Sunday, February 7, 2010

They Might Be Giants - Factory Showroom (1996)

Factory Showroom is the sixth studio album by the band They Might Be Giants. The album reclaims the more diverse and electronic sound of their early work, moving away from the live, relentlessly driving rock feel of its 1994 predecessor, John Henry. Still, Factory Showroom differed from previous They Might Be Giants recordings in several ways. While the band introduced a bassist and a drummer for John Henry, Factory Showroom was their first album to feature a second guitarist. Eric Schermerhorn played lead guitar on the album, adding solos to tracks like "XTC vs. Adam Ant", but evidently the band felt that this brand of guitar work did not mesh with their style, as Schermerhorn left the band after a short amount of touring. Factory Showroom also had, by far, the fewest number of tracks of any They Might Be Giants album up until the release of The Else, coming in at only thirteen, while no previous TMBG album had any fewer than eighteen tracks. The tracks on Factory Showroom tend to be longer than their older songs, however, so the album as a whole takes about as much time as their previous efforts.

Tracklist:

1. S-E-X-X-Y
2. Till My Head Falls Off
3. How Can I Sing Like a Girl?
4. Exquisite Dead Guy
5. Metal Detector
6. New York City
7. Your Own Worst Enemy
8. XTC vs. Adam Ant
9. Spiraling Shape
10. James K. Polk
11. Pet Name
12. I Can Hear You
13. The Bells Are Ringing

Link