Editorial Reviews Music Review:
Music Review
Mozart: String quartets No19; Haydn: String quartet No53
Luca Francesconi: Terzo Quartetto; Plot in Fictio
Inna City Pressure (Rmx) [Original recording remastered]
Pious Bird of Good Omen [Import] [Original recording remastered]
Party at the Luau [Explicit Lyrics]
Amazon.com essential recording
The self-titled debut from alternative music's favorite dork-rockers launched a career based on absurd lyrics planted in wildly diverse musical garden. Songs like "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head" and the New-Wavish tributary "Youth Culture Killed My Dog," are sung with an Andy Kaufman-like sensibility that leaves one questioning their sincerity. In contrast, the tune "Don't Let's Start" is relatively sweet and earnest. Musically, TMBG stray from the country honker "Number Three" to the glam-rocker "(She Was a) Hotel Detective," adapting accordion, fuzz-boxed guitar, and electric piano to suit their purposes. Perhaps the most subversive mockery of all is how TMBG write extremely catchy melodies that "serious" musicians would love to claim as their own. "His shoes are laced with irony" goes a line from "Hide Away Folk Family." That pretty much ties it up. --Beth Massa