Flood

33⅓ Main Series #88

by S. Alexander Reed, Elizabeth Sandifer

For a few decades now, They Might Be Giants’ album Flood has been a beacon (or at least a nightlight) for people who might rather read than rock out, who care more about science fiction than Slayer, who are more often called clever than cool. Neither the band’s hip origins in the Lower East Side scene nor Flood’s platinum certification can cover up the record's singular importance at the geek fringes of culture.

Flood’s significance to this audience helps us understand a certain way of being: it shows that geek identity doesn’t depend on references to Hobbits or Spock ears, but can instead be a set of creative and interpretive practices marked by playful excess—a flood of ideas.

The album also clarifies an historical moment. The brainy sort of kids who listened to They Might Be Giants saw their own cultural options grow explosively during the late 1980s and early 1990s amid the early tech boom and America’s advancing leftist social tides. Whether or not it was the band's intention, Flood’s jubilant proclamation of an identity unconcerned with coolness found an ideal audience at an ideal turning point. This book tells the story.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Pop Culture, Essays

152 pages, Paperback

First published July 18, 2013

Reviews

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Music can be as ripe for interpretation as literary works are -- not just in their words, but in their constructions as well. Knowing this, I'm open to the authors' interpretation of the 1990 album Flood by They Might Be Giants. Notwithstanding the few instances of almost ridiculous academic jargon (the authors are PhDs), the book is well-written and engaging with the humor you would expect from TMBG fans. Their theory of the band's "aesthetic of flooding [excess]" is overstated and a stretch much of the time, but fascinating tidbits about the band and their music are found throughout.

The authors chart how this album was released at just the right time (not intentionally, of course) to draw in members of a developing "geek culture" of teenagers and middle schoolers (which the authors were in 1990) who remained fans of the band as they got older. This 'history' is interesting, though different from my experience, as I was 28 when I first heard a track from Flood on our sadly short-lived alternative station and immediately went out and bought the CD. So, instead, I related to this quote from John Flansburgh, one of the two members of the band (both men just a year or two older than I am):

"For me, when people say, 'you guys are such nerds,' I am a million miles away from that. If it were not for the Sex Pistols and the Ramones and Patti Smith and Elvis Costello ... I would not be in a rock band, because those things are my cultural lighthouses."

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably the most comprehensive attempt to understand the underlying meaning of the album that is actually achievable, given that the authors--and the Johns themselves--admit the songs are impossible to interpret. It's not for lack of trying, though. This book is a 120 page start. Then you can hit the TMBG wiki for more (...and more, and more, and more...).

But no matter how finely they construct their arguments, I feel like it's ultimately the wrong approach. It's an unwinnable battle. There's an inherent assumption that you can be right, which you can't, really. So I think the book suffers from being a bit too academic. It's written by a pair of music professors and it reads like a thesis. Everything is technically correct (where "correct" has a meaning, that is) but lacking emotion. Dancing about architecture, right?

One section of the book tries to position the album as an important part of the early 90s' new geekdom, and I think that's a better way to go if you want to understand why it's important. (Even if the band sort of rejects that, which they do!) It certainly explains why they've had the crazy career arc that they have.

Anyway, if you're a TMBG junkie, it's worthwhile reading. Though I don't think it beats watching the Gigantic documentary if you want a bigger picture of what the band's all about.

[BigJohn · Rating 2 out of 5]

First and foremost, I'm what you would call a pretty big fan of They Might Be Giants. Though by no means the uber fan that will shame you into admitting you're just not as big a fan as them, I count myself as a proud 25-year fan of the quirk-rock group (uber fans hate the use of that term). I own 93 CDs (2nd only in my collection to John Williams' music, of which I have 114 CDs) of their music, plus 5 videos, 3 books and an audiobook, all of which contain music they've contributed. When I was first exposed to They Might Be Giants, it was just after they'd release their album, Flood, with which I immediately fell in love.

From there, my obsession maxed out in 2003, when I started to fall out of love, and after which it's been peaks and valleys ever since. For the most part, I'm a great fan of their adult work. So when I saw that there would be a book "about" the album that started it all for me, I felt obliged that I should read it. I really didn't know what the book would be about, nor was I familiar with the 33 1/3 series of books, but I thought I'd give it a try.

This book reminds me of being in college getting what was considered the General part of my education, and my most despised class of my college career: Lit. In class, I got tired, very quickly, of being told that my interpretation of what I was reading was incorrect, and being accused of being a fool for not "getting it." This book was written by obvious fans, who just happen to be PhDs, and who undoubtedly "got it" during THEIR lit classes. Their academic and dry analysis is offset by curiously insightful snippets, all mixed together in a bland analysis soup.

