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PHONING IT IN

Phoning It In: “Underwater Woman”

TMBG

They Might Be Giants have resurrected their ingenious Dial-A-Song concept by streaming a new song each week of 2015 at www.dialasong.com. MAGNET’s Matthew Fritch reviews them all.

Last week, we learned that They Might Be Giants will release a new full-length, Glean, and it will include “many” of the 2015 Dial-A-Song tracks. We were all set to predict the tracklisting this week, but the internet had other plans. At a glance, we know 10 of the 15 tracks already. It is a sensible lineup, and it leads off with the strongest track (“Erase”). I would’ve put “No Cops” in the first slot, because that’s the only place it could have gone (as it turns out, it does not appear on Glean). The Jonathan Richman cover (“I Was Dancing In The Lesbian Bar”) was appropriately left out as well. It’s going to be a good album, and the Johns should do whatever they damn well please, and there is no crying in baseball—but if you could cherrypick from a whole year’s worth of Dial-A-Song, a pool of 52 songs, how great could that have been?

The question hangs, and we move on to this week’s entry. Sort of. As I add each weekly track to iTunes, the songs are arranged alphabetically. After listening to “Underwater Woman,” last week’s “Unpronounceable” (rated 5/10 for a perceived 1980s complex) came on, and I realized I was too harsh. It’s more like a 7/10, because it has a good melody. This occurred to me because “Underwater Woman” does not.

File-A-Song: 4/10