They Might Be Giants: The Spine : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Twenty years into their duo's existence, John Linnell and John Flansburgh seem as though they could keep They Might Be Giants going for another twenty. They may not be as manic and frantic as they were when the indie pair's low-budget, high-whimsy weirdness cracked MTV in the late Eighties and early Nineties. But The Spine rocks without any loss of wit or melody. Musically, it's closer to Fountains of Wayne's power pop than to their last full-length album, 2002's demented kiddie-music side trip, No! Guitars dominate most of this thirty-two-minute CD's sixteen tracks as TMBG maintain their characteristic mix of playful absurdism and deeper melancholy in matured, two-minute marvels such as the Rubber Soul-ish "Memo to Human Resources." Now in their forties, these Johns are growing up without growing old.