After breaking through to a new audience with the 2002 kids album No! and the 2005 DVD Here Come the ABCs, They Might Be Giants are eyeing an August release for a sequel to the latter Disney project, Here Come the 123s. The DVD will boast an hour of original music plus videos specially commissioned by the duo.
"Not to sound like it is completely derivative, but it is inspired by 'Sesame Street,'" group member John Linnell tells Billboard.com. "The attitude we took to the 'ABCs' project is the same we took with this one, which is about numbers -- kids are going to learn this stuff anyway. But it's this vehicle for entertaining kids, which is all we really know how to do. We don't have educator skills so much. But the last one was a big success. It was a very satisfying experience hearing back from parents."
In the fall, TMBG will continue its practice of playing family shows in the daytime and more rock-oriented gigs at night in support of their upcoming album, The Else, due July 10. "We're not getting rich doing any of this stuff, but it is absolutely satisfying work," Linnell says. "It's also grooming the next generation of They Might Be Giants fans."
Of late, TMBG has also been writing music for an animated film based on Neil Gaiman's book "Coraline." Says Linnell, "A girl finds a door in her house that first opens to a brick wall, but at night, there's a crawlspace, a portal to another world. It seems appealing at first but it becomes very dark."
"We're having trouble being as creepy as we need to be; having to write songs that are sincerely scary," he continues. "We have some experience with the creepy. We're not completely unversed in writing creepy stuff. But we're also trying to cook up a pop song to go at the beginning and we're still working on that one."