He might be a giant

U Weekly, February 27, 2013
by Steve Patrick

John Flansburgh and his bandmate John Linnell have been making music together as They Might Be Giants for more than three decades now. Even if someone could possibly be unfamiliar with their hits like “Istanbul (Not Constantinople),” “Birdhouse in Your Soul,” or “Particle Man,” then surely they would have heard one of TMBG’s many TV theme songs for shows like “The Daily Show,” “Malcolm in the Middle,” or even the animated Disney programs “Higglytown Heroes” and “Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.”

TMBG will be releasing their new album “Nanobots” March 5. Prior to the record’s release, the band will be performing at the Newport Music Hall Saturday. Flansburgh took some time to speak with UWeekly about “Nanobots,” writing children’s music and why he enjoys performing at the Newport.

How is “Nanobots” different from your previous albums?

Well, it’s a collection of songs and the songs are different from one another. It’s a perfectly good question why the hell a band should make a 16th album, but I think we’re making real progress in our musical evolution and we’re doing a lot of things that we feel like we haven’t done before. But, it’s hard to sum up. There are some very sad songs on the record, there are some very disguised songs on the record … it’s just a new record.

The song “Black Ops” on the album really stuck out for me. Can you talk about what inspired that one?

Well, I mean, it’s about murdering people so it’s a weird … it’s sung from a weird point of view. You know, I’m not sure if it’s a really responsible song or a really irresponsible song, but it’s sort of about the problem of immorality versus amorality, I think. There are a lot of things in the culture that sort of romanticize people in that position and I think, you know, from another perspective it’s hard to think of those kinds of actions as anything but dubious.

There are some very short songs on “Nanobots.” How do you determine where to place these seconds-long nuggets in between the longer tracks?

We thought about how to arrange the short songs on this album. We don’t always have such short songs, but we kind of experimented with it on this album a little bit more than usual. There are 25 songs in 45 minutes, so there are … I guess the songs that just seemed bold enough in that embryonic state are interesting just on their own.

I’m sure we could have expanded any of them to be full-length songs, you know, but there’s something exciting and kind of psychedelic about a very short song in an album sequence. It breaks things up and makes it hard to know what to anticipate.

They’re kind of like jingles for impossible ideas. I mean, a song like “Hive Mind” … it’s very unclear what it’s driving at, but it’s an exciting piece of music. It’s a really good question … what it means … but I don’t think we have any better answer than anybody else.

How do you approach making a TMBG children’s album differently from a normal adult one?

Well, the educational stuff requires a little bit more care, but by and large it’s not that different of a process. There are things that are very liberating about writing for kids just because they’re sort of … it’s a more wide-open writing assignment somehow, you know?

From the second you start writing pop rock songs for adults you become hyper-aware of the history of music, and the way rock criticism works, and how bands are profiled and where you fit into that world the second that you enter that realm.

In the world of kids’ stuff, the immediate effect of the song is just how kids experience it. They’re not really thinking about what your place is. It’s taken out of that sort of hall of mirrors that is the world of rock culture. It’s just an immediate experiential thing. Maybe we should liberate ourselves from that as well, but it just sort of comes with the territory.

How have you and John maintained your friendship for so long?

We kind of stay out of each other’s hair. There are times when we’re traveling where it seems like we’re in the longest running production of “No Exit.” We have to spend so many hours traveling together that … it’s just the way it is for an itinerant musician … but it is a strange sort of Flying Dutchman existence where you’re just constantly in a state of transition continuously.

Some of that’s really, really fun. There’s like really interesting conversations and there’s a lot of goofing off and nobody takes it that seriously. Then there are times when you feel like you’re serving a very strange prison sentence together.

I think we have a good perspective on it and we have a lot of shared history and just the whole crew of people that we’re working with … everybody kind of knows how it works and everybody’s there to do a great job. I think we really lucked out in the “no drama” department.

You’ve had some pretty memorable shows at the Newport Music Hall. What are your thoughts on playing there?

I love the Newport Music Hall. I mean, I’ve had some of the greatest experiences of my life at the Newport Music Hall. (laughs) We did a show there where there was a complete power failure for the better part of an hour and the place was completely sold out and packed with people. We ended up playing a bunch of songs without any power at all and that was very thrilling in total darkness! The power grid went out so even the emergency exits weren’t lit up. It went from being a full-blown show at like 100 and whatever decibels to being an absolutely pitch-black room.

But, we’ve done a ton of shows there. We’ve been playing there for forever. I remember there was a sort of strange tradition. I don’t know if they still do it, but I hope they don’t. At the end of the night they would take all the beer bottles off of the balcony and throw them on the floor … the dance floor of the venue, which was the most chaotic, Hell-like thing to witness. They’d have to sweep up the floor anyway, but it seemed like a way to generate a lot more broken glass and possibly a lot more injury. (laughs) It’s a funny little place.

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