Given their three-decade run in the ever-changing and challenging world of independent music, Brooklyn-based singer-songwriters John Flansburgh and John Linnell, aka They Might Be Giants, are often asked for career advice by up-and-coming artists.
As Flansburgh explained in a recent phone interview from New York, the guidance never changes:
“Give up, save yourself! It’s too late for us, but not for you.”
Flansburgh is kidding … sort of.
“The only reason that we’ve survived this long is that we’re still interested in what we’re actually doing and how we’re doing it. Obviously, musicians are dreamers, but different people have very different dreams. As long as you’re happy with playing a sold-out show and then sleeping in the back of the van, you’re going to be OK. … We were never looking for any scenario to save us. We never thought of what we were doing as an audition for something bigger or an opportunity to get somewhere else.”
The duo’s 16th and latest release, “Nanobots” (the word has its origin in medical science and science fiction), packs 25 tracks into 45 minutes of listening, surrounding tunes no longer than 3½ minutes with cuts as short as 6 seconds.
“We were about halfway through the album when John suggested we do a bunch of miniatures just to see how it would turn out,” Flansburgh said. “It’s fun writing short songs. It’s a different kind of enterprise. You can sit down with a strong cup of coffee and do three or four of them in one sitting. They’re kind of delightful. It’s also a great device for making the listening experience a little less predictable.”
The TMBG publicity machine describes the duo’s sound as “alternative-indie-college-rock.” The two Johns have mastered the art of catchy, quirky and intelligent pop music that’s heavy in hooks and brilliant lyrics.
Or, as Flansburgh said, “a lot of effective songs are effective in ways that are very hard to put your finger on.”
Exhibit A on “Nanobots” is “Tesla,” a tune inspired by 20th-century Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla.
“He was a very American character. … He was essentially the Steve Jobs of his era who turned into the Donald Trump of his era. He squandered an incredible fortune. All the while, he was constantly having these extreme visions. And all the while, he was one of the most productive inventors of all time. On a poetic level, his genius was very much his burden.
“Ultimately, the song is very sad. It’s beautiful and strange. It’s nice when you can combine those two things. “
Still calling Brooklyn home, the duo has professionally, if not geographically, come a long way since those formative years in the mid-’80s.
“John and I shared an apartment in Brooklyn for a couple years somewhere around 1983. Those were the big formative years for They Might Be Giants. We did so much recording and rehearsed every night for an hour, no matter what.
“During those rehearsals, we would drink these giant mugs of Café Bustelo. At a certain point, we realized that about an hour after consuming all that coffee, we started arguing. It was completely coffee-fueled. It took about four months for us to realize that it was just like a chemistry experiment. If you drink that much coffee you’ll start yelling at each other no matter what. We didn’t need a topic, it was just caffeine.”