They Might Be Giants Mink Car 180g LP (Opaque White Vinyl)

They Might Be Giants' "lost" album, released on September 11, 2001, Mink Car was largely overlooked due to the almost instant collapse of Restless Records after the events of 9/11. Recorded in New York City and London, this album includes the first collaborations with Langer/Winstanley since the Flood session ("Bangs", "Cyclops Rock", "My Man"). The album also includes notable productions with Adam Schlesinger from Fountains of Wayne ("Man, It's So Loud in Here", "Yeh Yeh", "Another First Kiss").

Mink Car was functionally out of print as a CD after the initial copies arrived in stores. With financing withdrawn from Restless Records in the panic after 9/11, they were bankrupt just weeks later; and with iTunes and digital music brand new to the scene, the rights to the album would become ensnared in the company's collapse, and even electronic availability was frozen for over a decade.

Mink Car symbolizes a radical shift in direction - backward - into some of the same stylistic territory covered on their landmark 1990 album, Flood. Nowhere is this shift more evident than in the choice of Flood producers Langer and Winstanley on several cuts, particularly the Flood sound-alike 'Bangs.' Mink Car is far from a retread, however, as the band takes lessons that they've learned since 1990 - like that they sound really, really good when they play with a full band - and incorporates them into that classic sound. That means that Mink Car is in many ways the beginning of a new part of They Might Be Giants' career... the band seems to have realized that they're often loved because their sound is all over the place, not in spite of it, and in response to that revelation they've released one of their strongest batches of songs.

Mink Car will please just about all but the most picky of They Might Be Giants fans. Diverse, off-beat, strange, fun, and decidedly wonderful, it proves that TMBG haven't really lost anything over the years and literally hundreds of songs and sound-bites that the band has produced. In fact, this album might be as approachable for casual listeners unfamiliar with their past work as anything since Apollo 18.