CORPUS CHRISTI--They Might Be Giants' new CD, Nanobots, is a generous work, with 25 songs (including a half dozen "micro-songs" running 30 seconds or less).
But John Flansburgh (who fronts the group with John Linnell) said there could have been quite a few more songs in play for the album had circumstances been different.
"There are songs that didn't get finished," he said in a phone interview. "It was just as we were coming up on when we had to wrap it up, other things were closer to completion. There are actually a couple of really notable tracks that are kind of waiting to enter the world. It was a little bit frustrating to kind of be running out of time, but we only had so many studio days booked."
What complicated matters and curtailed some of the recording was Hurricane Sandy, which struck during the sessions for “Nanobots.”
"We really lost like a full week of production time, and that kind of curtailed some of the good times," Flansburgh said. "There was no electricity in the studio. Everything was (messed up)."
The studio, located in midtown Manhattan, didn't flood, but riding out the hurricane and its aftermath was still an unsettling experience.
"It was kind of a scary time," Flansburgh said. "I'm really glad that it didn't go on any longer. I think even if had gone on a couple of more days, there would have been a lot more looting and a lot of bad (stuff). There actually was looting. That was the thing, there was kind of a PR campaign to downplay what was happening, but there were definitely some shenanigans going on there."