Returning with their sixteenth studio album in thirty years, They Might Be Giants hasn’t slowed down. At all. Every one of Nanobots’ 25 tracks possess incredible energy and authenticity. There is a lot of camp, a lot of straightforward and kind of silly lyrics that are definitely reminiscent of their kids albums era. Call You Mom is a Buster Bluth anthem set to garage rock guitar riffs; Tesla is a blatant eulogy to Nikola Tesla, the 20th century inventor; Stone Cold Coup D’État is more or less an elementary school lesson on the phrase, giving anthropomorphic examples of revolution; Icky is about the insufferable kind of asshole who borrows a pair of pants and only returns one of them.
But lighthearted subject matter doesn’t mean that any of it reflects a lack of enthusiasm or effort. Towards the middle of the album, there are several tracks that are less than a minute, some of which are only a few seconds long. The baby songs really do well in tying the album together, but they leave a lot to be desired. Some of it feels complete, and the rest of it’s truncated and frustratingly short. More Sleep!
Nanobots has energy and it keeps your attention, moving fluidly through subtle subgenres and styles. It’s experimental rock in its definitive form. The album could be described with all of the good pitchforky adjectives, like cohesive and compelling and diverse and ranked 8.6 on an abstract and arbitrary scale.
PLAY: 2, 5, 12, 20, 23
RIYL: Soul Coughing, The Presidents, David Byrne
FCC: Clean!