In my life, I have attended four truly excellent shows. Lots of good, even great ones – but only four that were transcendent.
1. Carissa’s Wierd, Valentine’s Day, 2003. The Decemberists opened and it was the first time I had ever heard them. So that was a wonderful surprise. But it’s really all about my favorite band at the time playing an absolutely beautiful set.
2. Bruce Springsteen, November 18, 2007. I can only imagine what it would have been like to see him back in the 70s.
3. Okkervil River, September 25, 2007. It was almost religious.
4. They Might Be Giants, Bumbershoot, so long ago that I honestly don’t know what year it was. 1998, probably.
The thing that was so amazing about the TMBG show was the absolute control they had over the crowd. You have to understand that Bumbershoot is this massive 4-day long festival in Seattle over Labor Day weekend with about 7 million different shows, arts and crafts, food, and an almost unbelievable number of people. Basically all the shows are free – you just pay a general admission to get into Seattle Center. The result is that you get a LOT of folks at shows who aren’t really fans of the band per se. Or haven’t even heard of the band perhaps.
For this show, they were in the old Mercer Arena – which is a seriously big space for a band like TMBG. Just to offer some perspective, it’s the same place I had seen the Smashing Pumpkins a few years earlier on their Mellon Collie tour. So it had all the makings of a crowd that was not going to be terribly receptive to the John’s unique style.
Which is why it was such a wonderful experience. A few songs in people were up and dancing and cheering like crazy. A bit later they had what had to have been hundreds, if not thousands, of people up doing a conga line. And when they did roll out an “Istanbul” or “Particle Man” that people were familiar with the entire place was singing along.
I bring all this up partly to reminisce but also as a way of pointing out that TMBG are still around – and if they have never managed to put together an album that matches up to their work of the 80s and early 90s, they still know how to put together a great song now and then. What’s more, they are clearly still enjoying what they do, experimenting with styles, subjects, and the like.
Meet the Elements – They Might Be Giants
Hence, the new album Here Comes Science, which follows their recent kid-friendly albums but in a more explicitly educational context. Effectively, it’s the most fun album you’ll ever here that includes lines like “Chlorophyll cells take in carbon dioxide” or “Plants, bugs, birds, fish, bacteria and men / Are mostly carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen.” Admittedly, I’m a bit of a nerd about this sort of thing, but honestly who can turn down a band this earnest about actually trying to communicate legitimate science?
The absolute best part of it is the problem of their long-played standard, a cover of the 60s-era song “Why Does the Sun Shine?” It’s a great song and they’ve been playing it so long that it clearly needed to be included. But, as often happens with science, the theories of past eras need to be reformed based on new evidence.
When they were fact-checking this one, they ran headfirst into a pretty big problem. The hook for the song is, of course, “the sun is a mass of incanescent gas.” But, it turns out, that’s not what the sun actually is. As we all know these days, the sun is actually composed mostly of plasma. So what’s an enterprising band to do? Write an answer song of course. The result is back-to-back variations on “Why Does the Sun Shine?” the latter of which closes with an emphatic: “Forget that song, They got it wrong, That thesis has been rendered invalid.”
The other big highlights are “Meet the Elements” which is as exuberant as anything they’ve done, “Roy G. Biv” which, of course, helps us to remember the color spectrum, and “Cells” which tells us why some things turn into kangaroos and others turn into Dwight D. Eisenhower.
They’ve got videos for the songs, too, which you should definitely check out.