Mixtape 342 • Eyeball
They Might Be Giants have been fulfilling their titular potential for over 40 years now.
They Might Be Giants have been fulfilling their titular potential for over 40 years now.

Another cold night, but things are kept warm by Dry Cleaning’s icy indifference. I had a good before-show chat with Dr. Feelgood, where we discussed the many roles taken by esteemed character actor Stephen Root. What do you know, the next day he was gracing our screen in some made-for-streaming dud. I think I forgot my hat at the station.
The first thing to know is that it's pronounced "male." The important thing to know is that the Irish trio make the sort of rickety racket with metronomic drums, aggressive bass, spiky guitar, and disaffected vocals that immediately gets my attention
Disappearer sit right on the edge of scratching that itch too little and too much.

Back to the tried and true formula of new, old, obscure, and occasionally weird with tonight’s set, which features the return of Les Savy Fav and their always welcome abrasive electropunk. It’s now that time of year when I enter the studio in daylight and exit in pitch black darkness, which I always appreciate. In between, there were lots of exciting discoveries. Expect more heavily-censored Guppy in coming weeks!
Like pre-teens throwing every liquid into the kitchen blender and daring each other to drink the results, Woody and Jeremy fuse all manner of sounds legitimate and profane into some murky concoction that tastes surprisingly good.

It’s hard to pin down this Brooklyn trio, with their angular guitar dissonance and harmonies that range from drone to treacle. This live album showcases the band’s strange energy with a barrage of short songs and very little audience reaction.

If you are of a certain age and exposure to the MTV, you would think that people in Tijuana eat barbecued iguana, but that was just Stan Ridgway and Wall of Voodoo reaching for a cheap rhyme. Polvo takes the song's nervous energy and turns it up a few notches.

Trebled-out bass lines, disaffected vocals that could very well be reading from a dream journal, and a penchant for occasional dissonance are taking the forefront in this outing, refining their savage punk structures with a more stylized approach.

Spooky and unhinged, this single plods along with the menacing tone you might expect from the title. The flip side is more interesting, with call-and-response vocals, a bad attitude, and a woozy organ.