10 In my top 5 TMBG songs easily. "In the overgrowth of the underbrush" is a perfect opening lyric and it just gets even better from there. Linnell at his most poignant and most cryptic simultaneously. Such an elegant tale of someone who witnessed something supernatural and is now both trying to convince others it's real and mourning the fact that he can't go back. With lyrics like "They smoked the proof" indicating sinister deeds that only the narrator is aware of. "I've got my paints and I'll try to paint Canajoharie" is gorgeous, as are all the esoteric references to biology (rhyming front flipper with mudskipper?!), evolution, and rocket science. This song leaves so much to the imagination, almost inviting the creation of a low-budget sci-fi music video. Not to mention how it does so much with the name of a small upstate NY resort town. The way Linnell belts it out always gives me chills.
Also love the soaring, wavery guitar in the chorus, it's reminiscent of Ana Ng. And the triumphant way Linnell describes what he saw, with the emphatic percussion under it. And the accordion frantically rising up in the bridge. What a song.
Oh my gosh I didn't even make the connection to Ana Ng... Both feel sentimental but Ana Ng ends up being wistful while this one feels more triumphant. Crazy how that works!
9.5/10 Too lazy to write a full answer of my own, so I'm piggybacking off of you to say that it's definitely my favorite song on Join Us, and probably in my top 15 all-time TMBG songs. This is another one of those songs that I loved for years before I dug into the lyrics, and then got to fall in love a second time. I give Join Us some crap for not being adventurous enough, but with songwriting like this, it's excusable in my humble eyes (and ears).
It's a 10. I always say, a 10 needs to be rare to mean something, and this song drips with cleverness, confidence, and charm. Even though it feels very personal to a childhood experience of Linnell, it also resonates as a universal feeling of the impossible task of trying to describe a powerful and important childhood memory to someone. The tang of mourning knowing that you'll never be able to go back to a moment. It's all in there, and it sounds like just another day at the writing desk for him.
"If you can draw it in the air, or write it down, then you weren't there." God damn.
Couldn't agree more! You can feel both the wonder and the pain of someone who saw something greater than anything on earth and knows he won't see it again.
9.5 I’m sorry, from this point forward in their career a lot of my thoughts about individual tracks just boil down to “they’re so great at what they do, and this is fresh and weird and somehow life-affirming and the equal of any great pop song I’ve ever loved, even if it doesn’t scramble my brain like Where Your Eyes Don’t Go once did”
Ok but don’t stop writing up your thoughts on them because I always enjoy seeing what you come up with and it conjures up many depths to the songs I had not previously examined.
Linnell what the actual hell where do you keep pulling these beautiful melodic lines from? This almost feels OVERLY saccharine as a song but the ridiculousness of the lyrics somehow pulls it right back down into genuinely sentimental.
The warbling guitar feels like they put it in front of a fan... It tickles my brain hehe I wonder how they did that.
Somehow when I first heard this one it just didn't... HIT me. Therefore I'm not as sentimental where I'd wanna go back to this one in comparison to others, but I still adore this everytime it's on. 9.25
10 Other comments cover it better than I can. But another thing to love here is Linnell's pipes are in peak form. The way an accent we don't hear all the time comes out full force with the feeling he puts in some of the lines.
9.73/10 - It's a very sentimental song that I resonate with very much, especially at an age where I can get very nostalgic. The brash instrumental complements the soft lyrics very nicely done on here. They also brought back the accordion that was absent in The Else album. You know, this song reminds me of Purple Toupee where the protagonist remembers something wrong, that being the rocket ship experiment that may or may not have happened, he probably just confused it for another rocket ship accident. It's overall a pretty sweet song about wanting to go back to a time where you were young and free, a song that I get from a personal stance!
8.25. I saw them play this before it was released and loved it (granted I was a pretty obsessed superfan then), and remember feeling disappointed when I heard the album version. The production is just not doing as much as it could for this one imo. Maybe the chorus could use some more instrumental power, at least another guitar adding weight to the chords, to create some dynamics between the different sections. I might have been tainted by hearing it live first. Still, a pretty good Linnell song. I like the reverse accordion.
I think this song has just the right balance of intensity and tenderness. I feel like if it rocked harder it would be missing some of its poignance. Also the wavery nature of the chorus reminds me of Ana Ng.
9, maybe? This is from right around the time I stopped keeping up with new TMBG stuff and I've just started giving their "later" (last 15 years haha) albums a closer listen. This is definitely one of my favorites from that era but I'm still working on processing the lyrics and figuring out what it all means to me.
I'm about the age now that the Johns would've been when they wrote this song; that feels particularly relevant to this one in particular.
