Mink Car
- This page is for the album. For the song of the same name, see Mink Car (Song).
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Studio album by They Might Be Giants | |||||
| First released | September 11, 2001 Release details / collectors: Show | Hide |
Tracks | 17 | Last album | Long Tall Weekend | |
| Label | Restless Records <73744-2> | Length | 46:24 | Next album | No! | |
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Mink Car is They Might Be Giants' eighth studio album, released in 2001 on the Restless label.
Purchase
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| AAC | $9.99 |
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Background
After They Might Be Giants had left Elektra[1], they began work on a new live album inspired by a live session the band recorded for the Spin Radio Network in 1996.[2][3] While working on the album, which would later be announced by John Flansburgh as Severe Tire Damage on WFNX in an August 1997 interview, both Linnell and Flansburgh would begin to demo several new songs[4]. Flansburgh's demos included a new song titled "First Kiss" and a newly composed version of "On The Drag" from the Factory Showroom sessions the previous year, while Linnell would demo "Rest Awhile" and "Finished With Lies". In September 1997, the band embarked on the Severe Tire Damage ‘97-’98 tour to promote the new album, during which "Rest Awhile", "First Kiss" and "Finished With Lies" would all be performed live for the first time.
Sometime around 1998, John Linnell would demo four new songs, two of which would be released through Dial-A-Song.[5] These included "Wicked Little Critta", "Hovering Sombrero", "It's So Loud In Here" and "My Man", which would all eventually evolve into the versions heard on Mink Car. Not long after a live recording of "First Kiss" was released on Severe Tire Damage on August 11, 1998, They Might Be Giants would debut a brand new song written by Flansburgh titled "Working Undercover For The Man" at a show at La Luna on September 8, 1998. In an interview with Pop Culture Corn in October of that year, Flansburgh confirmed it was slated to appear on the "next record."[6]
In March of 1999[7], the band was approached by Joe "The Butcher" Nicolo, one half of the Butcher Bros. with brother Phil Nicolo[8]. They would soon begin recording sessions at Coyote Studios for a new album with the Butcher Bros. as producers, which directly coincided with the studio sessions for No! and music gigs for Brave New World and Malcolm In The Middle[9]. Bassist Danny Weinkauf (formerly of Lincoln) was also brought into They Might Be Giants after Graham Maby's exit to record alongside guitarist Dan Miller and drummer Dan Hickey, forming the Band Of Dans. In a New York Times article from June 1999, Joe Nicolo said of the upcoming album:
We would like [this album] make this a creative statement and a financial statement. We're not going to sacrifice quality, but it would be great for a lot of people to rediscover [They Might Be Giants].
Songs recorded for the album during these sessions included "On The Drag", "Hovering Sombrero", "Cyclops Rock", "Thunderbird", "Finished With Lies", "It's So Loud In Here", "(She Thinks She's) Edith Head", "Rest Awhile", and "Working Undercover For The Man", which were recorded and finished up from March to June 1999.[10] During this time, the band would release the album Long Tall Weekend through eMusic, which included future Mink Car songs "Edith Head" and "Older", as well as "On Earth My Nina", a version of "Thunderbird" with reversed lyrics. In August 1999 on Radio They Might Be Giants, John Flansburgh announced that the song "Older" would appear on the album. He also revealed the album’s provisional title, Unreliable Narrator, which was named after a recently written song that had debuted on Dial-A-Song that year.[11]
In an interview with the Dallas Observer on September 16, 1999, Flansburgh mentioned that the band was "three-quarters of the way through" the album, but by October 1999, the band had not been able to secure a record deal, as Nicolo's record label Ruffhouse Records had broken off from its distributor[12] and was forced to close down. As a result, Nicolo could no longer work with They Might Be Giants on new material[13] and a majority of recordings for the album were discarded in favor of the album versions that would be finished later on. "On The Drag", "Rest Awhile" and "Working Undercover For The Man" would be officially released on the Working Undercover For The Man EP on May 16, 2000, while "Thunderbird" remained shelved until it was re-recorded during sessions for The Spine in 2004.
Although the known recordings from the Butcher Bros. sessions were abandoned, almost all of them began airing on Dial-A-Song throughout 2000[14], and would reappear on a leaked 2001 promotional CD featuring incidental music the band recorded for Malcolm In The Middle alongside sessions for the album. Flansburgh would recall working with the Butcher Bros. in a June 2000 interview:
They're incredible talent scouts, they can recognize amazingly people who will become incredibly successful. And they're long, long, long term They Might Be Giants fans. It was really interesting working with people with such a different background. They totally come from a hip-hop background, and yet they totally liked us.
