THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS
This year, They Might Be Giants set themselves an unenviable task. For the entire calendar year, they would write, record and release one brand new song every week. Fifty-two brand new songs in a single year might seem like a reasonable workload, but the band are about to release their second album of the year and they have continued to tour extensively, including their upcoming shows in Australia.
It has to be asked: how are they holding up?
‘I will be candid with you,’ says one half of the band, John Flansburgh, ‘and tell you at this moment I am really really thrashed.’
Could have fooled me. If this is what John sounds like when he’s thrashed, I can’t imagine him at full capacity.
‘I have just had a coffee so at least I’m going to talk really, really fast.’
Maybe that explains it.
The band’s song-a-week project is the latest incarnation of Dial-A-Song, a project they originally began in the 1980s with nothing more than a phone line and an answering machine. Where the original Dial-A-Song was a space where the band would preview sketches and work in progress like a musical diary, the 2015 edition has seen remarkably polished studio recordings and accompanying videos posted to various internet platforms.
‘There’s something lovely about working spontaneously, but the phone based Dial-A-Song was more intimate; it was just you and the machine. One of the things that’s tough about working online—and generally of the moment we’re in—is that the instant something is available it gets critiqued. It’s important to us that this project be of a certain quality. But we don’t have unlimited funds. We can’t do amazing videos for example—many of them are kind ambient—so we sometimes get complaints about that. In a way it’s kind of comforting though because if they’re complaining about the video and not the song, it seems like we’ve probably done our job.’
The band seem to enjoy challenging themselves: aside from the original Dial-A-Song, over the years they’ve worked on television themes and incidental music, a series of songs written for every venue on their tour, and a highly successful parallel career in children’s music. What motivates them to set the bar for themselves so high?
‘There are so many things about this that I enjoy. Every song we work on gets it’s own moment in the spotlight. Even if it’s an unusual song—especially if it’s an unusual song—the fact that it’s not part of a package means it’s not bundled in with others. We’ve made a lot of albums and there are those songs that, at some point, you realise “oh, that’s not going to be the radio song” or “that’s not going to be a single” which changes how you approach the work almost right away. Whereas, here, everything we do here has to be a notch better because it’s going to be heard on its own. And it’s going to attract comments on YouTube.’
Wait, did John just say he reads the comments? Doesn’t he know the first commandment of YouTube?
‘Yes, I’ve read my share of YouTube comments. And I can tell you there are a lot of crazy people who really have a hard time sorting out their feelings.’
A more predictable emotional response might be expected from Australian audiences who have a chance to catch the band again after a couple of years. With their approach to making their music newly intensified, what can we expect from a They Might Be Giants show in 2015?
‘Obviously we have a lot of new songs but we don’t hold back on the old ones either, so it’s a pretty good package. It’ll be great coming back to Australia so soon with such a different show. I hope that that’s the takeaway. The big surprise is that it’s not the same show.’
It seems though that some things never change.
‘We are going to rock you into the ground.’
Just as well that coffee’s kicking in then.
They Might Be Giants play:
PERTH November 2 at Astor Theatre http://bit.ly/1U0I6Jq
ADELAIDE November 4 at The Gov http://bit.ly/1Nq4pDK
BRISBANE November 5 at Tivoli http://bit.ly/1JjJ0L0
SYDNEY November 6 at the Enmore Theatre http://bit.ly/1C1JyFN
MELBOURNE November 7 at the Forum Theatre http://bit.ly/1SXUvMP
Glean, the band’s first album of the year drawn from Dial-A-Song is available now.
SIMON GROTH