On the one hand, they obviously have done their research and know how to write. They use clever section title names with lyrical references to obscure songs that the casual TMBG fan might not recognize. But they are also analytically pretentious, elevating traditional geek fanboy gushing to the high art of overdoing it.

I can forgive the description of "Particle Man" as "...quantum particles get turned into cute-sounding superheroes who battle abstract geometric forms." But I simply cannot forgive the tedious sense of inflated evaluative importance that accompanies a description like: "The flipside of They Might Be Giants' music is a deep distrust of the grownup world, hence the bleakness with which 'Someone Keeps Moving My Chair,' 'Hearing Aid,' and 'Minimum Wage' all paint careerism and the suspicious amorality with which 'Women and Men' implicitly equates humans' tautological breeding with imperialism."

Seriously? Please.

They also have tried to associate "excess" with "flooding," and use the term CONSTANTLY. Overuse kills the analogy, however, and makes it appear more of a desperate attempt to convince you of how they have cleverly tied things together, rather than providing a clever and insightful analysis. Similarly, they overuse the phrase "aesthetic of excess." Blurgh.

There is some really great stuff about the Johns' early years growing up in Lincoln, Massachusetts, along with a brief history of the area and their ancestral migration to it. Since that part is early on in the book, it's a bit of a let-down to discover that the rest of the book fails to live up to that level of interest. There are two authors of this book, and I got the sneaking suspicion that I favored one of the author's contribution over the other's.

It's possible, of course, that I'm being overly critical about something for which I have an affinity. But I just don't feel that's the case. I'm disappointed, and though some Lit professor might try to shame me into admitting that "I don't get it," I'm an adult now - and I'm entitled to my own opinion, thank you very much.

"As we'll explain, They Might Be Giants' aesthetic of flooding bypasses the idea of the mainstream, a construct that vitally reinforces the cool-versus-uncool dynamic by which self-identified geeks in 1990 were routinely targeted for derision." If that quote sounds like something you want to have explained in a $12, 128-page paperback, this book is for you.

[Joshua Glasgow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somehow searching for the band They Might Be Giants on Libby or Goodreads I discovered this book, part of the “33 1/3” series (which I had not heard of until now), one of a large number of academic novelettes focused on notable albums from various bands. They Might Be Giants has been my favorite band for around 25 years now, so I jumped at the opportunity to read this book, even though on some level I was worried it might be too academic in that obnoxiously obtuse way—you know what I’m talking about: where the writing is incredibly dense seemingly on purpose so as to be essentially meaningless. I’ve read a few books of that ilk, and I had a slight worry this might well be of that caliber. Thankfully, I found the book to be largely readable with only the occasional bit of smarter-than-thou nonsense.

Another Goodreads reviewer writes that “[a]t times this was a 5-star book and at other times it was a 3-star book”. I agree with that assessment and I’d probably call my own rating a 3.5-stars rounded up. There are times authors S. Alexander Reed and Elizabeth Sandifer give some interesting insight into the tracks on the band’s 1990 album which I was unaware of, such as in their revealing that “Birdhouse in Your Soul” lifts musically from The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City”. There’s also an interesting interpretation of the band’s aesthetic generally in Reed and Sandifer’s thesis about “flooding”, a term that other Goodreads reviewers believe the authors overuse but which I wasn’t really bothered by. They explain: “In the music of They Might Be Giants, flooding is an artistic overflow; it is a supply of creative resources that so overwhelms the demands of creation that songwriting ceases to be about clearly expressing a single idea, and turns into a playground of excess ideas.” That is to say, the band both “floods” the listener with their extreme output—they have, at times, written new songs daily for their Dial-a-Song project(s)—and “floods” them with the variety of musical styles, instrumentation, and lyrical non sequiturs on offer in the individual songs.

