Recap They Might Be Giants at Metro

It’s only natural that nerd-rock band They Might Be Giants’ Friday show at Metro had a historic lineage behind it. It seems like TMBG would have a field day with a show celebrating Repeal Day, the day in 1933 the prohibition-ending 21st Amendment was passed--after all, the band has written songs about Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and James K. Polk and George Washington. Instead, they barely acknowledged it.

The tribute came by way of the opening act, burlesque troupe Michelle L’amour And Her Chicago Starlets, which channeled a speakeasy vibe during an hour of strategically placed tassels and erotic dancing.

TMBG's quirky, clever pop songs might have been a bit jarring after that opening,  but the Giants distanced themselves from the bawdy jokes and lewd poses by taking the stage dramatically: Thunderous drum pounding and flickering stage lights signaled the quintet’s ascension to the stage. The group immediately launched into a flawless “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” with a tacked-on raucous reprise, signaling a quick descent into fan favorites: a swarthy “S-E-X-X-X-Y,” a subdued “Drink,” and an enthusiastic “Particle Man,” wherein the audience clapped along for the entire song—even as it devolved into a bizarre, experimental mess.

Live, the group can be counted on for kooky and interesting antics. In past tours, they’ve brought a radio onstage to play along to random selections from the dial, and have performed a cappella tunes while spotlight-bathed, lip-synching puppet heads are suspended from above. After 25 years as a band, it’s understandable that Johns Linnell and Flansburgh feel the itch to keep things interesting. (1998’s Severe Tire Damage stands as perhaps the most laidback live album in existence.) On other stops on this tour, they’ve performed entire albums: D.C. saw TMBG play all of Flood, and New York saw them play all of Apollo 18, but in Chicago, they often found opportunities to deconstruct their long-familiar songs. So, it’s hardly surprising that five songs into their set, they abruptly lapsed into an unrecognizable mess that contained perhaps improvised lyrics from Linnell like, “That’s right I’m crazy!” Later, when they performed an electro-rock take on the Apollo 18 nugget “Spider,” it more resembled a high-school band thrashing in their garage than the highly polished and tight outfit that the band proved to be elsewhere in the set. Later, when they played “The Guitar (Lion Sleeps Tonight),” Linnell’s abstract keyboard solo more resembled an infant dialing a phone than anything melodic.

They kept stage banter to a polite minimum, though the acoustics made anything they said tough to understand. Flansburgh announced that “Damn Good Times” was “written a long time about right now—that’s right, They Might Be Giants have a time machine!” He later clarified that TMBG was actually “writing the song right now, and we’ll go back in time and put it out on a CD.” He also announced that the band just got word that this year’s Here Comes The 123s was just nominated for a Best Musical Album For Children Grammy—which Flansbrugh described as a “mindfucker” (this was an adults-only show), and Linnell expressed concern over any potential butterfly-ballot complications.

From there, they launched into a suite of educational songs, starting with “Seven,” continuing with a punk/space-rock version of their Tom Glazer cover “Why Does The Sun Shine? (The Sun Is A Mass Of Incandescent Gas),” and culminating with a scientific-community provoked response song from the forthcoming Here Comes Science, “Why Does The Sun Really Shine? (The Sun Is A Miasma Of Incadescent Plasma).” (Flansburgh explained they were repeatedly “bitch-slapped by scientists” for the glaring factual errors of the original.) The band cut loose on the unreleased song, which had a decidedly cool, lounge-y vibe, dripping with velvet-smooth keyboard frills.