Weekly Records – Flood

As mentioned in October’s 8, I’m trying to listen to more music I already own. I want to go through at least one album every week. I’ll write about it here, but I don’t think every post will be this long. Anyway, let’s get started. All headings in bold italics are references to lyrics and not attempts at irreverence, etc.

Album: Flood

Artist: They Might Be Giants

Released: 1990

Obtained: In 1994, taped from my brother’s CD copy

Why is the world in love again?

In the documentary “Gigantic,” Frank Black, Dave Eggers, Syd Stray, Sarah Vowell, and a cadre of other nerd icons praise Flood as a harbinger of the alternative rock era that was to come. True, They Might Be Giants were one of the first college-rockish bands to get regular play on MTV: an accomplishment, no doubt, given the band’s profound weirdness–they used a giant stick and a tape machine as background instruments on stage and their earlier records had lyrics like “Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful” and “I put a rock in the coffee in your coffee cup,” not to mention the bizarre visuals in the MTV clips.

But to hear people like Black, Eggers and Vowell praise TMBG is expected. Given how quickly critics write off the band as a novelty act, it’s hard to imagine TMBG with the power to shape mainstream music. It’s easier to think of John and John (the only band members at the time) as pied pipers of awkwardness. They were art rock lite–too punk for polite company, too new wave for roughnecks, too pop for hipsters and too smart for their own good. Their followers were essentially the same.

I’d like to poison your mind

As a nerd at age eight (going on nine), Flood was the most amazing thing I had ever heard. I had seen videos for Particle Man and Istanbul (Not Constantinople) on Tiny Toon Adventures and I liked them because they were funny. I had no idea what songs like Hearing Aid and Letterbox were supposed to mean, not with lyrics like:

If I had a pair of eyes on the back of my head for each time
You forgot to take out all the things you forgot to talk about when you took a bite out of my spine,
I would have a lot of eyes on me by this time wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t that just be fine.

But they were upbeat, so I liked them enough to wear out the discount blank tape I copied the album on to.

I’m not as messed up as I want to be

Listening to it now, can I hear how Flood influenced music to come? Not really. I can hear a weirdness in some of the less-popular bands putting out music now, but who knows where that came from. Flood went platinum. It spent a few weeks in the top 200. Maybe the album softened the mainstream consciousness and made room for bands like Nirvana, but that’s impossible to tell. For Frank Black to offer credit for Nirvana’s success to another musician is kind, but seems like an exaggeration. John Flansburgh once said that when writing music for TMBG, he was never interested in publicly crying. I don’t think that sentiment really stuck in the 90s.

But I can hear how Flood influenced my tastes. As an introduction to TMBG, Flood is better than any of their other records. The lyrics aren’t as dark as what precedes or follows and the production is slick but still very, very strange. It was TMBG’s major label debut, which is something I’d never thought about before. It’s an appealing record and it was my gateway into liking new wave-ish music (among other genres).

There’s only one thing that I like

For all its accessibility, Flood isn’t my favorite They Might Be Giants record. Listening to it again made me realize that. As much as I love the band, it seems like TMBG has never really released a masterpiece. There’s not one record in their catalog that sums up how funny, dark and genuinely upbeat the band is. Factory Showroom is the most concise and Lincoln and Apollo 18 are possibly the darkest. Mink Car is the weirdest. I don’t know which I like best, but I feel like Flood gives me a sample of everything without offering a larger portion.