This framing is interesting and I’m not against it, though I’m certain the band didn’t intend the album title as a mission statement of any kind. In fact, the book alleges that John Flansburgh, when they were putting the album together, kept bits and pieces of the work on different floppy discs he labeled with random nouns. One just happened to be Flood, and that’s what they went with for the actual title, somewhat haphazardly. I’m also interested in this comment about the music of TMBG being a “playground”. For me this calls to mind Richard Power’s aptly titled PLAYGROUND, which impresses the importance of play with quotes such as “Play was evolution’s way of building brains . . . If you want to make something smarter, teach it to play.” I think it’s true that the music of TMBG is playful in the sense that it is testing boundaries, and it lends itself to play on the part of the listener precisely because of the varying interpretations one can ascribe to the music and lyrics. Reed and Sandifer challenge the notion that TMBG is “funny”, arguing that Flood is not a novelty record because of the way it rewards deeper analysis. “It responds in kind to listeners’ heady acrobatics and heartfelt affection alike, which can make listening to it feel more dialectic and participatory than pop’s Great Album paradigm usually affords,” they write. Yes! That participatory feeling they describe, I agree, is part of what makes the band’s music so charming.

The authors go on to note that TMBG’s lyrics are non-autobiogaphical; unlike Taylor Swift, for instance, whose songs are very personal to her life and leave listeners trying to pick apart the meaning in relation to her as the artist, They Might Be Giants’ music “resists attribution by placing its concerns so firmly outside pop’s ethos where identities must be stable”. Reed and Sandifer argue that the band “in effect produces an anonymity of specificity” (a great phrase!) by writing songs “so packed with idiosyncratic details and specifics that they become completely anonymous, often even with relation to each other”. Ultimately, they contend, the best way to respond to TMBG’s music is “to argue for a way of hearing the album than for any one dogmatic hearing of it. In the outpouring of references, details, and ideas within Flood and They Might Be Giants’ work at large, the appropriate response is not to attempt to contain the ideas, but accept them in their multitude.” I’ve never thought of the band in quite these terms, though I agree with the sentiments expressed, and I find their putting it to words delightful. The idea that TMBG are large, they contain multitudes, they thrive in the space of paradox—yes, yes, this is what They Might Be Giants is all about.

There’s also a fair bit of straightforward biography of the band within the book: about their formation, how they moved from one record label to another, and their relationship with emerging technology. This I also found enjoyable – I did not know that John Linnell’s father’s name is Zenos, for one thing – but it does distract from the discussion about the album itself. Also, as mentioned, there are times when the academic reading gets the better of the authors. One instance comes when they argue that the fact TMBG rarely uses fade-outs to end their songs makes them more tangible because “fade-outs act to negate our understanding of a song as a physical thing; they declare music both permeable and endless, thereby obscuring its edges and denying listeners access to tactile analogies.” I couldn’t help but suspect that if TMBG relied on fade-outs excessively, the argument would instead be framed to suggest that the “endlessness” caused by fade-outs are a positive thing, some further evidence of flooding, rather than something that undercuts the music’s “thingness” (their word).

The book is ultimately at its best when it earnestly dissects one of the album’s tracks. I loved reading about the song “Hearing Aid” which, although certainly a weird track is hardly among the band’s best-regarded. Reed and Sandier talk about it being

Flansburgh number sung over a cool dub reggae backing track. The stylistic nod here is far from arbitrary: dub is a singularly technological genre, historically created to show off the Frankenstein assemblages of speakers that Jamaican DJs in the 1970s cobbled together on the truck beds to make mobile parties. Using echo boxes to create a sonic space that connotes equal parts prison cell and dense jungle, dub speaks a low-fi, bass-heavy language . . . those guitar squonks and metallic crunches at the track’s end are so appropriate in a song that addresses the ennui of the daily grind. The musical style itself calls our attention to the idea of echoey urban space.

I don’t know that I agree with or even totally understand all of that, but it certainly made me go back and listen to “Hearing Aid” with new ears (no pun intended) and I found myself appreciating all of the craft put into it more than I ever have. Even better is their description of “Minimum Wage”, a 44-second song consisting of only the words “minimum wage” followed by a cowboy yelp. I have to block-quote it again, it’s so good:

The song’s sound palette and several of its instrumental motifs very directly imitate Frank Sinatra’s 1965 cover of Petula Clark’s “Downtown” and the horn jabs throughout the song are sampled from a Sammy Davis Jr. album . . . More to the point, of course, is the fact that the entire song is built out of bits of the Rat Pack, who are in many lights the very definition of cool. All of which is spectacularly undercut by the fact that the song’s vocal tack consists of a mildly hysterical shout of “Minimum Wage!” followed by the crack of a bullwhip. What really makes it, of course, is the whooped “HEEYAH!”—a perfectly crafted morsel of excessive cowboy exuberance, halfway between John Wayne and Howard Dean. Not only is Flansburgh’s delivery overly enthusiastic, his preposterous enthusiasm is of course focused on a completely inappropriate topic. Minimum wage is the last thing deserving of such ecstatic shouting . . . the bulk of the song serves as an uneasy aftermath, unsuccessfully covering for the inappropriateness of Flansburgh’s initial exuberance, and ending with a comically underwhelming synth “ah”. The effect is a prolonged moment of uncertain awkwardness, sharply contrasting the vocal enthusiasm with the relaxed cool. The song is not “about” this contrast, as such—it is, after all, difficult for “Minimum Wage” to be “about” anything—but it nonetheless offers a fascinating moment of jarring discomfort between coolness and social excess.

