They Might Be Giants are still an active concern. They may have passed the (first) peak of their popularity, but their quirk-intensive brand of pop rock peculiarity is a genre unto itself, with a massive fan base. So while it's reasonable to expect TMBG to take a pioneering stance and release an entire album exclusively in the controversial MP3 format, it's going to be a while before the emerging format justifies expenditures equal to a full-scale mass-market release. But TMBG always seem to have a lot of unreleased recordings sitting around...and so we get Long Tall Weekend -- a collection of alternate versions, unreleased songs, dial-a-song tracks and oddities that were gathering dust, albeit in the best sense of the phrase. The quality on Long Tall Weekend is consistently high -- the disc merely lacks the cohesive feel and thematic structure of a more deliberately-assembled album. Songs like the raucously rocking "She Thinks She's Edith Head" (which, rather tellingly, is destined to appear on a "real" TMBG CD in the near future) and the theatrical jazzy 40s-ish gem "Reprehensible" are as strong as any of the band's more tangible output, and there's no doubt that the faux classic rock "Rat Patrol", the wry and cynical "Operators are Standing By" and the goofy hoedown "Counterfit Faker" show off the band's wildly creative humor to great effect. So what's missing? Nothing, really, except brightly-colored packaging and an easily-breakable jewel case with one of those annoying stickers across the top. If MP3s are your cup of tea, Long Tall Weekend can be yours in minutes; if not, you'll be reassured to know that Splendid's review copy came on CD, proving once again that music reviewers can be stubborn Luddite bastards when we see fit.