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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“Let My Love Open the Door”

A peppy, hopeful love song, "Let My Love Open the Door" became a U. S. Top Ten hit for Pete Townshend in 1980, anchored by the kind of repeating synthesizer figures that he'd used in some of the Who's recordings in the previous decade. Although Townshend brushed the song off as "just a ditty" in Rolling Stone shortly after its release, in 1996 he revealed it was about love of the holiest sort. "It's supposed to be about the power of God's love," he remarked. "That when you're in difficulty, whether it's major or minor, God's love is always there for you."