Factory Showroom
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Factory Showroom is the sixth studio album by the band They Might Be Giants. It was released in 1996 (see 1996 in music) through Elektra Records.
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, and They Might Be Giants have not used a second guitarist since. Factory Showroom also had, by far, the fewest number of tracks of any They Might Be Giants album, coming in at only thirteen, while no previous TMBG album had any fewer than eighteen tracks. The songs on Factory Showroom tend to be longer than most standard They Might Be Giants tracks, however, so the album as a whole takes about as much time as their previous efforts.
John Flansburgh (founding member, guitarist and songwriter) has publicly declared Factory Showroom to be his favorite of the duo's many recordings. Feeling that Elektra Records did not do enough to promote the album, among other disputes, They Might Be Giants left the label after its release.
Track listing
- "S-E-X-X-Y"
- "Till My Head Falls Off"
- "How Can I Sing Like a Girl?"
- "Exquisite Dead Guy"
- "Metal Detector"
- "New York City" (a cover of a song by Cub)
- "Your Own Worst Enemy"
- "XTC vs. Adam Ant"
- "Spiraling Shape"
- "James K. Polk"
- "Pet Name"
- "I Can Hear You"
- "The Bells are Ringing"
Trivia
- "I Can Hear You" was recorded at the Edison Laboratory on a wax cylinder phonograph without the use of electricity.
- "James K. Polk" is a song about James Knox Polk, the 11th president of the United States. A sparser, drum-machine driven version had previously popped up on a 1990 EP for the song Istanbul (Not Constantinople).
- There is also a hidden track (Track 0) on the CD entitled "Token Back to Brooklyn". It is accessible by rewinding from the beginning of Track 1 ("S-E-X-X-Y"), and is not playable on all CD players. It can, however, also be heard on the rarities compilation They Got Lost along with the Internet-only album Long Tall Weekend.
External Links
- Factory Showroom (http://www.tmbw.net/wiki/index.php/Factory_Showroom) page at This Might Be A Wiki
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