IT'S FUN TO STEAL

release year 1998
type album
listened to on 2025-05-30
favorite Mr. Hughes Says
links tmbw

Here we are. This is it. Everything we've done, it's led up until this point; Mono Puff's It's Fun To Steal.

I didn't even try to take notes this time. I learned that lesson with Unsupervised. With our critical analysis framework completely shattered, I don't know where to go anymore.

I like this album. It's funky, it's groovy. It's totally rockin!, except in a different way. It's Fun To Steal, the title track, is a great song about the consequences of your acti— no, okay, sorry, I'm doing it again, the whole "interpreting Mono Puff" thing. With Unsupervised, they made it exceedingly clear that I shouldn't do that, but I just can't help myself.

I mean, there is literary inspiration on this album. Mr. Hughes Says is inspired by a Langston Hughes poem.

The horns on this album are great, I love the drum beats and electronica, I love the strange synths, I love the uncanny sound of it all. Something here sounds off, like it's wrong-on-purpose, like I'm missing something. I can't get over Dedicated, it's just so silly, it's what it is. While listening to it, I learned that Kate Flannery, who played Meredith in The Office, was Lady Puff as a Mono Puff collaborator. I think that's neat.

But much of Dedicated is just a funky beat. A good funky beat, but a funky beat; it's got bed squeaking noises on it, almost. Mono... Puff! Puff! Puff!

I can't... I can't stop thinking about Dashiki Lover. There's something about it that... irks me. I like it? It's bizarre, it's almost got this Irish-sounding melody at the beginning, and its lyrics are absolutely inane. The first time we heard it, we reeled, but now it's... normal. It's good. I think Dashiki Lover is good, because I think Dashiki Lover is bad on purpose.

Maybe the point of Mono Puff as a project, then... fuck, I'm doing it again! Maybe what I'M GETTING OUT OF MONO PUFF is that things can be good because they're bad on purpose. Maybe Flansburgh likes making things kind of campy! Maybe this is the musical equivalent of camp.

What I'm getting out of Mono Puff is that there is a primal discomfort in us, and we don't know where it is, but we need to kill it. Maybe the discomfort is the point. Maybe we need to try it again.

...I know what we have to do.



















MINK CAR

release year 2001
type album
listened to on 2025-05-06
new to me? no
favorite (linnell) Man, It's So Loud In Here
favorite (flans) Mink Car
links spotify, tmbw

i still dont like it sorry








THEY MAY BE GIANTS

an in-depth analysis/review of/performance art piece about the band They Might Be Giants (which is a performance art piece about being a band and about being They Might Be Giants) and about itself by Tulips

album listing/rarities selection by Alice W

special thanks to Shadow the Hedgehog, Garfield, and Scissor from Feast For A King

i think cyclops rock is good now though