It's Fun To Steal (Album):Mono Puff

Artist: Mono Puff

Date Released: 1998

Label: Bar/None

Produced By: John Flansburgh & Pat Dillett

Tracklisting:
 * 1) Creepy
 * 2) It's Fun To Steal
 * 3) Poison Flowers
 * 4) Mr. Hughes Says
 * 5) Imaginary Friend
 * 6) Taste The Bass
 * 7) Extra Krispy
 * 8) Dedicated
 * 9) Backstabbing Liar
 * 10) Hillbilly Drummer Girl
 * 11) Dashiki Lover
 * 12) Pretty Fly
 * 13) I Just Found Out What Everybody Knows
 * 14) Night Security

Review: A collection of tracks from the two later Hello EPs and the b-side to the "Devil Went Down To Newport" 7", along with some new tracks, this is my favorite Mono Puff album, and one that stands up next to many of the great They Might Be Giants albums -- and is the strongest of the solo projects (though Hello (The Band) was great, too -- they only released the one EP; if they'd had more stuff, they might even beat this album). This is one of the pieces of circumstantial evidence that They Might Be Giants were about to break up; in some early interviews for this album, John Flansburgh said he'd written "Backstabbing Liar" about John Linnell after a fight they'd had (though he clarified he didn't mean it) -- later, he said the song was about himself. The only weak track on here is one of the two covers, "Pretty Fly" (taken from the film The Night Of The Hunter) -- the other cover, "Hillbilly Drummer Girl" (originally by the Young Fresh Fellows) is very strong indeed. Like on Factory Showroom, there's a bonus track on this album, accessed the same way, although it's just a monologue given by a text-to-speech generator. This album is very essential. - Rev. Syung Myung Me