1992-09-03 The Vancouver Sun
Thinking is a happening thing in the land of the Giants
By Katherine Monk, The Vancouver Sun, September 3, 1992
Archived from: https://www.proquest.com/docview/243341053/235622B433C94233PQ/
THEY MIGHT BE Giants — but one does not believe in God.
"I might have said something less straightforward about God," says the soft-spoken John Linnell, one half of the Brooklyn-based rock-pop-art band They Might Be Giants.
"But this is a bad time in the United States to be an atheist. I don't know if you've heard about the Republican convention up there, but there's a lot of intense feelings against people who don't believe in God and gays and stuff like that, and it's getting more and more extreme.
"I kind of feel proud of the fact that I can say I'm an atheist, and it means something. Like, there are other people who don't believe in God, and we have a government that is kicking them in the face right now.
"I think it's important for people to say what they really think."
Beyond their eccentric image and eclectic lyrics, thinking is what sets TMBG's music apart from the bazillions of other pop duos that play four-chord progressions with a bit of flair.
Linnell and co-writer/performer John Flansburgh write songs because they are thinking-kind-of guys who express best through music.
Their weird (but not in a dissociative way) lyrics talk about life, love, meaning, non-meaning and just plain existence in such concrete terms it's hard not to think the whole exercise is tongue-in-cheek.
"People at our shows usually think the material is funnier than we generally do. I'm not really sure why," says Linnell, with unmistakable sincerity.
Take a sample from a song like Particle Man, for instance: "Particle man, particle man, is he a dot, or is he a speck?... [when he falls in the water] does he get wet, or does the water get him instead?... particle man."
Funny — or existential?
"Well, I don't know what to say about Particle Man. It's about existence in some way. There are three kinds of characters in the song: particle man/person man; triangle man, who is the bullying kind of guy; then there's a god-like figure called universe man. It's a sort-of-simple dynamic. But triangle man always wins — the bad guy wins. I guess, given that, it is kind of an existential song. It's about how you just make what you will out of things.
"What I'm really trying to say is that there is no justice in the world," says Linnell.
Really?
"No. Not really, but it's just some thing that I suppose we wanted to express — the dynamic."
AND SO THEIR music goes, constantly bouncing off ideas like a supercharged pinball machine, then plunging into the depths of confusion, then rebounding to the surface where stuff isn't so scary after all.
Not that they don't have substance. At a recent concert at Dartmouth University, the band (and it is a full-touring band) had an unpleasant run-in with staff from the rightwing student newspaper, The Dartmouth Review.
"They came in wearing their shirts [with an Indian school mascot on them that had been long-abandoned for racist connotations] and they wanted us to wear them. Like, they thought we might like them or something," he says. "We finally had to tell them on stage that we weren't going to wear their shirts — not that we play the game that we're on stage, so we're right, it's just that they were ruining the show."
Linnell says he looks forward to the Vancouver date Sunday night because of the venue — the Commodore — "I hear it's a great place to play" — and because of the excellent selection of Thai food — his personal favorite right now.
"Thom Ka Gai... it's the ideal food. Coconut milk, and lemony."