This’ll be the last time I talk about They Might Be Giants’ Long Tall Weekend, I swear. No, really, it will be. It’s funny. Last time I wrote about a song from there before this ‘R’ section started was in 2022, and now two tracks off it arrive in relatively quick succession. Well, it’s been a trip. I think I more or less gave the gist about the context of Long Tall in the last post I did for it, but never gave the goods on how I came to listen to it initially. I actually think it was late March 2011, so hooray to 13 years of knowing it. I’d decided to go through TMBG’s discography starting late 2010; it had been a long time coming because they’d already been one of my favourite bands for years. Don’t think Spotify existed back then. It at least wasn’t popular to the extent it is now. But there was this website called we7.com that served the same sort of purpose. Long Tall was on there. I listened to it and once again, the Giants didn’t let me down. It was another fine album, I wasn’t surprised.

‘Reprehensible’ is the ninth track on there. Like ‘Certain People I Could Name’, like ‘Rat Patrol’ and ‘They Got Lost’ (a song I don’t like as much, but hey, what can you do), it’s a song that was recorded during the making of the band’s 1996 album Factory Showroom, but was left off for reasons that only the band would be able to explain to you. When I first heard it initially, I had the feeling that it was John Flansburgh singing it, though at some point I did wonder whether it was someone else. It isn’t. It’s definitely John Flansburgh. But the way he sings here is unlike any way he does on any other TMBG track he’s carried out lead vocals on. Would it be described as baritone? I’m not sure. Whatever it is, he sings it all low. Really from the belly too, so it has this breathy aspect to it that adds a depth and booming quality to it. It’s really cool. He would never sing so low on an album after Long Tall Weekend, maybe this song took it out of him. It’s most likely down to aging though.

The song is something of a showtune from the perspective of a bad, bad person who relishes in the fact they are indeed terrible. It’s a person who in their words has undergone ‘unerasable acts’ and committed ‘unspeakable crimes’. It’s also a person who’s lived for 10,000 years, in previous lives/times, so maybe it’s not a person at all. It’s an entity to say the least. Probably the devil, thinking about it. The soundscape is dominated by an enveloping horn section. If you think there’s something off-sounding about those horns, you wouldn’t be wrong, as they’re actually not real horns, but synthesized ones created by the use of a Mellotron. They almost drown the vocals out in those pre-choruses. They do add to the jazziness of the whole affair, though, already established by the swing feel, piano and brushes on the drums from the song’s very beginning. Flansburgh owns the track so well with his vocal presence and melody. So much so that you may be surprised when I tell you that John Linnell wrote it.