For the North American start of The Big Show Tour at Philadelphia’s Union Transfer, They Might Be Giants’ cofounding Johns (Flansburgh and Linnell), their tight-as-skinny-Levi’s band (Marty Beller, Dan Miller and Danny Weinkauf) and a guest brass-and-reed trio pulled out all of the stops in carrying out TMBG’s nearly 40-year-old mission: to boldly and eccentrically go where no eclectic, earworm-worming, power-pop ensemble fond of clever wordplay and oddball storylines with unreliable narrators had ever gone before.
Dryly tongue-in-cheek without ever succumbing to mawkish, obvious humor, the in-concert TMBG (additionally represented by a new live album, Beast Of Horns)—even after decades of gigging for sold-out roomfuls of beardos with glasses (a phenomenon that Flansburgh remarked on by trying to see what faction outnumbered the other)—never totally plays it straight.
Bravo.
Along with joking how “this alternative-rock thing might not be working” four decades on and playing “stelluB” in reverse (only to videotape the action and run “new” song “Sapphire Bullets Of Pure Love” at the top of their second set—unless it’s the other way around), TMBG has an overall irreverence to every note and nuance of a performance. Despite knowing and loving Linnell’s deadpan vocals and ever-so-nasal tone since 1985 debut “Wiggle Diskette” (a flexi disc!) for its curt, distanced whine, I still can’t help but wonder if he’s taking the piss on the hard-driving “Birdhouse In Your Soul” and its narration from the perspective of a child’s glowing nightlight. When Flansburgh pointed out that TMBG’s children’s music hit, “Science Is Real,” had been taken down a peg by the research community, you’re stuck wondering what those nine-out-of-10 scientists of toothpaste legend had been up to all this time.
What is no-never-at-all joke is how TMBG and friends attacked each song live, with exquisite, off-beat harmonies and pile-driving rhythm as their guide.
The most buoyant moments of their latest LP, 2021’s Book—such as the short, sharp “Synopsis For Latecomers” and the pounding, pliable “Brontosaurus”—were as forceful, chipper and contagious as tracks from 1992’s Apollo 18 (the night’s highlighted TMBG album, a focus the band changes with each show) such as “The Statue Got Me High” and “I Palindrome I.” The absurd, shouted-out, cut-and-paste collage of “Spider” was as mad and free as the dizzying “Twisting” was the sort-of rave-up, power pop that, on another planet, would be Beatles-worthy.
During the encores, the Two Johns’ wonky, accordion-sawing take on “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” was as spare, crisp and weird as their all-member version of “Doctor Worm” was wired and full-bodied. And “The End Of The Tour” was an oddly poignant finale to a gorgeous evening of Giants-dom.
And you’ll never hear the same set twice for the rest of this tour, so …
—A.D. Amorosi; photos by Eric Ring
