The last time John Linnell and John Flansburgh released an album for grown-ups, 2007's The Else, it was one of their most aggressively rock-centric to date. This time, they've gone more playfully experimental, from the sunny lead track, "Can't Keep Johnny Down," to the sly, strutty cabaret joint "Cloisonné." "Old Pine Box" seizes Simon and Garfunkelian acoustic jangle, and "Canajoharie" has one of Linnell's catchiest choruses ever. And while Join Us is lighter on lyrical surrealism than earlier TMBG, it delivers on their well-known gleeful morbidity: "You wreck everything you touch, and you're a sociopath," they sing on "When Will You Die," surely the year's most satisfying hate-on.

Listen to "Canajoharie":

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“(We're Not) The Jet Set”

George Jones and Tammy Wynette were still married when they recorded the tongue-in-cheek "(We're Not) The Jet Set." The lyrics, written by Nashville songwriter Bobby Braddock, who also penned Wynette's "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" and Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today," make fun of the good life by declaring, "We're not the Jet Set/We're the old Chevrolet set." Braddock recalled that while writing the song, he needed the name of a city that evened out the rhyme he had with "Riviera" and "Missourah." “I got out a Rand McNally atlas," he said. "In the first part are the maps. The last part is an alphabetical listing of cities. I wanted a rustic, small-time sound. I went to the listing for Missouri. And I found 'Festus.' I loved the sound of it."