FACTORY SHOWROOM

We think of what we're doing as a "have you seen our line of products" type thing. That's an idea that artists tend to shy away from when they're doing something for sale. Basically, we've woken up and smelled the coffee. We do have a product and we're proud of what we do, so we don't mind presenting it that way.

— John Linnell

I don't believe you, John. I really don't.

Much like Flood is a perfect major label debut, Factory Showroom is a perfect final record for TMBG's time on major labels. If Flood is PlayTime, then Factory Showroom is specifically the scene of the, well, showroom — its songs are the silent doors and headlight vacuums. The album has the Flood-like quality of "don't read into it too much, it is what it is"; in an interview with Suicide Girls, Flansburgh discussed the nature of lyrical interpretation:

I never thought about the fact that the cookie lyric could be taken as an, um, anatomical reference? I actually was thinking in that lyric about, um, you know eating in bed! Decadent, you know, as the purest expression of good time/getting it on that you'd just be eating a cookie. Whether it's like Chips Ahoy or something else, it's about actually eating a cookie. It's single entendre.

In a lot of cases I feel like even when we're trying to write things as directly as possible, they end up sounding like they're filled with coded messages. Even the title of that song, if we had thought about it or worked on it longer or thought about it in a smarter way, the song would actually be called "S-E-X-X-X-Y"! Because the just, "S-E-X-X-Y" makes people wonder if it's like an extra chromosome. Which again is something that really didn't cross my mind until the song, like, is this about some kind of transgender German swimming team thing? Which is fine, it totally fits the spirit of the song in a way but it's so much more specific than the intention. That's the terrain of writing lyrics—they're open-ended whether you like it or not.

"Single entendre" is one of the best phrases I have ever heard in my life.

As the title suggests, Factory Showroom constructs elaborate, ready-made, plastic products for sale, and every single one warns about the dangers of commodification the same way that The Simpsons warns about FOX. S-E-X-X-Y, being the first song that They Might Be Giants has written that's explicitly about sex, can itself be read as a commentary on the notion of "well, sex sells". I adore the bassline on this track, even though it's unlikely to be one that we return to often.

Till My Head Falls Off describes an old-timer in power who refuses to move on, in a way that I can only describe as Bidenesque. Continuing the theme of commodification, I personally believe that the narrator is a CEO refusing to yield control of a company, despite his time as the head tanking the entire image. This theme continues with Exquisite Dead Guy, which I both read as being about the veneration of old businessmen and also the co-opting of revolutionary figures (the FBI killed MLK but now they hold events about it), and James K. Polk, a song talking about how nobody will miss it when fascists die. These people are the ones who constructed the showroom: they have trapped us in it, and now we are listening to products rather than music.

How Can I Sing Like A Girl? is, about, well. Do I have to talk about this one? It stings like a motherfucker, is the problem. It's about, in the most general sense, freedom of expression, a thing that distinctly does not appear in corporate environments. But it does appear as a perversion of itself: as performative hiring goals, as "we stand with" posts on Instagram, et cetera. I don't believe that this was the intent as the album was written in 1996, but it's hard to not read it as being about that now. How can I sing like a girl and not be objectified (commodified)? I don't know. It's about other things, but I would rather not talk about those things.

When you're on the beach with a Metal Detector, you probably aren't taking it too seriously. You're focused on the beach. But you could be hunting for treasure, or you're pretending to. The narrator of Metal Detector does not understand why you would do these things for leisure, themself evidently running a more serious treasure-hunting operation. They have lost sight of why the beach matters. This is the situation which Spiraling Shape describes, one where you are so trapped in your bubble and means of thought that you can't run from it (very John Henry, really). It leads to the situation of Your Own Worst Enemy, which I think is an anti-work creed about a Severance-esque relationship with your work self; not in the literal sense of that show, but more generally of being "two minds" in and out of work. After many glasses of work...

If we're talking about music as commodity, then this album definitely can comment on that. XTC vs. Adam Ant is a deeply nonsensical match-up between '80s titans, neither of whom are really existing in the same domain as the other. So why would they be competing with each other? Well, XTC was signed with Virgin, who later was bought out by EMI. Adam Ant, additionally, was signed to EMI at the time Factory Showroom was released. So, from the perspective of the consumer talking to the label, there is no right or wrong: both sides made EMI money, so why would they care?

Once again, it's about 10 PM and I can't hope to talk about every track on this album, but I would be remiss if I didn't talk about The Bells Are Ringing, a song that I believe is about the seductive power of both marketing and fascism. Everyone must be persuaded by the music of the bells; a girl with cotton in her ears will not be permitted here. It's perhaps the most chorus a TMBG song has ever chorused up until this point, which is a thing that prior albums generally avoided. If you take the fascism read, it acts very similar to The Mountain Goats' Sicilian Crest, a song that is similarly incredibly catchy, because so is fascism, unfortunately.

In general, Factory Showroom, being TMBG's last album on Elektra, knows it's going to be their last album on Elektra. It takes the commodified perspective that being on a major label requires and dials it up towards comical excess, and in turn, creates a sonic landscape that feels almost otherworldly, ending with a death march into the future. It's one of the few albums that emotionally resonates with me enough to make me cry (How Can I Sing Like A Girl? and Pet Name), and I'm alarmed that we've overlooked it for as long as we have.