10, would honestly give it more, god I love Canajoharie. it has that excellent thing they do sometimes where the final chorus has a few lines altered or added to it. that slight slur of "launching site" could've been easily considered a blip and fixed in a retake, but it's one of my favourite parts for how it complements the raw emotion, as do the guitar and the way it builds.
my interpretation listening to this song is the narrator describing a formative youthful experience that no one else around can relate to - most likely one that ultimately didn't end well, going by its description as an experiment "that went awry". yet they can't help but obsess over those days. in a way, it's almost the antithesis of "put your hand inside the puppet head", whose narrator is savvy about falling into rose-tinted nostalgia, while this one succumbs to it. going off of this theme, I like the idea of a life-altering time being metaphorically likened to evolution, the "daring mudskipper" finding its feet on ground.
10 - close your eyes, see what I see.
Perfection! Flans' tremelo guitar has never sounded better and I love how at the end of the track it sounds like it powering down like an engine. The melody of every part is just so good and sung so powerfully. I can picture Linnell doing his little claw gesture during the breakdown.
9.5 - While I can't go all the way to a 10 here because it's more of a Top-20-to-11 song (as another commenter notes I want to reserve 10s for the absolute pinnacle of the TMBG catalog) this is still among the band's best songs. Linnell's in top form vocally here, and that final approach with "when the rocketship experiment went awry" is a huge release of energy capped off with what may very well be the highest note he's ever sung.
10 how could it be any less?!
Listened to the album yesterday a couple times and this song really sticks out, even on an album where I genuinely like every song, this just has an energy and a zing to it that kicks it up another notch.
9!!
God what a good song. On the surface it seems to be a tale of the evolution from aquatic creatures in the sea coming up onto the land ("where a daring mudskipper dragged itself away") in a random coastal town, but I think its easy to take it as a metaphor for foundational memories in childhood and beyond. There are always moments that, for good or ill, completely change the trajectory of your life, much in the way life on Earth was fundamentally changed when land became the domain of animals, or the way the space race changed our relationship with the rest of the universe. And those moments in life can be impossible to describe in any meaningful way to others--too specific to you, or seemingly innocuous from an outside view. The emotion of the memory eclipses its reality, becoming something that really can't be put to words; "If you can draw it in the air, or write it down, then you weren't there."
The emotion and drive of Linnell's voice here is fantastic, the way he belts out "CAANA - JUH - HAAARRRRAAARRRYYY" fits the desperation to impress what this memory means onto others perfectly. Here's a strange comparison to make - it kinda makes me think of the belted "JEEEEESUSSSSSS CHHRIIIIIIIIISSSSSTTTTTT" in *The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt 2* by Neutral Milk Hotel. Mostly because of the way they both draw out and modulate the ends of the words.
9.5
It's such a fun and sweet song.
Honest question - does he pronounce it wrong? It sounds like he says "Can-a-canary" to me. Maybe he does and that's correct? Or are my ears broken?
A high 8. Engaging premise told with interesting unfocused lyrics, and very good instrumentation. The way Linnell sings the title is a little silly, but not in a terrible way.
An easy 10. The production is absolutely flawless, especially on Linnell's vocals, which by themselves are a masterclass in melody. As others have said, it has a special kind of emotional drive to it that gives me goosebumps and has caused my eyes to tear up on more than one occasion.
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that it's extremely rare for either of the Johns to write without some level of cynicism, especially Linnell. But Canajoharie feels like 100% sincerity. There's still plenty of the evocative imagery and cryptc wordplay you'd expect, but there's no ironic twist or morbid humor, and it's just beautiful.
It's also packed with endearing Linnell vocal quirks, like the way he says "plaque" and the "site" in "landing site."
I can't bring myself to put a score on this and destroy the average, but I've never liked this song. There's something about the rhythm of the verse guitars that I find extremely annoying and uninspired for TMBG. For the longest time I just heard this song like generic pop punk from the early 2000s.
The tremelo guitar in the chorus is great and the song overall has grown on me over time. Hopefully one day I see what everyone else seems to see in this song!
My favorite song in their discography. I get kinda emotional listening to it sometimes. (10)
Me too.
10 In my top 5 TMBG songs easily. "In the overgrowth of the underbrush" is a perfect opening lyric and it just gets even better from there. Linnell at his most poignant and most cryptic simultaneously. Such an elegant tale of someone who witnessed something supernatural and is now both trying to convince others it's real and mourning the fact that he can't go back. With lyrics like "They smoked the proof" indicating sinister deeds that only the narrator is aware of. "I've got my paints and I'll try to paint Canajoharie" is gorgeous, as are all the esoteric references to biology (rhyming front flipper with mudskipper?!), evolution, and rocket science. This song leaves so much to the imagination, almost inviting the creation of a low-budget sci-fi music video. Not to mention how it does so much with the name of a small upstate NY resort town. The way Linnell belts it out always gives me chills. Also love the soaring, wavery guitar in the chorus, it's reminiscent of Ana Ng. And the triumphant way Linnell describes what he saw, with the emphatic percussion under it. And the accordion frantically rising up in the bridge. What a song.
