The Spine

5.5/10

  I have a confession to make.  I haven't really given this album a fair shake over the years.  I don't know if I had a bit of residual disappointment from Mink Car or what, but I wasn't even all that excited to hear that a new TMBG album was out at the time this was released.  I think maybe I also felt a little like I had started to "outgrow" this band.  They were starting to do children's albums around this time and my musical interests were starting to evolve elsewhere.  So I gave it a bit of a cursory listen.  It didn't seem to have many tracks that stood out and I kind of just dismissed it as the worst They Might Be Giants album yet.  I was starting to get ready to write this band off completely.  This was somewhat misguided of me, but this remains one of my least listened to TMBG albums.  As such. my opinion of this is more subject to change than on the albums prior to this, which my feelings about are pretty cemented.

  I've been listening to this album a bit more closely during the process of writing these reviews and there are definitely some good songs on here.  It actually starts off pretty strong.  The opener Experimental Film is catchy as hell and could have easily fit on one of their earlier albums.  Memo to Human Resources and Wearing a Raincoat are solid tracks.  Thunderbird is a good tune.  Museum of Idiots is another very strong track.  Even the couple of Spine tracks aren't bad even though they're only about 30 seconds long.  Heck, I even like Some Crazy Bastard Wants To Hit Me even though it features what kind of sounds like autocorrect or something on the vocals, which is normally something I don't enjoy very much.

  The latter half of the album has still kind of failed to make much of an impression on me up to this point.  I'm open to the idea that some of those songs might reveal themselves to me.  As such I might just revise the rating of this one up over time.  I still don't feel like it stands up to their classic albums like Lincoln or Flood.  I feel it's more on par with Mink Car, although it doesn't contain anything as unpleasant as Mr. Xcitement.  But there are a few songs that are slightly boring, which is something I really couldn't say about their earlier albums.  I will say that a lot of my issues with this album are just on me.  It's not the Spine, it's me.