Oof, sorry that was so long, but the deep dive unpacking this very brief song, which at first glance just seems silly and random, brings it to new heights. There are also sections in the book dedicated to parsing out why They Might Be Giants’ music is considered “geek” music and what the “geek” label means. This discussion didn’t hold my interest, but I did appreciate a couple of moments of acknowledgment that geek culture and, the concept of play more generally, “is defined by the enormous privilege implicit in having access to computers, wide swaths of literature and media, and education.” They admit that “unspoken in an aesthetic of playfulness is the economic security necessary to ‘play’ in the first place.” That topic doesn’t get teased out fully, but I nevertheless appreciated the moral dimension the authors touched on here. It seems of a kind with TMBG’s sense of the world, where they frequently marry bouncy pop songs to morbid themes. One of their recent albums ends with the Johns joyously scream-singing, “We die alone / We die afraid / We live in terror / We’re naked and alone / and the grave’s the loneliest place!”. John Linnell is quoted in the book on the title Flood, that “while it suggests an abundance, it also of course suggests a catastrophe. There’s a dark thing lurking behind.”

One final thing that bears mention as I tie this up: there are headings throughout to introduce the changing topics and each of these subheadings includes a lyrical reference to a They Might Be Giants song, some obscure enough to prove the author’s fan bona fides. These heading titles include, for example, “Coming to New York (Now I Walk Through Blizzards Just to Get Us Back Together)”, “Breaking Out (I’d Like This Song to Be Number One)”, “The Uneasiness of Childhood (“The Known, the Unknown, and the Underknown)”, and “Technology in 1990 (Put Your Hand on the Computer)”. I appreciated these winking references.

At times I was immersed in Reed and Sandifer’s reading of TMBG and of Flood specifically, at other times I wished it would stick to the music, so to speak. Ultimately, it’s a critical appraisal of a band I love, and I love that about it. The authors end asserting that “Even as time guides us beyond our adolescent insecurities, an abiding pull of everythingness keeps us coming back to They Might Be Giants.” I certainly feel that pull and I can tell the authors genuinely feel it, too, and that on its own makes this a worthy read.

[Quinn Collard · Rating 2 out of 5]

As someone proudly obsessed with TMBG, I have to say this book wasn't really written for me. Who it was written for, I'm not entirely sure. As a superfan there wasn't much new information to be had, but what casual fans are going to take the time to read a book about a band they don't care that much about?

There were entire chapters that were only related to TMBG in the most tangential way possible. I was particularly frustrated that the vast majority of interview quotes were from pre-existing interviews--the authors did interview The Johns themselves, but for some reason they included hardly any of that. As someone with *hundreds* of TMBG interviews, including most of the ones they quoted, this doesn't really help me gain more insight into the band or the album.

Still, I did enjoy it in spots--some of the analysis of particular songs was interesting and made me consider things in a different way. I have to love anything related to TMBG to at least *some* extent, I just was hoping for more from this book.

[Fred · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun, quick read for deep fans of the band and of this album in particular. Some disorganized thoughts:
- The history of the band and their family backgrounds was concise and helpful, though starting a history of individual humans or endeavors with geologic origins is a stylistic tic as played out as poetry formatted as a recipe or starting a speech with "Webster's defines _____ as..."
- My favorite parts were the deeper musicological dives into the songs "Hearing Aid" and "Birdhouse in Your Soul." The latter was probably the best bit in the book, and I could have done with a full-length track-by-track analysis in that vein. The connection between that song and the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City" is obvious if you know to look for it, but I NEVER would have found it on my own, despite loving both songs deeply.
- The section on the state of geek culture in 1990 was fascinating. I was just growing into geekdom in the years that followed this album, and caught the internet as it was on the cusp of widespread use outside of geek circles during the coda of local dialup BBSes.
- Several of the reviews on goodreads complain about the book's overthinking of the band's music, which I understand but am not bothered by. The central theme the book explores is that of "flooding," an aesthetic of excess. It's a point well-taken as regards the band's prolific song output on most of their albums, and their remarkably diverse stylistic choices. And when they connect "flooding" to the way geek culture changed in the incubator of the internet, it makes sense. The authors do sort of overuse the word and the concept, stapling it to every idea that they can, which gets a bit tiresome. And when they reveal that the album's title was chosen nearly at random, it kind of gives up the game. But if being a fan of David Lynch has taught me anything, it's that the point of this kind of interpretation is as much to provide *A* handle for the work, and that this can and indeed must be divorced from any intent on the artist's part.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

