It’s called The Big Tour, and after three sold-out nights at the 9:30 Club, with raging horns augmenting their full band, it’s hard to argue with the marketing. Concentrating on a different album each night, with more than 80 songs in their repertoire ready to go, They Might Be Giants have fans happily returning for more each night.
Once, They Might Be Giants was just two nerdy friends from Massachusetts, whose early shows were memorable not only for their guitar, accordion, and drum machine setup but their quirky songs, funny wordplay and a disarming array of giant props. Contrast that with the driving songs and soaring horns of today, with the humor and clever musical turns intact. But hardly any props.
At one point in the band’s show Monday, John Flansburgh banged a floor pedal with a long wooden stick, as if to bridge the ancient staphs of the old world with the electronica of the new. But that was about it.
Once, he and John Lindell were the poster boys for nerdy cool, with glasses and oddball interests and a million musical ideas. With both now at about retirement age, in their checked shirts and car jackets, they more resemble a couple of middle aged guys in the mall parking lot, looking for their keys.
But, hey, ditto the audience, who are much older and, to our credit, no longer sing along forcefully to every song like nutcases. And boy, it’s fun to stand and hear great songs for a couple of hours with a smile on your face throughout.
Placesetting each show these days by opening with a new one, “Synopsis for Latecomers,” they proceeded with the first of what would be 11 songs from their announced album of focus for the night, Apollo 18 (well 31 songs if you divided “Fingertips” into 21 different tracks, as did the original CD). (The two earlier shows at the 9:30 in the three-night run had concentrated on Mink Car and John Henry).
I remember what an impact it had when the duo formalized the addition of a full band, with Dan Miller on guitar, Danny Weinkauf on bass, and Marty Beller now on drums. But it’s a swinging, out of this world sound now with the horns that began touring with the band during the 2022–2023 tour celebrating the 1990 album Flood. The brass is especially emphasized in a new live album The Beast of Horns featuring new charts by saxophonist Stan Harrison that bring new life and verve to older tunes.
On stage, Harrison is joined by Dan Levine on trombone and trumpet ace Mark Pender, the one time member of Southside Johnny’s Jukes and Conan O’Brien’s Late Night band, who I last saw sitting in with Bruce Springsteen’s arena tour in October. These guys are pros. Still, the focus is on the inventiveness and musicality of the fronting duo, whose Apollo 18 songs, from the dreamy “The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)” to the succinct “Spider,” still stand up.
“We’re doing songs we barely remember. We’re doing songs we’ve hardly rehearsed,” Flansburgh said. “It’s thrilling for us, and may be startling for you.” What was surprising is that they knew most of the whiplash turns and brief phrases of “Fingertips” in order—and so did many fans.
The weirdest turn may have been their attempt to play “Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love” backwards, and then playing the video of it forwards to start the second set, presumably intact. In reality, it sounded pretty much the same (and unintelligible) either way. But you have to admire the effort.
They augmented the Apollo 18 tunes with favorites throughout, using the horns jazzily in “Lie Still Little Bottle,” and crashing “Meet James Ensor” into “The Famous Polka.” Flansburgh and Lindell became their own Zager and Evans with their futuristic musings in “2082.”
There was just one example from their four children’s albums, “Science in Real,” which they said was their only hint toward the city’s impending change in politics and earned some mention of extracting themselves from a contract from the Walt Disney Company, with whom they were working for a while.
And they saved their biggest crowd-pleasers to the end, with “Birdhouse in Your Soul” closing the second set, and “Doctor Worm” ending the first encore, which began poignantly with just the two, on guitar and accordion—and a sold out room singing along—doing their cover of “Istanbul (Not Constantinople).”
But they had to end the DC residency with “The End of the Tour” in the final encore (though the tour actually ends December 15 in Boston before picking up again in Florida at the end of February.
