They Might Be Giants, Nanobots

[mmcirvin]

I got They Might Be Giants' new album this morning and have listened through a couple of times. At times it seems almost like a retrospective of TMBG's many familiar styles and gimmicks: the first song, "You're On Fire," is almost a sequel to "You Probably Get That A Lot" from Join Us; later there's a political song from Flans ("Black Ops"), a wistful biographical song about a historical figure ("Tesla"), a cluster of "Fingertips"-like mini-tracks about halfway through (with a few others scattered throughout), even a song about a young nerd with a goofily portentous spoken-word bridge straight out of the Pink Album ("Circular Karate Chop"). It's fair to say they're not going out of their way to shock the fans with this stuff.

That said, John Linnell breaks some new ground here that I personally greatly enjoy: having become a master of children's music, he's starting to sing in his wry fashion about the adult experience of being a parent. "Nanobots" and "Replicant" both frame the experience in pseudo-science-fictional terms; the title track in particular is an utterly joyous piece of work that I want to listen to over and over, whereas the other suggests some of the darker possibilities.

On the flip side of parenthood, "Call You Mom" is a hilarious song about a person with serious, serious relationship issues, which is musically sort of like "Yakety Yak" collided with the Peter Gunn theme.

Flansburgh also gets a little off the beaten path with the spooky, jazzy and baffling "The Darlings of Lumberland" and the melancholy "Sometimes A Lonely Way", which I haven't quite entirely processed yet.

Comments

[jwgh]

The New Yorker has a write-up about the album which is pretty New Yorker-y: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/03/they-might-be-giants-back-in-the-land-of-adults.html

Last year, John Flansburgh went to Amoeba Records in Hollywood for part of a video series where celebrities (mostly musicians) go there and talk about the records they get there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5WR4id5f1c which I bring up because I was surprised at how into jazz he was -- though maybe I shouldn't have been since TMBG has recorded a few jazz pastiches over the year ('Lie Still Little Bottle', 'She's Actual Size', 'Empty Bottle Collector', etc.)

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I've heard that of TMBG's entire discography, the earliest-composed song (not counting covers) is actually the sweet little waltz-time instrumental "Space Suit" on Apollo 13, which Flansburgh wrote as an assignment for a college class on jazz composition.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...Apollo 18, that is.