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They Might Be Giants

Boss Of Me

Label: Restless Release Date: 16/07/2001

jalbert by Joss Albert July 4th, 2001

You ALL know them. Yes you do. When i was a nipper and was still sliding along disco-hall floors i remember a certain track. Not the Time Bomb, or the Star-Trekking song...The words "not to put to put too fine a point on it, lets say i'm the only bee in your bonnet...make a little birdhouse in your soul" come flooding back. Yes it's Uber-geekdom's most popular children from the ironic school of easy American pop-punk. Yeah!

Now, after sleeping off the success of their "hit" (Unless you know of the forgotten classics such as the highly political Constantinople...) they return with the theme to freaky BBC2 show, Malcolm In The Middle. Now, you can never take an ironic, post-modern geek seriously so, you can be quite resolved on this band hardly being Bright Eyes. They are kind of like Everclear's crazy older brother who plays with electronics when school is out. This means although they ramble and blather on, wear Buddy Holly spec's and generally aren't that cool...they can be fun to be around, more so than you might desire in fact. The dippy verse of Life is unfair... is full of summery nothingness. Then it goes into a classic example of USA-punkpop chorus's. Basically think somewhere between Blink 182 and Fountains Of Wayne and you have the chorus nailed already. It is not the sum of its parts but does have a cunning little mid song build up, a catchy if damn-annoying-sometimes chorus, and a general air of friendliness, despite the your not the boss of me fake scowl. This is the song being hummed by the dazed summer geek, as he lay there dreaming of one day being angsty (in a "that would be cool" way) and LED's for his Enterprise scale model.

Birdhouse In your Soul is still miles better though...

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