Talk:All The Lazy Boyfriends

This may be my second favorite Flans song on Glean (with "Let Me Tell You About My Operation" first). Does anyone else hear a strong echo of The Who's "I Can't Explain" in it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kaylum (talk • contribs) 22:34, April 17, 2015‎

Oddly enough, I was reminded of "Good Morning Tucson" from that Jonathan Coulton album that Flans produced. ~ veggieman 01:07, 18 April 2015 (EDT)

How about something a little closer to home? I think it's strongly reminiscent of Flansburgh's very own "Too Tall Girl", but since that was one of my favorites from Nanobots, I don't mind in the slightest. :-) --MisterMe (talk) 08:29, 21 April 2015 (EDT)

The intro makes me think of Georgy Girl by The Seekers --Nehushtan (talk) 16:19, 3 August 2019 (EDT)

New Man Flans!

One of my favourite sub-genres of Giants songs is what I call the Flans New Man song. Previous examples include Twisting which was fairly tame in it's right-on Sisterness, Hypnotist of the Ladies (which some argue is about date rape, but to my mind was more about a skilled pick up artist, who Flans was a bit jealous of!); to the Right on Sisterness of Take out the Trash. This reminds me thematically more with Take out the Trash, where Flans commiserates with the girlfriend, but in a much more fun way, than Trash, here the offending boyfriends more hopeless than appalling and this is reinforced with a witty video.

Musically I quite like the light orchestration and the above poster is correct in that there is something of Too Tall Girl to the arrangement and I also agree with the poster who hears the Who's I Can't Explain elements which I think are most evident in the bass-line. There is a great pop song here, but to my mind not in this arrangement/version. The production of the song is determined by Flans voice, which croons on the verse and struggles on the high bits of the chorus. He might want to sing like a girl, but he's always struggled to do so. What Flans has done is written a power pop song and this is one of the few Giants tunes I could imagine being remade into a pop song by a young female singer with a real powerful vocal , where Flans is vocally timid this song is dying to be really boomed out with a more aggressive arrangement. This would be a song to hawk around, as I think it could be really powerful power-pop song that could do very well commercially. For me this is the best song album on the album. (Mr Tuck)

morrissey

i'm surprised this never came up, but i wouldn't peg TMBG fans as having any patience for Morrissey - flansburgh had to know about his song All The Lazy Dykes, right?

Oh, nice spot. I like the Smiths and Morrissey's early to mid solo work. The Giants themselves are big fans. (Mr Tuck)

Casio keyboard?

I've been doing a grind of listening to the entire-- okay, maybe not the whole entire but a good majority-- discography of TMBG, and so far I'm really enjoying Glean. This song is a lot of fun, and first listen I was dancing immediately.

But in the "Begin again, begin again" intro and ending of the song, I've noticed how noticeably different the synth is compared to the rest of the song. It almost sounds like a Casio keyboard, which I know they've utilized in the past, especially their earlier albums/song releases.

A very nerdy subject for one of their songs, but I'm always fascinated by the music equipment used in bands and TMBG is no exception.

Yeah maybe! It's certainly got that one-key chord feel, could be a casiotone or a portasound or a omnichord sort of thing. Flans is usually happy to talk about this sort of thing if you care to ask him on Tumblr - tmbgareok.tumblr.com/ask (but sometimes he doesn't remember!) -j2