The Reindeer Section

They Might Be Giants, “The Mesopotamians”

A lethally catchy song, I’ll be humming this for the next several days. I feel like The Else gets really kind of ignored in the TMBG catalog. By that point, they were really kind of becoming known as a kids’ band, and they just slipped in this really lushly produced thing right in the middle of three kids’ albums.

[looks at “kids’”] That looks wrong. I think it’s right? Ain’t gonna look it up!

The Reindeer Section, “If Everything Fell Quiet”

The Reindeer Section is a Scottish supergroup, featuring members of Belle & Sebastian, Snow Patrol, Arab Strap, Mogwai, and others. The resulting album actually sounds a lot more coherent than what you normally expect from a supergroup, primarily because the songs were all written by Gary Lightbody (of Snow Patrol). The rest of the folks here fill out the roster, and they do it quite ably.