No luck finding the newly discovered American flavours "Cherry Passion" and "Sour Berry". An American friend can't find them in the stores and I've only seen one set (of 36 packs of Cherry Passion) on eBay. Perhaps I missed them or perhaps they're not out yet?

While searching around I discovered the German Wikipedia article on Tic Tacs and it seems the Germans (or Europe at least?) has many awesome sounding flavours of Tic Tacs (most of them limited editions from previous years) including Mango, Cherry Mint, Fresh Grapefruit and the exotic sounding Maracuja.

There is also a "Sonstige Sorten" section to the article which seems to translate to "other sorts". These include the various American flavours as well as some awesome sounding flavours that might be European including "Icegloo Acerola", "Wildberries", "King Size Liquorice Mint" (Italian), "Carnival" and "Hexa" (both Brazillian).

Wikipedia: Maracuja:

The Foetid Passion Flower or Stinking Passion Flower (Passiflora foetida), also known as the Wild Maracuja or Running Pop, is a creeping vine which has an edible fruit and leaves that have a mildly rank aroma. It is native to northern South America and the West Indies and can also be found in South East Asia countries like Vietnam.

They Might Be Giants are quite a bit older than God and have been around since before the big bang. They're known for their wacky little ditties about randomness such as "Birdhouse in Your Soul", "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" and more recently "Doctor Worm" and "Boss Of Me" (title theme to "Malcolm in the Middle").

Their latest album is "The Else", produced by the Dust Brothers who can love for the music in "Fight Club" and blame for "MMM Bop".

Why I bought it: Not really sure. I like TMBG but don't have any of their CDs (until now). It came with a free CD of stuffed full of extra tracks ("Cast Your Pod to the Wind") and was fairly cheap I think ($22?).

In a sentence or so: A few gems and a number of growers that all suffer a little from 21st century "turn it all up!" production.

Tell me more...
The album doesn't start well. "I'm Impressed" isn't very good, and "Take Out The Trash" felt way too try-hard-modern-dull-rock to me. Both songs introduce the new "everything up loud" production that really got up my nose.

It gets better from there, "Upside Down Frown" being more the usual TMBG track and many of the following tracks are growing on me despite not quite being what I expected. "The Bee Of The Bird Of The Moth" is great and "Withered Hope" is awesome. I deliberately gave this one a few listens even though at first it didn't catch me. I want to keep going back for more, but there are tracks I want to skip every time.

Musically I'm mostly not hugely impressed but overall it's a fun listen and elements of songs are great (much of the diverse "With The Dark" is great but other parts break my heart). I think the vaguely amusing/wacky lyrics save what often would be quite boring rock songs.

The modern production puts the vocals so far up front that the music is often lost. I miss the subtlty of guitar work and musical production that I imagine I used to hear on CDs, but perhaps I'm remember something that was never there, or maybe I'm just going deaf.

This seems to be a theme with a lot of recent albums...

I enjoyed the bonus CD a similar amount although I haven't given it a fair listen yet. My favourite is the first track, "Put Your Hand on the Computer", a song about itself sung in faux David Bowie tones. Another track, "Scott Bower" that makes fun of the Metallica line "my lifestyle determines my death style" which had me giggling on the train but only for obscure reasons, and "(She Was a) Hotel Detective in the Future" reminded me of Ween. I'll give this one a better listen later.

It's probably worth noting for the nerds that "The Else" was released on iTunes in May, about a month before the CD release came out. I haven't found any details on how well the digital only version sold before the "real" release.