Likely due to its appearance on the EP, "Working Undercover For The Man" would be the only song released on Mink Car from the Butcher Bros. sessions that had not been re-recorded.
Recording
While working on material for the Daily Show, Malcolm In The Middle[15] and for Timothy McSweeney's Very Intense Heated Passionate Battle/Embrace with They Might Be Giants[16], the band had begun recording sessions once again in 2000, which had mostly been self-produced[17]. On May 3, 2000, the band would record an extended version of Malcolm In The Middle's theme "Boss Of Me" for use in a music video[18]. Sometime around mid-2000, the band began collaborating with the newly formed Elegant Too (Phil Hernandez and Chris Maxwell) on a new studio recording of "Wicked Little Critta" and two new tracks titled "Your Mom's Alright" and "Mr. Xcitement". Mike Doughty of Soul Coughing would contribute lyrics to both, and announced his involvement with They Might Be Giants in October of 2000 via his website[19]. In November of that year, demos for "I've Got A Fang" and "Drink!" would premiere on Dial-A-Song, while a newly recorded demo for "Bangs" appeared on a "2001 Sampler" alongside "Your Mom's Alright" and "Boss Of Me". On Dial-A-Song, Flansburgh would also announce a new service through eMusic titled TMBG Unlimited, with the announcement confirming that subscribers would receive the new album in 2001.[20].
Sometime in January 2001, a new re-recording of "Hovering Sombrero" from sessions at Coyote Studio[21] was completed alongside a newly recorded studio demo of "Bangs", with both being released exclusively on the February edition of TMBG Unlimited. As sessions for the album continued, they began working with guest producer Adam Schlesinger of Fountains Of Wayne, who helped with producing a rewritten version of "First Kiss" titled "Another First Kiss", a cover of Georgie Fame's "Yeh Yeh" and a new re-recording of "It's So Loud In Here", which became more electronically oriented at the suggestion of Schlesinger[22]. Director AJ Schnack would capture the reworking of the song at Coyote Studios in the rock documentary "Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns" on March 12, 2001.[23]
The band would also travel to London to begin work with English producers Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, who had previously helped the band produce "Birdhouse In Your Soul". Langer and Winstanley would help to produce "Bangs", "Cyclops Rock", "My Man" and "I've Got A Fang", the latter of which was remixed by the Elegant Too from its original demo recorded in 2000, with Clive Langer "superimposing" a rapid hi-hat beat throughout most of the song.[24] Sessions with Langer and Winstanley would also be recorded at the Magic Shop studio in New York using the RADAR disk recording system[25], while longtime They Might Be Giants producer Pat Dillett would be brought in by the band to produce each of the album's tracks. In a 2008 interview, Flansburgh said of the decision: "We just wanted to make sure that [Mink Car] had more sonic continuity. It just helps the overall experience."
During March 2001, a newly rewritten version of "Finished With Lies" had been recorded, being released exclusively on the April edition of TMBG Unlimited. Cerys Matthews, formerly of the Welsh rock band Catatonia, would be brought in at the suggestion of Langer to provide the screaming bridge for "Cyclops Rock" originally intended for Joe Strummer of The Clash. Flansburgh would give further details on selecting Matthews for the bridge on Tumblr in 2013:
We were working on the track with Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley in London. We had done a very finished version of the song already and Clive was looking to open the arrangement up. Clive has a very lively imagination about how an arrangement and a production of a song can travel—people peg us as being a bit manic with [our] song structures but I think we’re Trappist monks compared to what is going on in Clive’s mind. ANYWAY—he wanted to shake the song up add even more mania to an already manic track. I had the kind of scream/chant idea that seemed better for an outside voice. Clive and Alan had worked with Cerys Matthews, and clearly loved her to pieces. When she arrived at the session she was clearly a very magnetic personality, and she dove into her brief moment in the track as if it was life and death. Nothing had to be conjured out of her. She just exploded and it was perfect, crazy and finished.
In April 2001, They Might Be Giants announced the release date of August 15, 2001 for the album on theymightbegiants.com, while continuing to work in the studio with the production team of Dillett, Langer, Winstanley and Schlesinger through April and May.[26] During this time, the working title of Unreliable Narrator was dropped, with Schlesinger suggesting Yes and Flansburgh suggesting Secret Mountain Laboratory as new titles.[27] A partial tracklist for the album was also announced[28]:
Of course, the album will be hit-packed, and include "Bangs", "I've Got A Fang," "Cyclops Rock," "Finished With Lies," "It's So Loud In Here," "Yeh Yeh," "Another First Kiss," "My Man," "She Thinks She's Edith Head," "Older" and many other new songs and current show favourites.
