as I know nobody had really done the online release thing prior to that.  The thing is, because it was such an odd idea at the time I think they sort of assumed not many people would hear it and it's kind of a half-assed collection of odds and sods.  Sort of a B-sides album if you will.  And they were sort of correct.  I didn't get it at the time because the idea of listening to music on my computer seemed ludicrous and I didn't think it was worth spending money on something I would never listen to.  That's kind of funny now on several levels.

  But the point is, Mink Car was the "official" followup to Factory Showroom.  Remember how I mentioned it came out in 2001?  Can you guess of all days, which one it came out on?  That's right.  It was 9/11.  THE 9/11.  It's kind of odd because I remember I had been looking forward to that day because there were going to be new albums released that day by TMBG and Mercury Rev, who I was also really into at the time.  But stupid real world events cast a shadow over what should have been a cool day.

  If I wanted to be mean-spirited I could make a joke that Mink Car was only the second biggest disaster that occurred on that day.  To be fair it's not really that bad of an album, it was just kind of a disappointment.  After a five year absence I expected them to come back with something really killer, but instead they released what, to my ears, was the worst TMBG album to date.  They really did seem to have kind of run out of ideas a little bit.  To make matters worse several of the songs on here were re-recorded versions of songs that had appeared on Long Tall Weekend or otherwise had been previously released.

  That's not to say it's all bad.  Opener Bangs is catchy, although something about it is starting to sound a tad TMBG-by-numbers to me.  It's got a memorable melody that'll stick in your head but for some reason it just seems a little generic.  Like it's the sort of thing they could just toss off in their sleep.  It's very typical sounding for them, which isn't actually a bad thing, considering some of the "experiments" on this album.

  I also really like Hopeless Bleak Despair.  It's probably my favorite song on this album.  It goes through several different catchy hooks including a great sing-along chorus.  It also has some dark subject matter as you may have guessed given the title, but they somehow make it amusing in the way that they excel at.

  Hovering Sombrero is almost as catchy and certainly sillier.  It's a fairly ridiculous image, and I'm not sure there's much of a deeper meaning here, but it's still a worthy addition to the TMBG canon.

  Then there's the title track, which sounds heavily influenced by Burt Bacharach.  I actually enjoy that kind of music, so I can dig it.  It's not my favorite song on the album, but it's a keeper.

  I'm not a huge fan of dance music, but I really like Man It's So Loud In Here.  They're kind of making fun of dance music by playing dance music.  It actually works surprisingly well.  Similarly My Man has some kind of electronic borderline dancey effects, but it sounds pretty cool to me instead of the horribly cheesy misfire it could have been.

  On the other hand there are a lot of mediocre songs on here and unfortunately some real stinkers.  I don't really know what they were going for with Mr. Xcitement.  Featuring guest vocals from the Soul Coughing dude it doesn't even sound anything like TMBG.  Maybe that was the point, but whatever this is, it isn't the type of music I enjoy listening to.  This is probably my least favorite TMBG song of all time.  Congratulations, Boat of Car.  You are no longer the worst song.

  I've Got a Fang isn't really much better.  It's kind of tuneless and kind of dumb.  I feel much the same way about Wicked Little Critta.  It's probably a lot funnier and more enjoyable if you're a fan of Boston sports and accents, or at least making fun of them.  I can't say that I'm a huge fan of either.  So for me this song is kind of an unpleasant chore to sit through.

  Most of the other songs just fall into the okay category for me.  Older is kind of catchy and kind of clever but it's also kind of creepy.  I sort of don't need to be reminded of how fast time is going.  It sort of freaks me out.  But that's on me.  I don't dislike the remaining songs, but they're sort of just there.  Compared to their earlier albums, which were usually close to 90% awesome at least, okay just doesn't cut it.  I'm still rating the album a little above average on the whole because I really do like some of the songs.  It's still the weakest TMBG album up to this point by a considerable margin.