Brooklyn-based, alternative rock absurdists They Might Be Giants have sold out an April 28 show at the Theater of Living Arts.
Having released their 20th album, I Like Fun this year, the fact that people are still coming to see them perform isn’t something songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and co-frontman John Linnell takes for granted. “We’re pretty happy when we go play because we’re surprised people are still listening. I love the TLA. I don’t think we’ve ever had a bad show there. I don’t think we had any idea (we’d reach a 20th album); we weren’t planning that far ahead. We don’t know what people want, but we know what we like,” he said.
I Like Fun was recorded in the same studio as their best-selling album, Flood, which featured memorable songs like “Birdhouse in Your Soul,” “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” and “Particle Man.”
“We did not have a live band when we made Flood,” Linnell recalled. The room looked similar, even with obvious renovations, and still had a little of the same energy from back in 1990, he said.
Just like back then, the songs are peppy, to-the-point, and still have Linnell’s favorite themes of death, dread and disillusionment. “By the time you get this note/we’ll no longer be alive. We’ll have all gone up in smoke/there’ll be no way to reply,” goes the opening verse of “By the Time You Get This.”
“We’re not trying to be topical. We are affected by current events, but we don’t write directly about current events,” Linnell said when asked about the new song “An Insult to Fact Checkers.”
What began in the 1980s as a musical collaboration between two high school friends, eventually morphed into a full They Might Be Giants band, which took many quirky turns: the theme songs from the TV shows “Malcolm in the Middle” and “Higglytown Heroes;” several music albums for children, winning a Grammy Award for 2008’s “Here Come the 1 2 3s;” recording songs for Dunkin’ Donuts’ 2006 “America Runs on Dunkin’” campaign; jumped onto the podcasting bandwagon in 2005; and revived something they created call “Dial-a-Song.”
During the ‘80s, the duo of Linnell and John Flansburgh recorded random new songs mock advertisements onto a cassette answering machine, and then advertised the Dial-a-Song phone number. “John Flansburgh’s landlady swapped the cassette tapes,” Linnell said. In 2000 They Might Be Giants moved the operation to a more up to date dialasong.com website. But in the 2015 the retro, phone-based Dial-a-Song returned at the number (844) 387-6962.
“We’re media whores,” Linnell joked. “In the ‘70s The Rolling Stones were doing promotional things. For example, they would go and rent a flatbed in New York to promote their project. Everybody already knew who The Rolling Stones were. That made me aware of that whole thing. They worked hard to get well known and worked hard to continue to get well known. You still need a promotional machine.”