Perhaps it's no surprise that following 1996's
Factory Showroom,
They Might Be Giants began a prolonged recording absence, releasing only the Internet-only album
Long Tall Weekend in 1999.
Factory Showroom suggested that the band had backed themselves into a corner, as the humor of their early records had waned and even the band's trademark hooks were confined to a few tracks.
Mink Car, however, symbolizes a radical shift in direction -- backward -- into some of the same stylistic territory covered on their landmark 1990 album,
Flood. Nowhere is this shift more evident than in the choice of
Flood producers Langer and Winstanley on several cuts, particularly the
Flood sound-alike "Bangs."
Mink Car is far from a retread, however, as the band takes lessons that they've learned since 1990 -- like that they sound really, really good when they play with a full band -- and incorporates them into that classic sound. That means that
Mink Car is in many ways the beginning of a new part of
They Might Be Giants' career. Much like on
Factory Showroom, the band does recycle a few cuts, including "Older" and "She Thinks She's Edith Head" from
Long Tall Weekend and the non-LP single "Working Undercover for the Man" for the disc. But of the cuts, there's a healthy mixture of old-school
TMBG humor in strange, short songs like "I've Got a Fang" and "Wicked Little Critta," and fairly straightforward pop/rock like "Another First Kiss." That track and the mock-Euro-disco-based first single, "Man, It's So Loud in Here," both sport the trademark radio-ready production of
Fountains of Wayne's
Adam Schlessinger, who pops up in one of many cameo spots on the album. Former
Soul Coughing vocalist
M. Doughty also stops by to sing on a track, and
Catatonia frontwoman
Cerys Matthews screams one frightening verse in the stomping "Cyclops Rock." All this may sound like a mess, but the band seems to have realized that they're often loved because their sound is all over the place, not in spite of it, and in response to that revelation they've released one of their strongest batches of songs. ~ Jason Damas