The Daily Spin, July 20
Tally Hall | Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Today is album 200! Cannot believe we made it this far. I am so grateful to all of you that have tuned in, those of you that have recommended albums, and particularly to Eli and Preston, who have joined me for every single album.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite song from each album right here.
Album: Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum (2005)
Artist: Tally Hall
Link:
There are great moments in this album, guitars that sail into the distance and have my head banging and bopping along to the best of mid-aughts indie rock. The instrumentals are, by and large, genuinely awesome and super catchy. There’s something about a guitar that just refuses to quit that really gets me.
Unfortunately, this slides pretty frequently into what I’m gonna semi-affectionately call ‘goober rock’ - lyricism that just feels corny in the worst way a little too often for my liking, and as such, it’s hard for me to score this too highly. It’s not always hokey, but they don’t ever shy away from it, and while I respect the aplomb, I don’t have to like it.
There’s something delightful about the way this traverses genres, but it’s not enough to salvage the theatrical elements of the production - something I’ve called out in the past as Not Really Being My Thing - and that remains true here. Too frequently, this sounds a little bit like it’s a folksy parody of Book of Mormon - and sure, that’s hilarious in its own right, but it’s just a bit of a miss for me.
That said, the instrumentals here do the lion’s share of the heavy lifting, and with great success. Give me a lyric-less version of this and I think it’d be a point or two higher.
Rating: 6.9/10
Best Tracks: Just Apathy
Worst Tracks: Banana Man; The Bidding