There aren't too many books about the two Johns yet so avid fans like me will eat this book up. Even if it occasionally veers toward the overly academic ("Going back to Melanie Klein's idea of splitting, the song could be read as an inversion of the Kleinian part-object paradigm") and forgets the deep surrealistic humor of TMBG, it still is a mostly fascinating read.

[MICHAEL · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book was fun, and difficult at the same time. Fascinating back stories paired with social commentary on the contemporary world events and social evolution of the years that created both TMBG and their one popularly successful album.

I can't say I loved it, but as a fan of the band I enjoyed a lot of the background and inside looks. I also think the concept of 33 1/3 is interesting and will be scrolling through the other titles in this collection for albums I personally enjoy, or that I think may have been representative of a particular moment in time, or social movement.

[Corey Vilhauer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Found the history of the band interesting, but found myself skimming large sections of the over-analyzed theme treatments. At times, it felt more like a desperate thesis argument than a book about the album.

[Loki · Rating 4 out of 5]

A highly idiosyncratic look at an even more idiosyncratic band's best known album. Lightweight, but deceptively deep.

[Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the only solid piece of cultural criticism I've read about They Might Be Giants — the musical duo of John Linnell and John Flansburgh celebrating their 40th anniversary this year (2022) that's been trading back and forth the title of my favorite band with King Crimson for what seems like forever now — and in that respect, I'm very glad to have this book under my belt. Reed and Sandifer capture a lot of what makes TMBG so different from (as far as I can tell, and seemingly as far as they can tell too) every other band. Their scope with this book is quite broad, and covers a lot of cultural forces adjacent to TMBG.

I originally decided to read this book, I think, in order to challenge any supposition the authors might present about TMBG's nerdiness (which itself was going to be fodder for a weird, now abandoned essay I was going to write linking TMBG to A.R. Ammons). However, Reed and Sandifer make it clear that TMBG are not themselves nerds. The fact that their music appeals to (as Reed and Sandifer prefer to style them) geeks gets some explanation here, though not as much as I would like; while, simultaneously, the authors acknowledge the existence of TMBG fans who are neither geeks nor part of the mainstream, a group to which I like to imagine I belong myself. "Post-Coolness", the title of Reed and Sandifer's concluding chapter, is an aesthetic I can get behind, and perhaps also the aesthetic that informs my favorite passage from the book:

At a given They Might Be Giants show in the mid or late 1980s, the stage would be festooned with three colossal portraits of William Allen White, the Johns might don three-foot-long papier-mâché gloves or sombreros, and a host of other props and gimmicks would lie in store. When they'd perform "Lie Still, Little Bottle," Flansburgh would keep time on the jazzy number's offbeats by thumping the stage ceremoniously with a microphone affixed to the end of an eight-foot stick. Slide shows played behind the band. Their TEAC tape machine would play surreal spoken-word introductions to usher them onstage and exit music to conclude their shows. A glockenspiel was carted before the audience with chanting and totemic reverence, only then to be used for just one note of one song. They fenced with loaves of French bread.

After reading this book, my faith in TMBG has been, if anything, reaffirmed. Sandifer in particular is an author I've been looking more into since reading it — her Twitter, for example, has been pretty fascinating — and I might just have to follow up with Neoreaction: A Basilisk at some point, however horrifying its subject matter at times is to me.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

33 1/3 is a fascinating concept: short, academic books about popular or well-regarded albums. Flood is my favorite album (and They Might Be Giants are my favorite band) so I was interested to give this a read.

First, it satisfied my need, likely not shared by anyone else, for a book on They Might Be Giants. I still think there's a ton of fertile ground to be had for an album about them coming to the East Village scene in the 1980s, moving to Brooklyn way, way before it was cool, being a nerd group that still had success on MTV, being one of the first bands to reject major labels, and then settling into a productive later career, often kept afloat financially by licensing deals set up by their own fans, now in positions of power at creative institutions.

