1989-02-16 The GW Hatchet
Giants: they might be serious
By John Druy, The GW HATCHET, February 16, 1989
Archived from: George Washington University Libraries, Internet Archive
Duo's Flandsburgh talks music before tonight's 9:30 show
Lincoln, the latest album from the New York-based duo They Might Be Giants, is currently enjoying success on the college and alternative charts. It is an infectious collage of hook-based pop songs, bizarre sounds and a number of what sound like bittersweet radio jingles.
Their lyrics are both obscure and bitingly satirical. Lines such as "He wants a shoehorn, the kind with teeth./People should get beat up for stating their beliefs," bounce along over muted strings, accordions and xylophones, not to mention melodic guitar lines and the quirky, harmonizing voices of singer-songwriters John Flandsburgh and John Linnel.
Two years ago, these two obvious victims of arrested development buzzed their way into our consciousness with their hit single "Don't Let's Start" from their equally brilliantly eclectic eponymous debut. Tonight, they're playing at the 9:30 club.
From a recent interview with Flandsburgh, the duo's bespectacled half, it was learned that 10 years ago he spent a semester at GW, but his college career was cut short by triple-probation. While living in Thurston hall, an experience Flandsburgh described as horrible, he taught himself how to play guitar. The rest of our conversation centered around the present.
GW Hatchet: How did people react at first to a two man band doing odd pop songs?
Flandsburgh: I think when we first started we thought that people would be more disturbed by it than entertained by it. And then, to our happy surprise people tended to take it in a positive way. I think basically that we weren't writing for an audience—we still aren't—so it's funny when someone says "you do pop songs," because to me a pop artist is someone who's calculating their songs for a specific audience. To me, what's really going on with us is that we're basically obsessed with melody and the song form, but in a more formal kind of way. Just like someone who might be into electronic music, we happen to be into melody. I don't think we're a pop group so much—instead of experimenting in texture, noise or whatever people tend to be interested in, we're doing a lot of things with melody, and melody is a powerful thing. It really grabs a hold of people.
How do you keep an interesting live sound with two guys?
Well, basically you use what you've got. The show really works well, I think it's a really good experience. When people hear that you have a backing track they immediately thing it's gonna be intensely boring. But in fact it's a very musical show and both of us are singing, and there's a lot of audience-related activity. We directly deal with the audience, unlike a lot of bands which are kind of looking at their shoes a whole lot, or looking at one another and pretending that the audience wasn't there. We also do some songs acoustically, and so the range of accompaniment on the tape goes from being maybe sampled sound to an all out band, with bass, drums or horns. The tape isn't there to fake anybody out. It's also not crucial to the show. We do things without it. Basically, we've built a lot of variety into the show. The tape just helps us keep it going.
Are you worried that you'll be dismissed as a novelty act because of the satirical element in your lyrics and some of your music?
The new single off the album is "They'll Need a Crane," which doesn't have any novelty quality to it. We try to steer away from releasing songs as singles that seem like they might be misconstrued as novelty songs, because we basically want people to hear our music before they hear the humor. What's weird about what we do is that there's an element of humor in it, especially just compared to the status quo. There's a seriousness, but what we're struggling with right now is that we're thinking about (releasing the song) "Purple Toupee." A lot of people responded really well to the song and when we recorded it, we thought it was going to be the first single off the record, but the weird thing about it is, if it became a hit, what would happen? If it became a hit record, would we suddenly be faced with 20 drunk guys wearing purple toupees in the front row of our show, thinking it's all a joke?
It's a song about misunderstanding the 60s, about fake nostalgia. It's just a vehicle for talking about how people misunderstand history. Basically if it became a hit, it would probably be commonly misunderstood, and I don't know if it wouldn't be really tiresome to deal with. I mean, I think about something like (Randy Newman's) "Short People" or (Timbuk 3's) "The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades." That song is more like a protest song, it's a thoughtful song, but then it turned out to be a song you drink beer to. I guess we just wonder what the right thing to do is.
How would you explain your record cover?
The general on the right side of the cover is my grandfather, and the man with the beard is John Linnel's great-grandfather. Originally the guy who built the shrine wanted to put our photographs in the frame, but we felt funny putting our faces on it, so instead we put the faces of our ancestors on it. It's kind of nice, it's got this churchlike quality to it, so there's something reverent about it, and then something very twisted about it. Our music incorporates a lot of musical styles, but it's reverent to the styles. We're not making fun of Latin music when we do a Latin song. It suits the band. We're not like this totally off the wall thing. Somehow it gives its own crazy integrity to it.
What was it like when "Don't Let's Start" started getting popular?
We hit right after touring the country to really small audiences, and it was right at the moment when we were thinking that we can't sleep on people's floors. We're getting really close to 30, we're not gypsies and we can't hack it anymore. We were touring Europe on a really dismal tour with very little interest, and we come back and our audience had quadrupled. At first it was kind of strange because at first a lot of people wanted to hear just one song, and didn't care that much. But then slowly, we alienated the people who were just there for the moment, they went away, and that was fine. And now basically our audience is people who are interested in our music in general. We found an audience for what we do, which is really great.