Birdhouse In Our Soul: They Might Be Giants Celebrate Debut Album’s 40th With ‘Bigger Show Tour’

“It’s great to be back in Los Angeles” is the very first line of the opening film noir-ish, surrealistic track on They Might Be Giants’ new album, The World Is to Dig. released April 16 on Idlewild Recordings. “Where ladies wear hundred-gallon hats/Where your pals yell, ‘Hi, who are you?’/And smack you across the front door.” Founding members John Flansburgh and John Linnell now find themselves in the City of Angels, East Coast fish out of water on a whirlwind trip, seeming more like two salesmen trying to hawk an extended warranty than a pair of alt pop-rock legends promoting their latest release and upcoming tour.

“I hate to admit it, but I do have an East Coast bias,” explains Linnell about the song’s Day of the Locust vibe. “The drum part is copped from Bernard Hermann’s Taxi Driver soundtrack. It’s just that New York alienation transported to L.A.”

Coast displacement aside, They Might Be Giants are currently marking their 40-year anniversary of their self-titled debut album, originally released on Glenn Morrow’s Hoboken-based Bar/None Records label in 1986, with “The Bigger Show Tour.” The ambitious run kicked off April 17 and continues through November, with multi-night stands at 1,000-2,400 cap venues, including Indianapolis (The Vogue), Detroit (Majestic Theatre), Chicago (Vic Theatre), Philadelphia (Union Transfer), Brooklyn (Brooklyn Steel), Boston (House of Blues), Milwaukee (Pabst Theatre), Madison, WI (Barrymore Theatre), Kansas City (The Truman), Minneapolis (First Ave), St. Paul (Fitzgerald Theatre), Austin (Emo’s), Houston (The Heights Theater) and Dallas (Echo Lounge & Music Hall), culminating with four shows at Washington, DC’s iconic 9:30 Club (Nov. 19-22).

According to Pollstar Boxoffice Reports, TMBG’s multi-night plays are yielding significant revenues while drawing solid crowds. Three sold-out shows at Asheville’s Orange Peel last November grossed $110,250 on 3,150 tickets; while two nights at Seattle’s Neptune the previous summer brought in $120,000 on 3,000 tickets. The band is managed by Phil Frandina and Pete Smolin, repped by the inimitable Frank Riley and Dave Rowan at High Road Touring along with the highly-regarded Felice Ecker of Girlie Action handling press.

Dubbed “An Evening with They Might Be Giants,” the framework of the show, according to Flansburgh, is “like the band serves as its own opening act.” There will, naturally, be a healthy dose of TMBG’s best-known songs, including “Birdhouse in Your Soul” (a Top 5 hit in the U.K.), “Particle Man,” “Istanbul [Not Constantinople]” and “Boss of Me,” the Grammy-winning theme from Malcolm in the Middle, but expect plenty of variation, too.

“We’ll be playing very different sets from night to night,” explains Flansburgh. “Spotlighting various highlights from a single album during the first portion, then more of a fan favorite section to follow, including songs from the new record. That makes every night something fresh and challenging. It’s a great way to stay involved on-stage. We’re very aware of how things ebb and flow on-stage.”

“If we continue to be engaged in what we’re doing, that comes across to the audience,” Linnell chimes in. “You have to consider the fan who will be attending more than one show. But I will wear the same clothes.”

“There is nothing to recommend being in a band for 40 years except you have a much larger repertoire to draw from,” deadpans Flansburgh, who like Linnell, is now in his mid-60s. “Everything else is shit by comparison.”

They Might Be Giants have always been at the cutting-edge of technology, going back to their long-running Dial-a-Song promotion – offering new material to fans via phone answering machine  – now updated with an app for the digital age. The group was also one of the first to release an album in MP3 format.

“It’s ironic that now everyone listens to music on their phones,” jokes Flansburgh.

The Johns certainly prefer Spotify to Napster, but “is it as good as selling records at Tower Records in the 20th century?” asks Flansburgh. “Of course not, but that’s the way it goes. You don’t know what you’re missing until it’s gone. All creative enterprises in the 21st century are facing these extinction events.”

They Might Be Giants have certainly been a beneficiary of the classic major label system, having released four albums on Elektra (where they were signed by A&R execs Sue Drew and Peter Lubin) from 1989 through 1997, including the platinum Flood in 1990, but have been putting out music through their own Idlewild Recordings label since 2013’s Nanobots.

“Being on a major label that is completely ignoring what you’re doing is not a great thing, either,” admitted Flansburgh. “It wasn’t all good, nor was it all bad. But things are so competitive today in music, it’s hard to command people’s attention.”