As you might guess, I initially envisioned a thousand-page Robert Caro-style tome, but this is a pretty good imitation. The band cooperated with the book, so there are plenty of insights I hadn't seen anywhere else.

That said, the idea of an academic-style book running through the album's meaning and symbolism was interesting. I haven't had that feeling since college of reading academic writing and wondering whether the authors themselves even have a point, or whether they're just jumping from tenuous point to tenuous point like monkeys jumping through trees. But I definitely had it here. So whenever they made a point about a song (or the "flood" which, you might imagine, they find in everything), I gave it due consideration, and often found it compelling. And often not.

But all told, I'm very glad this book exists, and I'm very glad I read it. At the very least, I feel less stupid to have a favorite album, and less stupid to have a favorite album that was featured on a children's cartoon 20 years ago. It's a neat concept, and now I want to see if the series has covered any other albums I like.

[Elliot Chalom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most fans of the band and/or the album have rated this book 3 or 4 stars, with the general complaint that it focuses too much on TMBG's place in "geek culture" and not enough on Flood itself. To those people I ask - what book did you read? Yes, it's true, there's a lot about TMBG's place in "geek culture" in here. But the book isn't ABOUT that. There's so much in here that I would never have recognized about the band and the album, like the way they use technology (and how Flood was perfectly timed to coincide with a personal-use tech explosion), like the reasons their music is so imbued with American history, like the role that economic privilege has in shaping their music (and their fans), and so much much more. Including, but notably not limited to, the geek thing. Meanwhile, the authors managed to seamlessly weave an analysis of each song in the places where they thought appropriate in their narrative - all 19 of them, even the Theme to Flood, and Birdhouse twice naturally - which to my mind is the best way to write one of these 33-1/3 books. A song-by-song takedown of the album is fine; many very good 33-1/3 books do just that. But a real analysis of the album as a whole and its place in the world at large, like the one done by the authors here, that manages to also individually look at each song as a separate entity ... when done correctly that's so much better.

[Meredith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read a draft of this book before it was published and again in its current published form. Though they set themselves a major challenge in writing about an album that is crucially important to so many people, they did a great job.

Mostly I think they did a great job because this isn't the standard treatment of an album. They don't do rote history, anecdote, analysis and call it a day. This book does so much more than that, and therefore stays vastly more interesting.

It gives plenty of unusual knowledge and exploration of the band, the album, and each song, but it also theorizes so much about the culture time leading up to Flood and how the album came together with other factors to change the relationship between mainstream culture and geek culture. If you care about the 90s, the internet, the awkwardness of adolescence, or TMBG and Flood, you'll want to read and digest this witty thoughtful book.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short book is an enjoyable trip, especially if you're a fan of not only TMBG and Flood but of analysis. This is the sort of book I would have liked to have written as a graduate student, combining my interests of pop culture and crazy analysis. If you are looking for a straight forward account of the origins of the band and the album, you are in for a disappointment. There is plenty of information packed in here, but it is spread out through a lot of analytical wanderings. It is a cool way to approach an album, and even when I found myself shaking my head in complete disagreement, I enjoyed what the book was attempting to do.

[Richard Watt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent little book in what looks like a terrific series about that most old-fashioned of concepts - the record album.

Thoroughly enjoyable, even if the authors' interpretations of some songs didn't match my own - in a way, that's the point both of this book and of TMBG music in particular. I do take issue with their reading of the British (or as they put it, English) music scene of the 1980s and 90s, but otherwise a thoroughly enjoyable read which has put me back in touch with one of my favourite albums of that era.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dry and stuffy and overly academic. It had a few insightful moments when it discussed the Johns personal histories and their early shows and evolution of their sound.

However the bulk of the book is approaching the album in all the wrong ways in my opinion. It over analyzes the social, political, and cultural reasons behind the album. It my opinion it should have been talking about the recording techniques, the genesis behind the songs and lyrics, and what the Johns think about the album.

It's a fine book but it felt stuffy and overly academic.

[Chris Nagel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The butler did it.

If you think TMBG is a silly band, or a kiddie band, first of all, you are wrong about that and probably wrong about most things. In any case, this book would overturn your illusions quickly.

Despite what they state is their theme, and what they defend as their thesis, what Reed and Sandifer really demonstrate is that TMBG is a band whose essential character is play, in a profound and sometimes anarchic sense.

More than a good book about a great album by a terrific band, this is a book about adulthood, play, and meaning.

