Dan Levine on trombone and Mark Pender on trumpet were absolute scene stealers. Perennial favorite “Doctor Worm” (“ I’m not a real doctor/ But I am a real worm, a real actual worm”) buttoned up the first set with shiny-bright chaotic glee courtesy of the brass section. The Johns took turns on lead vocals and, of course, traded barbs at each other, providing just the sort of meta-commentary we’ve come to expect throughout the show (“We’ll talk about this on the drive home” Flansburgh said pursuant to real-time self-critique with Linnell replying, “Good thing we’re in separate cars”). The show was divided into two acts: the non-sequential songs of Flood alternated with old favorites (“Don’t Let’s Start,” “Number Three,” “Spy,” “The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)”) and new tracks from BOOK (“Brontosaurus,” “I Can’t Remember the Dream,” “Synopsis for Latecomers”). We moved as a single organism, too, hundreds of arms synced in a whip-crack motion during “Minimum Wage.” No doubt this was going to be a singalong show – even through the rapid fire verses of “Letterbox,” even through the medical material of the masks – and while that’s always a blast if you’re a singer-along-er, the synergy is that much bigger and weirder when a whole audience simultaneously lights up and earnestly shout-sings about being a bag of unexpired groceries (“Dead”). “Letterbox” was the first of the Flood tracks in the setlist sequence, and that backwards shuffle effect of the intro was the perfect anticipatory launch point.
How lucky we are to be together finally! But let’s not push it! The band’s request for attendees to be masked was met with respectful compliance the “Science Is Real” tees at the merch table were gentle reinforcers of the message in this new, still unfamiliar endemic reality. And so we celebrated the 32nd anniversary of Flood with that now-ubiquitous +2-COVID-years adjustment.
(“Make sure you take care of them,” cautioned Flansburgh, “so you can take them home and… sell them.”) This particular show – the second of a two-night sold-out run – was billed as the Flood anniversary show (as opposed to the “favorites from Flood” show), re-re-rescheduled from the original 2020 tour date.
The floorspace was dotted with folks sporting paper crowns provided by the Johns the sight of random IT-core dudes holding convos in cartoonish headpieces created an atmosphere of on-brand whimsy. Let it be said that I did not expect the takeaway from this They Might Be Giants show to be a socio-anthropological discussion of motif, it’s just that we’re old enough now to recognize that the pathway from non sequitur to insight is a perfect circle.īut not to worry – this egghead behavior was just the late-nite comedown after an affably goofy and stupid fun show. I came at it more from a proletarian angle: “ I said if I was smart that I would/ Save up for a piece of string/ And a rock to tie the string around” reflects the tension between the human requirement for simple pleasures and the (in)ability to afford them. “I had an epiphany about “We Want a Rock”,” my companion said, and from what I could follow, the song’s refrain about people wanting “ prosthetic foreheads on their real heads” had something to do with an elective (or selective?) kind of de-evolution, the tacking on of this extra forehead an allusion to the shape of Neanderthal’s protruding brow-shelf.
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