Wake up early or any time, on a Saturday or any day; put on a pot of coffee, and pour a cup or drink the pot. Then grab BOOK. It’s a two-part thing—audio and visuals. The bundle comes in a CD/book set or add it on 180-gram vinyl for full audiophile experience.
When ordering BOOK, there’s an instantaneous download on release day. Hell, it’s on eight-track and tape too! There’s choices, but the goal is this: crank the tracks, either in a home den on hi-fi speakers or in a head on headphones. Then crack the pages for an immersive experience from They Might Be Giants.
John Flansburgh, one of the two gigantic Johns who created They Might Be Giants in 1982, along with John Linnell, says:
“In a way, it’s like having more artwork accompanying an album. It’s a little bit of a cultural Trojan horse. I feel like the artwork is beautiful and cool unto itself, but it elevates the whole experience, and it just means people are going to be more involved in listening, and that’s a very exciting possibility for us.”
They Might Be Giants added a visual language to their music at a time when the late ’80s were pushing the door open to the ’90s. Their video-making was some of the most interesting work on MTV, back when MTV still had music on their channel. The visual art TMBG were creating inspired generations to reject ignorance.
Smart. Smart in the ‘80s, smart in the ‘90s. Never an antithesis to pop music of the music video era, they were running “perpendicular.” They’ve been early adopters of a lot of technology, including music streaming around the turn of the century. In 2021, they’re still trying to do their own thing and inspiring masses.
“I think the idea is to just kind of celebrate the album and give people a different kind of musical experience,” Flansburgh says. “We’re of a generation that really enjoyed a lot of music with album covers sitting in our laps as we listened to the music. And there’s something about the way sound washes over you when you are not also doing something else. This is for active listening. And I guess the great thing about BOOK is that it really promotes by having a whole accompanying book. It really invites a deeper dive into the sounds of the album.”
This from the duo who brought Dial-A-Song to the world via an ad in the Village Voice. An answering machine was stationed in Flansburgh’s home studio. Callers, one at a time, could phone up the band and hear whatever inspiring bit of music they might be working on at the time. The creativity for this record, born in the wig district of Manhattan, Flansburgh says, happens at any time. Morning, noon and night, he’s working on music.
“Sometimes the night turns into the morning,” he says. “Sometimes the morning turns into the night.”
Over approximately a year, the two Johns worked out of their home studios at first, passing digital files back and forth. Things got put on pause during the lockdown, and when they finally got to recording, they occupied two studios. Bringing new ideas, they continued to flesh out the last of the songs, while simultaneously mixing in another studio. Flansburgh explains:
“We actually were running one session in the big tracking room with the full band, while Pat Dillett was mixing the rest of the record in his mixing room. So, we were running two sessions simultaneously. The velocity of productivity was really high because we were actually able to finish the whole record in two weeks. And probably, it would have taken us at least four weeks otherwise. But it was a bit of a … it was a bit of a sprint.”
They Might Be Giants may always be sprinting. From their single and video for “Don’t Let’s Start,” to Flood, to “Boss of Me” for the Malcom in the Middle sitcom early in the 2000s, they’re always racing to make more art. Flansburgh elaborates:
“I mean, we’re always kind of in the middle of making a new album. We’re actually already embarked on the next project now, but I’m sure it won’t be out for at least a year or more, but right now, today, I’m thinking about the next project that we’re working on. But we were approached by a publisher about doing a kind of a coffee table book that was a retrospective of the band, and what form that would take wasn’t really formalized in any way.
“It was just like they had interest in just doing a book about the band. And that kind of thing happens pretty often. And those books are, they’re like kind of scrapbooks; they’re often, sort of photo collage-y things, and they’re usually kind of messy in terms of their form.”
In considering Flood, arguably one of their finest works, Flansburgh says:
“It was sort of our first. A lot of electronic, a lot of computer-based music making was really just beginning at that moment. Up until then, I think you could kind of describe our recording activities more like we were like home-recording enthusiasts. But when we embarked on Flood, we were working with samplers and pretty devolved drum machines. And we were experimenting with sound and experimenting with kind of how you could put a song together with all these gizmos, which is a really fun adventure, you know? I mean, I think a lot of times people make it sound like it’s like something tricky, but it’s actually just like … it’s really a lot of fun working with these tools.”
A lot has changed since They Might Be Giants brought Flood to the world in the 1990s. Some things never change—the care for the craft that makes their work so profound and somehow so simple.
“Songwriting is the kind of craft where you’re both simultaneously trying to hold on to the power of working simply, but as you write more songs, you want to kind of add a level of sophistication to what you’re doing,” Flansburgh says. “You don’t want to just repeat yourself. And it’s hard, and it gets harder to write simply.
“There’s a little bit of almost contrary motion as you evolve as a songwriter. I think a lot of songwriters end up doing work that’s very Baroque and very overly-complicated, because they sort of painted themselves into a corner. They’ve said all they can say in simple direct ways. But the process, a lot of the ways in which we started working when we were making that album, which was our third album, are kind of the ways we work now.”
The way they work now inspired them to continue to take further steps forward. Once BOOK was recorded, they set out to make the recording a complete thought by making a physical book to accompany the music. Flansburgh explains how the project evolved to its completion.
“The photographs were all selected to compliment the vibes of the songs. And so, it was a music first project, in that sense. It just seemed like the natural way to do it. And we were working with Brian Karlsson’s photography. Basically, he gave us access to a couple of years of his work. He’s a street photographer and he’s very, very active. So, there was a huge range of photographs that we could cull the illustrations in the book from.”
And finally, BOOK got its finishing touches with typing and graphic design from Paul Sahre. Flansburgh praises the collaboration.
“He’s actually a very, well-known, highly regarded graphic designer. I mean, in the world of graphic design, he’s a pretty big deal. And we’ve been collaborating with him for, I guess, over a decade now. And he always brings a lot to the table. Typing up the lyrics, the way that he did, I hope there could be an illustration for people to understand, but it’s a lot easier to understand them than it is to explain.
“But yeah, he was working with, I think, a 1973, IBM electric typewriter and typed up all the lyrics by hand. And some of them are really amazing objects. They’re illustrations, really. But I have to admit, the references to The Shining did come up over the course of the process, because he was doing a lot of typing.”
Flansburgh wraps up his thoughts:
“They Might Be Giants, we’re not for everybody, but we are for most people. So, I feel like we’re kind of a take it or leave it band. I mean, every band has got its qualities, but we’re not really… we don’t do anthems. We’re not looking to fill stadiums. We’re just trying to keep people interested.”
Their latest work, BOOK is just that—interesting. No matter the day, the time or the place. Pick up BOOK and sit down to be immersed in the art of They Might Be Giants’ music, and the collaboration of Brian Karlsson’s photography and graphic designer Paul Sahre. Flansburgh concludes:
“Hopefully it’ll just get people just digging into the songs that much more. It’s kind of a psychedelic experience. I mean, in some ways having lived through the album era, I feel like there’s just a great reward to having related visual stimuli in your hands. And I think that’s what this will provide. It’s not going to be a monolithic experience.”
Listen to “Part of You Wants To Believe Me” here:
For more from They Might Be Giants, find them on Instagram, Twitter and their official website.
Photo courtesy of They Might Be Giants and Shervin Lainez