"Older" and "She Thinks She's Edith Head" were re-recorded at Coyote, with "Edith Head" repurposing the original 1999 backing track with newly recorded vocals from Flansburgh[29]. During tracking for the song "Yeh Yeh" by Schlesinger in April at TMF Studios (where "Man, It's So Loud In Here" was also recorded)[30], a new song titled "Mink Car" had been written by the Johns impromptu on the piano[31], which was inspired by a phrase coined in conversation by Robin Goldwasser[32]. The album was officially titled Mink Car not long after a demo for the title track debuted on Dial-A-Song on April 18, 2001[33] and was featured alongside the finished version of "Another First Kiss" and a newly recorded song titled "McGyver" on the May edition of TMBG Unlimited. It was likely that "Mink Car" was one of the final tracks recorded for the album, as the rest of the album's tracks had either been completed or still in production. The band received the final master of Mink Car from the UK in late May, marking the conclusion of the album's recording sessions.[34] Flansburgh said of recording the album's title track[35]:
We recorded the piano first, and then did the drums afterward, then all the horns and vocals and everything. The very last thing we did was have Danny Weinkauf, our bass player, play the bass part. The great part about it is that the bass gets to do all that elaborate stuff in all the holes that weren't filled by anything else.
One of the songs recorded during the making of Mink Car that would not make it to any version of the album's tracklisting was "I'm Your Boyfriend Now", which was released in demo form on the June edition of TMBG Unlimited. It would later be re-recorded and released six years later in 2007 for the They Might Be Giants Podcast compilation, Cast Your Pod To The Wind.
Release and promotion
Promotional advance CDs for the album were quietly released in June 2001, while the album itself would officially premiere through TMBG Unlimited on August 1, 2001 as a free MP3 download to subscribers, one month before its commercial release. For unknown reasons, the album would be rescheduled from its original release date of August 15, 2001 to September 11, 2001. Cover and media art for the album were designed by The Chopping Block, which also did artwork for the band's follow-up, No!. More information and images from the design process for the album's artwork can be found in the behind-the-scenes Mink Car Design Tour.
Depending on the country of release, Mink Car's tracklisting varied widely. In Japan, several additional songs, "Boss Of Me", "Your Mom's Alright", "MacGyver", and "Robot Parade (Adult Version)" were tacked on as bonus tracks. The European CD was missing five songs—"Mr. Xcitement", "Wicked Little Critta", "Finished With Lies", "She Thinks She's Edith Head" and "Working Undercover For The Man" (and erroneously, one missing rauschpfeife note on "Older")—but had the addition of "Boss Of Me" and "Your Mom's Alright" worked into the tracklisting. Australian releases of Mink Car also included "Boss Of Me" as an extra bonus track due to its popularity as a chart hit. But despite its appearance on international tracklistings, the band opted to leave out "Boss Of Me" on the US version of the album, when asked why in a 2002 interview, Flansburgh replied:
It was our choice. You know, we like the song, and it was actually on the European version of the record as a bonus track, but I think when we were making Mink Car, we kinda wanted to get out of the shadow of the song. We worked really hard on the album, and "Boss of Me" had just been dominating our lives for like a year and a half. It came out on the show, and then the show was a hit, then it was a chart hit in the UK and Australia, so we were just kind of like 'Next.' I don't know, maybe it was a mistake not putting it on the record. A lot of people are still looking for it. It was on the Malcolm in the Middle soundtrack, but I think a lot of people are picking up our record expecting it to be on there.
Man, It's So Loud In Here was the only domestic single from the album, but was not widely circulated. Promotional releases of "Another First Kiss" and "Bangs" were also issued, and "Working Undercover For The Man" had been released on its own extended play the previous year. "Bangs" was originally intended to be a UK single, but the idea was ultimately scrapped. Flansburgh would explain why in a 2002 interview:
We had this very catchy kind of pop song, so we sent out a tape to Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley who produced "Birdhouse In Your Soul" and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" and we were trying to work with them on something ever since. They've done a lot of big stuff since then, and they really loved the song, so we were like cool, let's do it. Then while we were recording we found out that the phrase bangs doesn't exist in the UK, they call bangs 'fringe.' So they'd have no idea what we're talking about, so it was vaguely depressing as we finished recording the song knowing that it wouldn't be a likely contender on BBC 1.
