{"id":5097,"date":"2012-02-29T02:11:09","date_gmt":"2012-02-29T09:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=5097"},"modified":"2012-02-29T02:11:09","modified_gmt":"2012-02-29T09:11:09","slug":"they-might-be-giants-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2012\/02\/they-might-be-giants-2\/","title":{"rendered":"THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h1>\n

After almost three decades of cleverness, this duo is still right on track \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t get into music to meet girls or to strike a pose,\u201d says John Flansburgh, who formed the clever alt-rock duo They Might Be Giants with John Linnell in 1982. \u201cIt was about having crazy ideas and taking those ideas as far as we could. A lot of people find the idea of humor in music childish, but what we do is post-adolescent. It\u2019s a natural reflection of who we are and what our sensibility is.\u201d It\u2019s a sensibility the pair first began to hone as part of New York\u2019s post-punk scene. \u201cI feel like we\u2019re the last New Wave band,\u201d says Flansburgh. \u201cThe underground music of the late \u201970s was a revelation for us. The philosophy that anyone could pick up a guitar and start a band was something I grabbed hook,\u00a0line and sinker.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Giants\u2019 latest, Join Us<\/em>, features the sort of concise, whip-smart songs that have earned the duo a dedicated following. Their first album aimed at adults after several years devoted to children\u2019s projects, the disc boasts song titles\u2014\u201cWhen Will You Die,\u201d \u201cJudy Is Your Viet Nam,\u201d \u201cOld Pine Box\u201d\u2014that hint at dark topics. \u201cFormal pop songwriting and those short, keenly focused songs of the \u201960s were very appealing to Linnell and me,\u201d explains Flansburgh, 51 (one year Linnell\u2019s junior). \u201cWe often talk about giving our songs graphic impact. We want the choruses to be startling and we want the verses to be arresting. Hard left turns are something we\u2019re always interested in.\u201d<\/p>\n

After some nagging false starts, Join Us <\/em>became \u201cone of the most focused albums we\u2019ve ever done,\u201d says Flansburgh. Still, the duo ended up recording enough material to release a new odds-and-ends companion disc with the tongue-in-cheek title Album Raises New and Troubling Questions<\/em>. \u201cWe go into preproduction with templates for lots of things that are in varying degrees of completion,\u201d Flansburgh says. \u201cAs we\u2019ve evolved, we\u2019ve figured out how to hold onto the twitchy, manic charm of those demos.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flansburgh is quick to credit that evolution in part to the duo\u2019s longtime backing group, including guitarist Dan Miller, bass player Danny Weinkauf and drummer Marty Beller. \u201cThe guys in the band who play with us, and the way we work together, have become extremely fruitful,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are a lot of great people involved who make what we do sound right. Considering that we\u2019re nearly 30 years deep into this project, it\u2019s remarkable how on track things are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Russell Hall<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS\u00a0 After almost three decades of cleverness, this duo is still right on track \u00a0 \u201cWe didn\u2019t get into music to meet girls or to strike a pose,\u201d says John Flansburgh, who formed the clever alt-rock duo They Might Be Giants with John Linnell in 1982. \u201cIt was about having crazy ideas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[3032,10156,2095],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5097"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5097"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5099,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5097\/revisions\/5099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}