Greetings From Timbuk3 (1986)

Timbuk3 was a husband and wife act straight outta Madison, Wisconsin—Pat and Barbara K. MacDonald—augmented by a drum machine for the pseudo-trio designation. Their instincts pointed them in rootsy directions, but they had a surprise top 20 hit in 1986 with “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades.” It’s basically skinny tie and shades new wave, but the country blues inflections combined with the nuclear anxiety at high levels then (due to Chernobyl and Ronald Reagan joking about releasing bombs) produced something everyone wanted to hear for a few weeks. It was a pretty good joke too. The singer is in college, getting good grades, studying nuclear science. His teacher wears dark glasses, presumably for the intense flash of light that accompanies A-bomb detonation, and now the singer is wearing them too. I wasn’t sure what I was going to find coming back to this album—in memory the hit seemed more like a novelty and most of the rest of the album (except the closer) a lot of half-songs that never much cohered. But my memory was faulty—Greetings From Timbuk3 is way better than I expected. The songs are shaggy and shambolic but they are good. There’s a continuing theme of the brave young couple very much in love and facing down the cruel world together. With barrels of love. Many years later, after moving to Austin and releasing six more albums, they divorced. So it goes. It does not make them any less brave in 1986. Some cynical, vaguely lefty politics are involved too. “Hairstyles and Attitudes” sells the cynicism with homely wisdom and a brief screeching guitar. “Shame on You” is the longest song here at 5:04 and the only one where Barbara K. gets a writing credit. It’s a rap song, the rap is Barbara K.’s, and it’s not bad, with all due disclaimers. The secret gem to Greetings From Timbuk3 is the last song, “I Love You in the Strangest Way,” featuring more updates from the brave couple. But this song has always hit me in the strangest way, so to speak, it's one made for howling along with at night in various states of drunkenness and/or sadness. I wonder how they felt about it then and feel about it now. The whole album is worth checking out—and now, maybe, I will look into the rest of their catalog too.