Mink Car is TMBG's only album to have ever fallen temporarily out of print, due to what Flansburgh referred to as "the almost instant collapse of Restless Records after the events of 9/11."[36] In 2021, Flansburgh reflected on the album, in response to a question about performing some of those songs in shows: "Doing Mink Car [songs live] is kind of for us. It was a record we spent a lot of time on and collaborated with the dearly departed Adam Schlesinger [who passed away in 2020]. I think it didn’t really get a public hearing because of events beyond anyone's control. It's something we're proud of."[37]
The album was released on vinyl for the first time in February 2022 and limited to 3000 copies, with artwork "upgraded for the times by the uber-talented Elizabeth Connor and TS Rogers."[38] The vinyl release was accompanied by a digital rerelease that featured the four extra tracks originally found on the album's Japanese CD release. As a result, the songs "Boss Of Me," "Your Mom's Alright" and "McGyver" were made available for the first time on streaming and digital stores.
Track listing
US Release
| # | Title | Length | Lyrics | Guitar Tab |
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| 1 | Bangs | 3:09 | 
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| 2 | Cyclops Rock | 2:38 |
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| 3 | Man, It's So Loud In Here | 3:59 |
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| 4 | Mr. Xcitement | 3:36 |
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| 5 | Another First Kiss | 3:06 |
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| 6 | I've Got A Fang | 2:32 |
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| 7 | Hovering Sombrero | 2:13 |
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| 8 | Yeh Yeh | 2:40 |
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| 9 | Hopeless Bleak Despair | 3:08 |
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| 10 | Drink! | 1:49 |
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| 11 | My Man | 2:57 |
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| 12 | Older | 1:58 |
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| 13 | Mink Car | 2:09 |
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| 14 | Wicked Little Critta | 2:11 |
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| 15 | Finished With Lies | 3:18 |
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| 16 | She Thinks She's Edith Head | 2:37 |
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| 17 | Working Undercover For The Man | 2:19 |
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Japanese Bonus Tracks / 2022 Digital Bonus Tracks
| # | Title | Length | Lyrics | Guitar Tab |
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| 18 | Boss Of Me | 2:57 |
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| 19 | Your Mom's Alright | 2:59
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| 20 | McGyver | 0:46
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| 21 | Robot Parade (Adult Version) | 1:05
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Australian Bonus Track
| # | Title | Length | Lyrics | Guitar Tab |
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| 18 | Boss Of Me | 2:57 |
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European Version
| # | Title | Length | Lyrics | Guitar Tab |
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| 1 | Man, It's So Loud In Here | 3:59 |
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| 2 | Boss Of Me | 2:57 |
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| 3 | Cyclops Rock | 2:38 |
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| 4 | Another First Kiss | 3:06 |
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| 5 | Bangs | 3:09 |
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| 6 | My Man | 2:57 |
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| 7 | Drink! | 1:49 |
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| 8 | Your Mom's Alright | 2:59 |
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| 9 | Hovering Sombrero | 2:13 |
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| 10 | Yeh Yeh | 2:40 |
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| 11 | I've Got A Fang | 2:32 |
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| 12 | Mink Car | 2:09 |
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| 13 | Hopeless Bleak Despair | 3:08 |
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| 14 | Older | 1:58 |
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Trivia
- The lyrics for "Yeh Yeh", a cover of song performed by Georgie Fame, were not included in the liner notes. The track itself was omitted from some versions of the publisher's promo CD because Warner/Chappell does not have the rights to the song. Other Warner/Chappell pressings do include the song, but it is unclear as to why this is.
- Some promotional literature indicated catalog numbers for a cassette release of the album, but this did not occur, likely due to the wide obsolescence of the format by the time of the album's release.
- The Dial-A-Song phone number can be found in sections scattered around "THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS" on the album cover.
- In 2011, a number of musicians organized a cover album for the tenth anniversary of both the album's release and the 9/11 attacks.
- The car featured throughout the album’s art is a 5th generation Honda Civic Hatchback.
Gallery
Alternate cover coloration
Alternate CD design
Publisher's promo (note the lack of "Yeh Yeh")
Promo artwork
Promo CD
Sticker (on shrink wrap)
2022 vinyl and digital rerelease cover
Foreign releases
European cover with promotional sticker
European back cover
European CD
French promo insert
Australian CD
Back cover of the Australian release
German sticker
Promotional material
Flat
Australian newspaper ad
