Editorial Reviews Music Review:
Music Review
Fifty Years of Hungaroton: String Players
Haydn: Sonata for keyboard No48; Sonata for keyboard No50
Music: Chillout Compilation [Import]
History of Female Vocal Trance [Import]
Fran Brännö Brygga till Brännö Brygga
Guilty by Association [Explicit Lyrics]
Amazon.com
The prolific and quirky John Linnell of They Might Be Giants has come up with 16 pop songs-one each for 16 different states of the U.S., but not literally, of course. Here you'll find songs about Iowa being a witch and Oregon being bad ("Oregon is bad / Stop it if you can"), coupled with every musical genre you can think of-bossa nova, carnival music, polka, you name it. Linnell's craggy twang wraps around the surreal lyrics with a brainy, tongue-in-cheek earnestness that will, no doubt, delight TMBG fans. Linnell, an equivocating sort, gives the rest of us a little slack. In "The Songs of the Fifty States," an overture of sorts, he sings, "I'm not going to say they're great, I ain't gonna say they ain't." Pipe organs and accordions flesh out most of these songs, contributing immensely to their old-timey wackiness and giving the impression that these pieces could have been written for a 1940s-era musical comedy. --Wally Shoup