S-E-X-X-Y: The Factory Showroom Era Begins
The song that turned my car stereo into a coming-of-age soundtrack.
A new They Might Be Giants album era means a new era of me, too. Subscribe to follow along as I write through Factory Showroom. The band found its groove, and I found whatever phase my life was in when I first found this album.
A blue Ford Escort cruises down Canyon Road beneath an almost-dark winter sky. The air outside is crisp, and a breeze pushes what’s left of the autumn leaves across the street ahead. I’m inside the car, blasting the newest They Might Be Giants album on cassette, Factory Showroom.
In just under twenty minutes, I’ll be at my girlfriend’s house, where for the first time in my life I’m about to reach second and third base. She calls on the landline to say there won’t be a single adult home until much later tonight. Before she even finishes saying, “Love you, goodbye,” I’m already backing out of the driveway. The first track that hits when I pop in the cassette is S-E-X-X-Y.
An Ode to Getting It On (The TMBG Way)
As we crack open Factory Showroom, the eighth studio album from John Flansburgh and John Linnell, we finally get what Flansburgh once called their first “ode to getting it on.” It’s a fitting anthem for sixteen-year-old me, about to experience my own kind of firsts. It feels like both the band and I are stepping into a less PG-13 arena.
And what an ode it is. S-E-X-X-Y opens the album with one of the best bass lines in the They Might Be Giants catalog. A musical tour de force. Just forty seconds in, the song plants a bold exclamation mark. A synth slides from your right to left ear, a groovy bass line joins in, then some mellow horns, a conga, and a rapid procession of violins, viola, and cello, all converging on a single moment at the forty-second mark.
Then, a beat of silence. It’s as if the band itself is holding its breath. A moment of pure anticipation, setting the tone not just for the song, but for the entire album.
And then, emerging from that hush, Flansburgh’s voice:
S-E-X-X-Y.
Impossible to miss is the guitar tone from Factory Showroom’s new lead guitarist, Eric “Wah-Wah” Schermerhorn (formerly of Iggy Pop, The The, and David Bowie). Here he’s flexing his face-melting levels of shredding, using the pedal effect that’s become almost synonymous with porn itself: the Wah-Wah.
Every time I hear S-E-X-X-Y, I’m sixteen again and it’s autumn. Much like the summer fading behind me, the violent trauma from two years earlier feels finally gone. I was healed, or at least I buried it deep enough that I could pretend it is. The perfect soundtrack for this new world of dating, driving, and fumbling my way into intimacy was this new sound from my favorite band.
Welcome to the Factory Floor
The process TMBG went through to make Factory Showroom was as unique and eccentric as their artistic sensibilities. It was an industrious experiment: a month-long residency at the Mercury Lounge, where they played two shows every Thursday, rehearsing new material by day and performing it by night.
By the end of that run, they had fourteen new songs ready to record. An almost literal assembly line of creativity that made the album’s title feel like a mission statement.
Their previous record, John Henry, had been the band’s first full live-band album. Before that, the Johns were a two-man machine, building songs through weird, wonderful innovations born of necessity. If I have a single critique of John Henry (an album I genuinely love), it’s that it sometimes sounded more like a “rock band of the era” than the forward-minded artists who made Flood.
The sound was full and deep, but it lacked some of the inventive charm of Ana Ng, Birdhouse in Your Soul, or really any track from their debut. John Henry felt like the Johns were still figuring out how to stay authentically them with a full band.
Factory Showroom continues that evolution, with some lineup changes, but some surprises are back. The band sounds like it’s now fine-tuning the blend of live rock instrumentation and the quirky, electronic DNA of their early work. Or maybe that’s just how it felt to me as I experienced those changes in real time.
Press Play on the Next Era
Over the course of the next twelve weeks1, I’ll explore each song from Factory Showroom and celebrate the return of TMBG’s trademark experimentalism as it merges with the full-band sound. As always, I’ll reach deep into my life and memories to share how each song still brings something new to the surface for me.
Today, as I write from my living room couch on a Sunday afternoon, I’m feeling thrilled to embark on this next album. Listening daily to S-E-X-X-Y for an entire week has been an absolute joy. It’s a banger I’ll never skip. An amalgamation of sounds that conjure memories of fresh starts, nervous anticipation, and a few R-rated firsts.
If you’ve been enjoying these essays, you might like my ebook too. It’s a darkly funny, painfully honest meta-memoir about overthinking, loss, and learning how to exist inside your own head.
Available at Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kindle, Everand, and Kobo!
Factory Showroom has thirteen numbered tracks. I learned VERY recently, that there was also a track zero on the CD release. A song called Token Back To Brooklyn that was only accessible by skipping backward from track one. I had the cassette and could not have found this even by accident. My best friend had the CD and even still, we never located this. I heard this song as part of their next album, Long Tall Weekend and so that’s when I’m going to write about it. SORRY.
This one is all about that bass, and the strings. It is indeed SEXXY, which is not a word that most anyone uses to describe TMBG. I didn’t know about the new guitarist, so thanks for the info. I will say that I was not a big fan of this album when it came out, but I haven’t listened to it in so long, that I have a feeling I’m gonna come to really love it now.
"Factory Showroom" was the first non-"Flood" album I purchased from the band. "Flood" was the gateway, but "Factory Showroom" was when I became all in. Everything I love about TMBG flows from this album.
I'm very excited to see where you land on some of these tracks!