Mink Car:They Might Be Giants

Artist: They Might Be Giants

Date Released: September 11, 2001

Label: Restless

Produced By: They Might Be Giants, Adam Schlessinger, Clive Langer, Alan Winstanley, Pat Dillett

Tracklisting:
 * 1) Bangs
 * 2) Cyclops Rock
 * 3) Man, It's So Loud In Here
 * 4) Mr. Xcitement (with Mike Doughty)
 * 5) Another First Kiss
 * 6) I've Got A Fang
 * 7) Hovering Sombrero
 * 8) Yeh Yeh
 * 9) Hopeless Bleak Despair
 * 10) Drink!
 * 11) My Man
 * 12) Older
 * 13) Mink Car
 * 14) Wicked Little Critta
 * 15) Finished With Lies
 * 16) She Thinks She's Edith Head
 * 17) Working Undercover For The Man

Review: They Might Be Giants are back to form with this album -- though, perhaps, their years spent doing basically exclusively mp3-only releases has wanged their ability to pay attention to track-flow in the knees. But, you know, what? It's OK -- it doesn't really matter that this album sounds like someone just put a playlist of this collection of songs on shuffle and called whatever order they got good. These songs are all great and the fact that this album doesn't flow at all (part of the problem might be how they used many different producers for different tracks) just doesn't really matter much. Stand-outs include the previously-released-in-drastically-different-versions "Bangs", "Another First Kiss" and "She Thinks She's Edith Head" (which isn't that drastically different -- it's the same backing track as previously released with a new vocal track), and the lead single "Man, It's So Loud In Here". (Though did we really need another version of "Older"?) Still, though -- there are worse places to start, so if you're a newbie to They Might Be Giants and a copy of Mink Car falls into your lap, check it out. (And, hey, I love the Elvis Costello-meets-Pogues "Drink!" and the Burt Bacharach-inspired "Mink Car".) - Rev. Syung Myung Me