“The technology now makes it very easy and cheap to record your own music,” adds Linnell. “The means of production are way more accessible now than when we first started. You can do almost anything with your own gear these days, but we were actually doing a lot of home bedroom recordings back then.”

The new album, The World is to Dig, is the band’s 24th studio recording (including their five children’s titles, among them the Grammy-winning 2008 Here Come the 123s). The 18 tracks offer a master class in economical hook-heavy pop – only two last more than three minutes —  encapsulating the band’s sunny-side-up optimism, which barely hides a sardonic strain of black humor. It’s their first release since 2021’s Book, which received a Grammy nomination for Best Boxed or Special Limited-Edition Package.

Highlights include Linnell’s “Wu Tang,” their unabashed epiphany inspired by the legendary Staten Island hip-hop Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, where he dares us to “Listen to the sound on the CD/If you don’t believe me/Check it and see for yourself.”  Flansburgh’s “Outside Brain” is a claustrophobic blast of urban paranoia with a ‘80s-‘90s downtown New York chase scene inspired by the garage-rock “I Fought the Law” backbeat of the Bobby Fuller Four.

“It’s about trying to create the energy of an anxiety attack,” explained Flansburgh. “The refrain of the song is just one panic after another, citing all sorts of things that freak you out. It’s got a manic energy.”

The duo’s cheeky side comes across in “Je N’en Ai Pas” (“I’ve Got Nothing”), a blend of existential ennui and Linnell’s Duolingo French lessons, while “Let’s Fall in Lava” takes a mispronunciation by Lawrence Welk of the word “love” and attaches it to the tale of a couple with a death pact who meet their end by jumping into a volcano.

“It’s like relaxing your guards to the unconscious,” said Linnell about the pair’s writing process. “You come up with stuff and have no idea where it came from.”

Another notable set piece is the group’s loving cover of the Raspberries’ wish-fulfilling “Overnight Sensation (Hit Record),” a wry acknowledgement that these college radio faves have never sniffed the pop Top 40.

“It’s a kickass song, a real banger,” saiys Flansburgh. “Our cover is a lot faster than the original, a little more power pop than theirs, which sort of leans on the ballad side.”

“We’re not in any danger of becoming an overnight sensation,” acknowledges Linnell about the built-in irony. “We do this for ourselves. We’re trying to make the kind of album that we want to hear. We’re still passionate about what we do. We’ve kind of created our own little corner of the world for ourselves. We’re not aiming for the charts, but we have a very solid fanbase that remains interested in all the different things we do.”

With the band’s typically diverse palette of various pop and rock styles represented, everything ends up sounding exactly like They Might Be Giants — quirky, catchy, witty, literate. The name was adopted from the 1971 movie starring George C. Scott where he believes he’s Sherlock Holmes, also a subtle nod to Don Quixote’s reason for tilting against those windmills.  

For over four decades, TMBG have traveled a similarly Quixotic path, but have achieved any number of worthy goals, winning a pair of Grammys among four overall nominations, writing the theme songs to Malcolm in the Middle and, with Bob Mould, “Dog of Me,” for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart while also contributing a song to Tom Kenny’s Emmy-nominated hit Broadway musical Spongebob Squarepants. They also released a series of critically acclaimed, award-winning children’s albums for Disney.

 Just don’t call them a novelty band.

“That’s just a very reductive way of looking at our music,” said John L. “It makes it sound like something very specific. We want to maintain a certain mystery to what we do, even for us.”

The two Johns moved to Brooklyn from New England in 1982 starting as a musical duo, with Flansburgh on guitar and Linnell on accordion, then began adding members for both recording and touring along the way. The current lineup – guitarist Dan Miller, bassist Danny Weinkauf and drummer Marty Beller – has been in place since the mid-‘90s, which is when they first recorded with current co-producer Pat Dillett. The band also tours with a three-man “Tricerachops” horn section, featuring Stan Harrison on sax, Mark Pender on trumpet and Dan Levine on trombone.

“These guys are not just hired hands,” points out Flansburgh. “They’ve been with us more than 25 years. It’s a family.”

“And they’re all on retainer,” adds Linnell. “Which means they’ll end up making more money than we do.”

They Might Be Giants may never be overnight sensations, but they’ve managed to succeed on their own terms, not an easy thing to do in this day and age. 

“It’s a big challenge, but it’s still fun to do,” says Flansburgh about touring. “And it gives us a chance to get away from our families.”