Reprising the Glory of They Might Be Giants' Flood

Another round with the delightfully bizarre filler tracks from a classic album

Comments (0) By Rob Harvilla Wednesday, Oct 29 2008

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There's only one thing that I

know how to do well

Santiago Felipe

John Linnell, serenading the faithful

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And I've often been told that you only can do

What you know how to do well

And that's be you

Be what you're like

Be like yourself

Smirk all you like, but this is something a certain cast of human being desperately needs to hear. So tonight, (Le) Poisson Rouge hosts a raucous orgy of self-actualization, spilling over into the band's second set, a conventional we'll-play-whatever-we-want affair, including songs called "James K. Polk" and "The Sun Is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma." Lately, TMBG have taken to making children's albums, 2005's Here Come the ABCs leading to this year's Here Come the 123's, a lucrative and logical endpoint for such an effortlessly childlike band. Remarkably, their songs for adults and their songs for children sound exactly the same: The tune about rogue number sevens invading your house and eating all your cake slides easily into their catalog of alleged adult-friendly fare. The big kids learn more from it than the little ones do.

They Might Be Giants play (Le) Poisson Rouge November 29