[Rob Adey · Rating 3 out of 5]

The thesis here about Flood coming out at the dawn of acceptable nerdom makes sense and is diverting if you know the record well and especially if you were in the generation the authors are talking about (i.e. about 18 in 1990). But it's frustrating they apparently interviewed the Johns and barely use any quotes from that interview.

I guess what I really want is a Classic Albums episode.

[Andrew May · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times this was a 5-star book and at other times it was a 3-star book. The subject matter was fascinating to me, but the authors at times tried too hard to be smart that it was sometimes a tough read (and I didn’t come away understanding what they were saying). At other times they were great. I would read it again, though, and ultimately they did a good job. Maybe I’ll understand more the second time. Their dissection of “Minimum Wage” was great. HEE-YAH!!!!!

[Thomas Hale · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 33⅓ book on the They Might Be Giants album of 1990, this explores the album and the band's history and legacy in depth. Branching off from a central idea of "flooding", Reed and Sandifer discuss the Johns' childhoods, their love of Americana, their politics, and their cultural capital as "nerd" icons. For a TMBG fan like myself this was a really fulfilling and entertaining read.

[Nick Kives · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like it more, but except for a few parts, I just couldn't get into it.

[Curmudgeon · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's a decent book buried in here somewhere, but the insufferable authors' pretension and self-obsession kills any potential the whole thing may have had. To my knowledge, there hasn't been any scholarly/academic attention paid to They Might Be Giants, and unfortunately, this book does nothing to alleviate that problem.

The book's few virtues are what bump it up to a two-star rating; a section on the band's early years is good, as are occasional snippets from the authors' interviews with the Johns, and some of the discussion of the songs. (I never would've thought to connect elements of "Birdhouse In Your Soul"'s instrumentation and performance with The Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer In The City"!) Unfortunately, the book's faults are numerous, and get progressively more annoying as the book wears on. For such a short book, it was a surprisingly exhausting read. I actually had to take a break in some places because reading it made me so angry. The authors seem intent on proving their nerd-scholar credentials by alternating between academic argot and insufferable geeky injokes--chapter subheadings all have subtitles derived from TMBG lyrics, for example--but the book itself is a thoroughly unacademic affair, with nary a footnote or citation in sight, nor any sort of reference list. (The authors could learn a thing or two from Andy Miller's 33 1/3 book on the Village Green Preservation Society, which cites all its sources, in addition to having its main text written in a pleasantly straightforward style, with some occasional moments of levity.)

Beyond the general tone of the book, the book's contents also leave much to be desired. It is worth explaining that TMBG are icons of "nerd/geek culture" despite not identifying with that subculture themselves, but an entire chapter devoted to computer programming, conventions, cosplay, and other thoroughly non-TMBG topics is not only irrelevant, but takes up valuable printed real estate that could've been spent talking about the band or the music. One gets the overall sense that Flood itself gets short-shrifted by the authors' absurd desire to promote a theory they call the "aesthetic of flooding"...which mostly consists of them attempting to shove some form of the word "flood" into every sentence they can, regardless of logic or appropriateness. It's not a real academic or critical theory, but rather something that they have invented, which might have been forgivable if it had actually served to better explain They Might Be Giants, Flood, or the songs on Flood. Unfortunately, it does none of those things. The authors are eager to show off the intensity of their TMBG fandom, but as a long-time TMBG fan myself, I feel like most of the band's active fans online could've put together a more illuminating book if they were given the same opportunities.

[Peter O'Connor · Rating 2 out of 5]

After inhaling They Might Be Giants, along with every other band that was released on the alternative charts in the early nineties (I had Flood on cassette), it was only after that I become aware of their role as purveyors of 'geek chic' (surely a term at odds with itself and not a term ever officially adopted by the artists themselves). It seems that They Might Be Giants tendency to omit rock and roll cliche (romance, aggression, heartache) from their work, seemingly opened them up to a whole audience of those to whom those cliches were alien.
In this volume, the authors (proud, card-carrying members of the geek nation) dissect the album and explore just what they found so appealing in the first place. Now, as one with some very strong nerdy tendencies myself, I can tell you that part of the nerd curse is that they (we) will often find something that is potentially interesting and concentrate on the less appealing details of the subject. For example, a dreamer will stare into space and and wonder at the vastness and infinite possibilities beyond while a nerd will get to work memorising the names of the stars. Each to their own of course (and hooray for everyone) but I did find that with this volume of the 33 1/3 series, going to such lengths to define or categorise an artist that by their nature, set out to defy categorisation was somewhat missing the point.
Overall, still worth a look, especially for those that love the band and want more insight, but sometimes it is ok to just love music because it is big and dumb and makes you feel good.

