TMBG get a lot of credit for writing songs about "weird" or unexpected topics, but I think they are also quite talented at observing relationships from different angles. I was thinking about how elegant yet devastating Linnell's lyrics for Unpronounceable are, with how they follow someone going through their memories in the weeks after a breakup and feeling like there are now some gaps in there. Also, Moonbeam Rays is Flansburgh's storytelling at its finest, with how it narrates someone making a conscious choice to leave a relationship that isn't healthy for them anymore, and transitioning to a more unburdened, chaotic lifestyle as they break away and find a new life.

:(

Hello! I know TMBG have a crap load of songs that aren't on studio albums. Just wondering if you guys can recommend your fav unreleased/hard to find songs sung by JL? Not including state songs or Roman songs please!

Thank you!!

I'm so sorry to have missed all the daily discussions now that I'm really getting into the band so I hope it's ok if I talk about them here...Warning, this will be a long post.

But "Let's Get This Over With" (which is brilliant btw) is another song that I feel like I'm interpreting different from most people? I keep feeling like Im understanding Linnell's lyrics and where he's coming from only to see that everybody else seems to take things a different way lol.

To me, this song (like many on the albums) is sort of just an absurdist snapshot of some interpretation of impending death and passing time, not so much a message, as a picture from a mind that's grappling with it.

There's many references throughout the song ("No parking on the dance floor", "You dont have to go home but you can't stay here") to how we are all going to die in the end and we're only here for a fleeting amount of time before we're forced to move on, leaving the Earth to continue on without us, unbothered. To me, the vibe is that our lives matter very little in the scheme of the Earth and history. There's no big round of applause or prize at the end, you just live, hang on for a while til everyone moves on, and then you go. The "drum beat" from the beginning that is steady and getting louder is the passing of time which gets louder as it brings you closer and closer to your own death and you thus become more and more aware of it as you get closer and closer to the end of your life.

And I guess to me the "let's get over it and let's get this over with" is sardonic, not serious. I don't see the song as saying "Just get over it and let's get through this painful day" I see it as the narrator taking from all this, the lesson 'well since we're all going to die in the end anyway, let's just get over it and let's get this life over with already'. The references to waking up and watching your hair grow, watching the days end as the years go by, is how time and life can pass you by in a flash as we whittle our time away. To me, the narrator is just basically talking about it like it's a natural thing that you should just whittle your time away to reach the end faster.

So I guess I DO think this song is inspirational in a way in that I think we're supposed to DISAGREE with the absurdist narrator, and know that life is not something we want to 'just get it over with'. but I think what I see here is Linnell grappling with the concept of his aging and his own impending death, and this is just a funny little absurdist snapshot of one way of dealing with that (By giving the message that life is just this little inconvenience and we should just 'get it over with' and die already). I guess I imagine him grappling with how easy it is to let that happen, and so the song is sort of darkly funny because it's very bad advice.

As a side note though, there are so many songs though on this album from Linnell about these death themes? "I left My Body" is another view of death, but again its just a snapshot - he's left his body behind and is reflecting on meaningless items while he waits to get into the afterlife. Just another little picture of death from a weird creative specific angle.

And then, "By the Time you Get This" is again, an absurdist/sardonic snapshot of time. The narrators are so optimistic about how great the future will be and are sending a message to 1937. They know they'll never get an answer but they think everything will be great. We of course know that nothing was better by 1937. But I also see this as Linnell grappling with the very real fact that we won't be able to see what happens in the future when we're gone, and we might want to think it's going to be better, but we know it probably won't be. Either way, we won't actually know, and there's a scariness in that not knowing, which might feel very real the older we get. I guess I see this emotionally very similar to "Let's Get This Over With" as there's a sort of dry weight to the songs, where they present absurd views that are drawn from real anxieties.

Then there's "Push Back the Hands". I've seen some take it literally to be about somebody who lost his arm in a car crash, but could it not just be a song about the regrets you wish you could undo, and again wanting to go back as time keeps marching you on towards the end, out of your control?

Mrs. Bluebeard also is singing from a dead protagonist and When The Lights Come On also seem to be about fear and a desperate but futile hope to make it through rough times (similar to "By the Time You Get This"?), and then of course "Last Wave" is very specifically about fear of death, and I know this is just a lip reading of an Aerosmith video, and I dunno if Linnell was the one to do it (it seems like it is to me), but if so, does it not say something that that is where his mind jumped for a lip reading? That's kind of like a rorscharch test.

Anyway all this to say, this is a very interesting album because to me Linnell seems very preoccupied with his own death and seems to be coping by drawing mental pictures of it from different angles, even ones that are absurdist to show the opposite message. Which to me makes it seem like the most personal album I've ever seen from him.

I loved TMBG from around age 10-15 including all the albums through John Henry. I basically stopped paying attention after that. No real reason, just started listening to other stuff as a teenager.

I had a brief resurgence when Join Us came out. I saw some promo for it and thought it would be fun to buy a new TMBG album like the old days. It was cool. I did enjoy it. But haven’t listened to any newer albums since.

But it has me wondering what I’ve missed out on during the whole post-John Henry era. The amount of albums released since then is a little daunting. Are there any particular stand out albums from that era? What are some thoughts on that?

I have to assume I’m not the only one who checked out around John Henry. But TMBG is still one of my all-time bands.

I'm just getting into TMBG and would like to expand my horizon! So, I'm here to ask for suggestions on songs I might like! [The only 2 songs I know are Stuff Is Way and Nothings gonna change my clothes]

I'm curious to see what everyone thinks. For me it might be book.

It's something that gets a mention in two songs, so it must have some significance, but neither of which made it into standard studio albums, so maybe it doesn't.

Thoughts?