Not for the first time, I find myself wishing that They Might Be Giants wrote songs for other people to perform while listening to “Dead,” from their 1990 album Flood (It’s the closest they had to a crossover album; it’s the one with “Birdhouse In Your Soul” and “Instanbul (Not Constantinople)” on it). The flat-vowelled accents of Johns Linnell and Flansburgh do this song no favors, which is a real shame; it has a lovely structure, especially in the call-and-response bridge that starts at 1:33, and the arrangement that has both Johns harmonizing for the majority of the song feels like it deserves singers with less nasal voices, to be brutally honest. Despite that (because of that?), this is an earworm of a song that nestles into your brain sneakily, distracting you with the vocals and letting the wonderful piano that underpins the whole thing quietly slip into your head and decide to stay for awhile.
Being an internet refuge for Graeme McMillan