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My iPod #189: They Might Be Giants – Circular Karate Chop

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“Nanobots” is They Might Be Giants’ sixteenth studio album which the band released earlier this year in March. I was already hyped for its release due to being a massive TMBG fan, and due to the fact that the four songs that the band had revealed before its release date assured me that good things were to come.

The band then went on to stream the whole album their SoundCloud account a week before the album was officially released. How swell. My excitement could not be contained. I went onto that site as soon as I heard.

“Circular Karate Chop” is the second song penned by John Flansburgh to appear on the album after “Black Ops”. It is a real rocker in contrast to the latter, which goes for a more… ‘experimental’ approach. By ‘real rocker’, I mean it contains electric guitars, hard-hitting drums and keyboards which remind me of something I have heard in a cartoon before. Maybe Scooby-Doo, I can’t remember.

It is probably my favourite Flansburgh song off the album. Just a cool pop rock track. Sounds similar to something from the “Factory Showroom” album.

My iPod #185: System of a Down – Chop Suey!

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Ah, Chop Suey… I was confused as fuck when I saw the video for this. System of a Down freaked me out just a bit.

I change the channel and suddenly there are these half-naked guitarists pulling faces at the camera, a singer with a huge beard yelling, screaming and saying gibberish in the verses. Quite creepy. But I saw it again and again and wasn’t so perturbed by it anymore. In fact, the more I watched it the more I understood what the song was about. The more I liked it, too.

Back then, I probably thought the band members were just being weird. But it’s probably the passion they put into performing the song if anything. The video is pretty cool; the song is…… Well, I’ll just say if mood swings were to be composed into music then this is the piece captured in three and a half minutes.

“Chop Suey” was the first single from the band’s second album “Toxicity” in 2001. I did not hear the song until years after.

It is very hard to say exactly how I feel about the song. Only because a lot of things happen in it. If you haven’t heard it, where have you been?

But really if you haven’t heard it then you should watch it above because…. it is something.