[James Piazza · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love music criticism texts which read like a doctoral thesis, (and indeed, many of the 33 ⅓ volumes are precisely these). The exploration of They Might Be Giants' musical intention makes for a fascinating and endearing read. Here's a snippet from page 55 on "Birdhouse in Your Soul":

"Birdhouse" can be read as an inversion of the Kleinian part-object paradigm. Here the nighlight enters the paranoid-schizoid position as it splits itself and the child into part-objects: your only friend, not your only friend, a little glowing friend, not actually your friend - a process that notably doesn't ever resolve, but instead leaves off in mid-split with a "but I am..." as the electric organ's octaves beckon the drums."

I'm sure that's exactly what the Johns were thinking when they wrote it!

And from page 107 -

In this way, it’s a misunderstanding to label They Might Be Giants’ music uncool, because despite being optimal teenage music, it makes no attempt to exist in the mostly adolescent economy of cool. The flood doesn’t fail to restrain itself any more than a nightlight fails to darken one’s room. Flooding is therefore not so much uncool as it is post-cool.

I believe I have a new favorite hyphenated expression.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never would have thought that such a book could exist. It's quite the read but I can't help but think that it gets a little too explain-y about the psychology behind the album and TMBG in general. It's purportedly a book about Flood but they spend a huge amount of time discussing ideas that distract from the genius that is the album. That being said, I enjoyed reading this book very much. Flood stands the test of time better than most albums from that era, and, in my humble opinion, better than any other TMBG record. It doesn't feel dated and the themes are very much universal. The authors do touch on all of the reasons why Flood was important then and now. But I would have preferred a more thorough approach to the album. For instance, "Lucky Ball & Chain" is barely mentioned. And they discuss how one song's theme goes into another like Hearing Aid into Minimum Wage. But there's no final discussion about the track list as a whole or about how the Johns achieved such a unified feel on different sounding songs. Still, this book is worth reading because it's meant to be discussed.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly, I loved this book--so much so that I am searching for other books by these authors.

The album is great, of course. It's been such a big part of our culture for thirty years now that it feels like it's always existed. One of my friends joked when I was younger that they send out Flood in the mail to people randomly.

Anyway, of course the album is great. But the reason why this book is so good is because it's just so darn fun to read. These authors come up with novel arguments, derived from interesting interpretations of these songs. They also tie it all together with geek culture, which is definitely worth exploring here.

Their main argument is that the album Flood exemplifies an aesthetic of flooding--of overwhelming excess. That's exactly what TMBG is all about here, so it's a solid argument. But as they explore the dimensions of it, they keep bringing up more and more little details and elements of this argument that I couldn't help but smile when I read it. Excellent work, fellas.

Recommended to all TMBG fans and people who like academic interpretations of popular music.

[Susan]

I will always have a spot for this album in my 💖

If you know which songs these lyrics are from you are my people

There is only one thing that I know how to do well and I've often been told you can only do what you know how to do well and that's be you

Everybody wants a rock to wind a piece of string around

I can't stand here listening to you and your racist friend

Is he dot or is he a speck when he's underwater does he get wet?

If you have a date in Constantine she'll be waiting in Istanbul

But I was young and foolish then I feel old and foolish now

She doesn't have to have her young fresh fellows tape back now

(And if course)
Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch who watches over you?

[Jade Dove · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exhaustive look into one of the most decade-defining albums of the '90's (and the most popular album by my favorite band). Songs are painstakingly analyzed, the band's history---and the history of their history---is examined and the writers bring a lot of thoughtful interpretations to the Johns's work. All the while freely acknowledging that there's no "real" or right way to interpret the tunes.
Overall, very solid read. Learned a few things I didn't know (that Flansburgh has a brother) but most of this is stuff I've encountered in years of being a TMBG freak.
I'd recommend this for those just getting into They Might Be Giants or those curious about them and what they're "about."

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit heady & dense at times, but a nice overview of TMBG's career and some particularly interesting takes on a concept of "flooding" which is introduced at the book's start. That the authors tie TMBG's appeal into the experience of being a gifted kid was particularly relatable, but I'm not sure I can say more about it without some more reflection on my own past. More than anything, the glimmers of the memory of infinite potential that this book provided are what I'll take away...perhaps the world can be in love again, even as the ocean levels rise up.