OK! Spawned by vovat's post on a track-by-track review of Lincoln, I put Lincoln on for the first time through in a while[1], and one thing that kind of hit me[2], and this is something that seems to come to mind whenever I listen to the album but then goes away almost immediately is that while I wouldn't CUT any songs, it seems that the order isn't quite optimal; in that, well, it's really hard for ANYTHING to follow "They'll Need A Crane"; if it weren't for "Kiss Me, Son Of God", it'd probably be the best track for album closer, really.

But then again, the middle seems to kind of drag a little bit, too, but, again, in a way that's not because of any bad SONGS, just a little bit of meandering momentum. I wonder. Hm. What if they'd gone the Dual EP route? So, like two stand-alone releases that happened to come together in one package. Hm. I don't know! Strange. Sort of like Duck Stab/Buster & Glen, except that was, IIRC, only released that way on the European CD issue, rather than on any vinyl, since I think all LP issues of DS/B&G shuffled around the original Duck Stab order. Huh.

I'm trying to figure out what the EPs would be, like, track-order wise, but it's really hard; like, the first chunk of tracks seem to flow pretty much perfectly, but then the order seems to fall apart a little bit. Hm. I'd have to think. But, then again, TMBG have never been GREAT at track-order. They've never really put together an Album per se, as so much a collection of songs that happen to be on a flat piece of plastic.

Looking at the tracks:


EP 1:
Ana Ng (3:23)
Cowtown (2:20)
Lie Still, Little Bottle (2:06)
Purple Toupee (2:40)
Cage And Aquarium (1:10)
Where Your Eyes Don't Go (3:06)
Santa's Beard
You'll Miss Me (1:53)
I've Got A Match (2:36)

EP 2:
The World's Address (2:24)
Piece Of Dirt (2:00)
Mr. Me (1:52)
Shoehorn With Teeth (1:13)
Pencil Rain (2:42)
Stand On Your Own Head (1:16)
Snowball In Hell (2:31)
They'll Need A Crane (2:33)
Kiss Me, Son Of God (1:52)



That's sort of a rough first-draft; I didn't listen to check segues or anything; in fact, right now, I'm listening to Son Of Schmilsson, which I ALSO just had the urge to listen to at about the same time as Lincoln. So there you go. The thing I Did notice with Lincoln is that they were pretty good at getting CHUNKS of songs that flowed, it was just a matter of getting the chunks to flow. Even looking at this, it looks like the First EP is the stronger one, but still. Hm. There must be something that'd work.

Still, though; I wonder why it is about TMBG's lack of Albums-As-Albums; I mean, most B-side collections tend to stand out as being cobbled together; aside from the, perhaps slightly higher incidence of "weirder" cuts than most early TMBG albums, Miscellaneous T doesn't really stand out as being a fake/not-real/compilation-type album.

Flood reasonably hangs together, kinda, and John Henry probably does the most -- but a lot of the recent stuff, like Mink Car especially, is almost like they just said "Eh, people are just gonna dump this on their computer and listen to it on shuffle with everything else ANYWAY so there you go". The Spine and The Else are slightly better in this respect, but not really? I still like that version of The Spine I made with the corresponding EPs, which I thought really flowed a lot more than the real album did. So there you go. I hereby state that I know better than John and John themselves about what to do with their music.



[1] It's one of my favorite TMBG albums, though I burned myself out on it a bit growing up, as basically there was a time in high school when as soon as I got home from school, I'd put it on my walkman and listen to it EVERY SINGLE DAY. And basically force myself to only listen to it once a day, not any more; however, now, my favorite album is probably John Henry, with Apollo 18 as a close runner up, maybe tied with Lincoln.

[2] This is kinda cannibalized from a comment on said post.