With their latest studio album, 'BOOK', They Might Be Giants hark back to their '00s sounds, eliciting a lot of nostalgia.
By the same measure the band, who've been around since 1982, are still pushing their sonic boundaries, though remaining conscious of retaining that TMBG flair.One half of the alternative-rock duo, John Flansburgh reasons that TMBG haven't made an official declaration of ever having changed in any "essential way".
"We've gone from being a drum machine-driven project to being kind of a sample based, to working with a live rhythm section, to now," John muses.
"We're doing stuff with machines and doing stuff in an unusual format, and there's sort of a built-in eccentricity.
"When you hear a Billy Bragg record, it just sounds like Billy Bragg. When you hear a They Might Be Giants record, it just sounds like They Might Be Giants."
Contemplating the various creative methods they've dabbled in across their 23 studio album catalogue (that includes 5 children's records), John ponders the instances where TMBG have utilised a rhythm section and the related challenges to find a "secret sauce" within a new concept, one that would shake things up but still retain the band's sonic make-up.
"I think we've gotten better at holding onto whatever the most essential personal part of the songwriting is and exploiting it to our songs," he says.
"It's a big challenge, drawing off the good ship drum machine to the world of live bands. Live bands don't sound that different from one another and they're not that idiosyncratic, so it was a big transition for us, and it took us a while to figure out how to keep it super personal."
When made to think about it, if John were to remove all sense of personality from 'BOOK' he says TMBG would still be wrapped up in their sensibilities of collaborating with a host of creatives. "That's really what defines the band; working with other people can enhance it.
"It's funny, we work with musicians who are so much better than us, technically. I've thought about this – I think a lot of people in our position feel more comfortable working with people on the same level as they are. But for us, we ended up hiring people who are much better musicians than we are, and it's a strange dynamic.
"We're the band leaders and have got to keep it together, but it's also a real challenge to our authority. It keeps everybody humble in a certain way. "
Really, what is the definition of 'better', 'being the best' or 'better than'? For John, though he chuckles, calling 'BOOK' a demonstration of TMBG at their "best" is completely subjective.
"I would like to think it's us at our best," he says. "My perspective is really different from somebody outside the project.
"Almost everything we do is improved by having more time to work on it. What's interesting about this project – there are very few things about this pandemic that made things better – but basically, reality stomped on the brakes right as we were finishing this record, making it impossible for us to do anything for six months.
"When we came back, we actually swapped in and out a bunch of songs and I think it made the record a lot stronger and had a lot more personality."
'BOOK' is available via all major streaming outlets.