Oh my gosh I didn't even make the connection to Ana Ng... Both feel sentimental but Ana Ng ends up being wistful while this one feels more triumphant. Crazy how that works!
I love how the Johns will often write songs that share an emotional or thematic connection to their past work, but rarely do they repeat themselves.
9.5/10 Too lazy to write a full answer of my own, so I'm piggybacking off of you to say that it's definitely my favorite song on Join Us, and probably in my top 15 all-time TMBG songs. This is another one of those songs that I loved for years before I dug into the lyrics, and then got to fall in love a second time. I give Join Us some crap for not being adventurous enough, but with songwriting like this, it's excusable in my humble eyes (and ears).
It's a 10. I always say, a 10 needs to be rare to mean something, and this song drips with cleverness, confidence, and charm. Even though it feels very personal to a childhood experience of Linnell, it also resonates as a universal feeling of the impossible task of trying to describe a powerful and important childhood memory to someone. The tang of mourning knowing that you'll never be able to go back to a moment. It's all in there, and it sounds like just another day at the writing desk for him. "If you can draw it in the air, or write it down, then you weren't there." God damn.
Couldn't agree more! You can feel both the wonder and the pain of someone who saw something greater than anything on earth and knows he won't see it again.
9.5 I’m sorry, from this point forward in their career a lot of my thoughts about individual tracks just boil down to “they’re so great at what they do, and this is fresh and weird and somehow life-affirming and the equal of any great pop song I’ve ever loved, even if it doesn’t scramble my brain like Where Your Eyes Don’t Go once did”
Ok but don’t stop writing up your thoughts on them because I always enjoy seeing what you come up with and it conjures up many depths to the songs I had not previously examined.
Aw, thanks! Im sure I won’t be able to resist. Cloisonné alone could take a couple thousand words…
Awesome man, I can't wait to read that one!
Linnell what the actual hell where do you keep pulling these beautiful melodic lines from? This almost feels OVERLY saccharine as a song but the ridiculousness of the lyrics somehow pulls it right back down into genuinely sentimental. The warbling guitar feels like they put it in front of a fan... It tickles my brain hehe I wonder how they did that. Somehow when I first heard this one it just didn't... HIT me. Therefore I'm not as sentimental where I'd wanna go back to this one in comparison to others, but I still adore this everytime it's on. 9.25
9. One of their finest sing-along-at-the-top-of-your-lungs choruses.
10 Other comments cover it better than I can. But another thing to love here is Linnell's pipes are in peak form. The way an accent we don't hear all the time comes out full force with the feeling he puts in some of the lines.
9.73/10 - It's a very sentimental song that I resonate with very much, especially at an age where I can get very nostalgic. The brash instrumental complements the soft lyrics very nicely done on here. They also brought back the accordion that was absent in The Else album. You know, this song reminds me of Purple Toupee where the protagonist remembers something wrong, that being the rocket ship experiment that may or may not have happened, he probably just confused it for another rocket ship accident. It's overall a pretty sweet song about wanting to go back to a time where you were young and free, a song that I get from a personal stance!
8.25. I saw them play this before it was released and loved it (granted I was a pretty obsessed superfan then), and remember feeling disappointed when I heard the album version. The production is just not doing as much as it could for this one imo. Maybe the chorus could use some more instrumental power, at least another guitar adding weight to the chords, to create some dynamics between the different sections. I might have been tainted by hearing it live first. Still, a pretty good Linnell song. I like the reverse accordion.
I think this song has just the right balance of intensity and tenderness. I feel like if it rocked harder it would be missing some of its poignance. Also the wavery nature of the chorus reminds me of Ana Ng.
9, maybe? This is from right around the time I stopped keeping up with new TMBG stuff and I've just started giving their "later" (last 15 years haha) albums a closer listen. This is definitely one of my favorites from that era but I'm still working on processing the lyrics and figuring out what it all means to me. I'm about the age now that the Johns would've been when they wrote this song; that feels particularly relevant to this one in particular.
