THE TURTLENECKS EP

The Turtlenecks was a band comprised of John Flansburgh and Julie Kantner, his girlfriend at the time. While the release date is 2015 here (which is true), it was only uploaded to Bandcamp in 2015: it was recorded in 1981 in a dorm room.

Notably, The Turtlenecks EP, which is their only release, is almost a punk album. I Slept With This Thing All The Way Back From Baltimore has the lyricism of, like, a Black Flag track. This makes sense, because Flansburgh was a Ramones fan.

The political content on this album has a lot of anti-war screeds in Julie's Tune (fall into a relationship as the war rages on), In A World Without Food, and Where Are All The People In The World — can a pony find a home on the oven range?

This lends a lot of credence to our read of The Pink Album as being intensely political and spiteful. It is also utterly fascinating to hear Flansburgh on this type of music, especially when the rest of his music is so clearly inspired by it.