‘And it is not a calendar’, said John Flansburgh and John Linnell, looking at people among the Amoeba crowd holding their new album ‘Join Us’, whose cover pictures a pink giant-wheel hearse.
The They Might Be Giants duo was playing the last Amoeba show of the year on Tuesday night, and they had brought their usual idiosyncratic humor, talking and taking all the time they wanted between songs, as comfortable as if they were home.
The music, eclectic and always playful, sounded like a sort of revenge of the nerds, with two frontmen, not taking themselves seriously for a second, and having fun playing their instant-hook-poppy songs like ‘Can’t Keep Johnny Down’ from their new album, or the doo-wop-y ‘Can I sing like a Girl’ from their 1996 ‘Factory Showroom’ album.
There was most of the time an educative-nursery-rhyme undertone in their quirky songs, and yeah they have played this role with albums like ‘Here comes the ABCs’ (they played 'Alphabet of Nations' at Amoeba) or ‘Here comes Science’, the dream album for science teachers (they even have a song about photosynthesis!), but it was never simpleton, and always too weird to be kid songs.
Right away, John Flansburgh had announced that they would begin with the quiet part of the show, then going crescendo, will go to the loud part that could ‘bring the lawsuits’. It was never too loud in terms of rock show, with just a guitar played by Flansburgh and a synth played by John Linnell, then joined by Marty Bellar on drums after the second song, and I realized this was the ‘loud’ part of the show.
They joked a little, saying they liked their audience to be engaged and not staring at their phone during their entire set, throwing a ‘I know, you have REAL friends but…!’, the Amoeba crowd, which was eclectic and with an unusual number of young kids, was certainly concentrated on the music and made of true fans, some having standing there very early.
They played a song from a recently released compilation entitled ‘Album Raises New and Troubling Questions’, the worst title for an album as they said, and I think it was question of Whitney Houston,…. the few seconds of silence that followed the song (may be people did not know it) didn’t escape John Flansburgh’s wit, who said that it was raising even more troubling questions.
Announcing two upcoming shows in Anaheim, where there is ‘a completely different vibe’, and San Diego, which is ‘exactly like LA’, they sounded like two stand-up comedians, knowing their routine and turning everything in self-derision. They will also play two shows at the prestigious UCLA Royce Hall, a family show to celebrate their thirtieth anniversary and a ‘delivery disappointment for 30 years’.
Disappointment? Certainly not the case of the public having fun with the two Johns’ silly melodic songs, goofy humor and eccentric personality; it was feel-good-family-time music, followed by a signing-it-all event, Flansburgh declaring they were ready to even sign driver licenses or anything as long as it was not too weird…. 'We'll tell you if it's too weird!'