10/10. One of my favorite songs of all time. Has so much personal meaning to me and its lyrics conjure some vivid memories
A 10. One of my favorites
10, would honestly give it more, god I love Canajoharie. it has that excellent thing they do sometimes where the final chorus has a few lines altered or added to it. that slight slur of "launching site" could've been easily considered a blip and fixed in a retake, but it's one of my favourite parts for how it complements the raw emotion, as do the guitar and the way it builds. my interpretation listening to this song is the narrator describing a formative youthful experience that no one else around can relate to - most likely one that ultimately didn't end well, going by its description as an experiment "that went awry". yet they can't help but obsess over those days. in a way, it's almost the antithesis of "put your hand inside the puppet head", whose narrator is savvy about falling into rose-tinted nostalgia, while this one succumbs to it. going off of this theme, I like the idea of a life-altering time being metaphorically likened to evolution, the "daring mudskipper" finding its feet on ground.
10 - close your eyes, see what I see. Perfection! Flans' tremelo guitar has never sounded better and I love how at the end of the track it sounds like it powering down like an engine. The melody of every part is just so good and sung so powerfully. I can picture Linnell doing his little claw gesture during the breakdown.
10. This song really grew on me. I love the story, I love the way he sort of splutters at the end, and I love howling along with it.
9.5 - While I can't go all the way to a 10 here because it's more of a Top-20-to-11 song (as another commenter notes I want to reserve 10s for the absolute pinnacle of the TMBG catalog) this is still among the band's best songs. Linnell's in top form vocally here, and that final approach with "when the rocketship experiment went awry" is a huge release of energy capped off with what may very well be the highest note he's ever sung.
10 how could it be any less?! Listened to the album yesterday a couple times and this song really sticks out, even on an album where I genuinely like every song, this just has an energy and a zing to it that kicks it up another notch.
9.975
9!! God what a good song. On the surface it seems to be a tale of the evolution from aquatic creatures in the sea coming up onto the land ("where a daring mudskipper dragged itself away") in a random coastal town, but I think its easy to take it as a metaphor for foundational memories in childhood and beyond. There are always moments that, for good or ill, completely change the trajectory of your life, much in the way life on Earth was fundamentally changed when land became the domain of animals, or the way the space race changed our relationship with the rest of the universe. And those moments in life can be impossible to describe in any meaningful way to others--too specific to you, or seemingly innocuous from an outside view. The emotion of the memory eclipses its reality, becoming something that really can't be put to words; "If you can draw it in the air, or write it down, then you weren't there." The emotion and drive of Linnell's voice here is fantastic, the way he belts out "CAANA - JUH - HAAARRRRAAARRRYYY" fits the desperation to impress what this memory means onto others perfectly. Here's a strange comparison to make - it kinda makes me think of the belted "JEEEEESUSSSSSS CHHRIIIIIIIIISSSSSTTTTTT" in *The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt 2* by Neutral Milk Hotel. Mostly because of the way they both draw out and modulate the ends of the words.
10 - one of my favorites and makes me a little nostalgic
10 LOVE the sweet guitar in Canajoharie
10
9.5 It's such a fun and sweet song. Honest question - does he pronounce it wrong? It sounds like he says "Can-a-canary" to me. Maybe he does and that's correct? Or are my ears broken?
Sounds correct to me: can-uh-juh-hair-ee
There's a hard g sound in there but he's enunciating it subtly.
I've always heard more of a "Cana-duh-hairrrraaaairy" which still isn't a "juh" sound, but is close enough for the belting he's doing.
A high 8. Engaging premise told with interesting unfocused lyrics, and very good instrumentation. The way Linnell sings the title is a little silly, but not in a terrible way.
An easy 10. The production is absolutely flawless, especially on Linnell's vocals, which by themselves are a masterclass in melody. As others have said, it has a special kind of emotional drive to it that gives me goosebumps and has caused my eyes to tear up on more than one occasion. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that it's extremely rare for either of the Johns to write without some level of cynicism, especially Linnell. But Canajoharie feels like 100% sincerity. There's still plenty of the evocative imagery and cryptc wordplay you'd expect, but there's no ironic twist or morbid humor, and it's just beautiful. It's also packed with endearing Linnell vocal quirks, like the way he says "plaque" and the "site" in "landing site."
I can no longer drive past Canajoharie without hearing Linnell in my head 😁 8
10 out of 10. So evocative and the wordplay is sublime.
10. This power-op paean to the Johns’ vacation home is on constant rotation on my phone and in my head. Love singing along.
10.... its peak........
10, easily my favorite track from join us and it invokes a sense of nostalgia for me
10. Love, love, love, love, love. Join Us is a great album but oh man, this song. I can never get enough of Canajoharie.
10, a favourite, so beautiful and evocative.
I can't bring myself to put a score on this and destroy the average, but I've never liked this song. There's something about the rhythm of the verse guitars that I find extremely annoying and uninspired for TMBG. For the longest time I just heard this song like generic pop punk from the early 2000s. The tremelo guitar in the chorus is great and the song overall has grown on me over time. Hopefully one day I see what everyone else seems to see in this song!