They Might Be Giants’ ‘BOOK’ Pleases the Ear, Teases the Eye

BOOK is the intriguing new multimedia project from Brooklyn icons They Might Be Giants (John Flansburgh and John Linnell). It combines a 15-track album with a deluxe hardcover art book that illustrates and otherwise depicts select TMBG lyrics (more on that later).

John Linnell and John Flansburgh / photo by Shervin Lainez/courtesy of Girlie Action Media

The group’s absurdist, surreal style of alternative music, often featuring unconventional instruments, is in fine form here, and, after nearly 40 years together, the two Johns’ maturing voices lend their material more gravitas. BOOK is full of clever, insightful wordplay with tunes ranging from wry commentary on the human condition to out-of-left-field love songs. TMBG have mastered the art of being humorous without straying into parody.

Titles such as “I Lost Thursday” and “Darling, the Dose” appear to be COVID/lockdown inspired – indeed, Linnell notes that some of BOOK’s songs are “humorously germane to the catastrophe going on around us”— but the songs are much more than that. The opening track, “Synopsis for Latecomers,” advises listeners not to panic, assuring them that “there’s a very simple explanation if you’d only be patient.”

Megaphone Giants / photo by Sam Graff / courtesy of Girlie Action Media

Here a few more of Brooklyn Roads’ impressions of BOOK.

“Moonbeam Rays” is kind of a “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” for the 2020s (“all of those times that I missed you, but you weren’t missing me / you called it self-improvement”), while “Part of You Wants to Believe Me” takes a deeper, twisted dive into a troubled relationship (“maybe I didn’t correctly misstate all the things that I thought I said I never said”). The aforementioned “Darling, the Dose” seems to suggest that the right kind of “poison” may be able to unbreak a heart.

They Might Be Giants / photo by Shervin Lainez / courtesy of Girlie Action Media

“Drown the Clown” touches on the pitfalls of social media (“can’t resist this rabbit hole, can’t deny this troll”). “Super Cool,” one of the most musically appealing of the tracks, has a breezy ‘70s pop vibe.

The rule in “I Broke My Own Rule” is never identified but it’s a litany of the downward spiral when one fails “to thine own self be true.” OK, it’s not Shakespeare, but we enthusiastically applaud lyrics sch as “climb to the top of the statue of freedom from gravity / and you’re at liberty to jump from the top of the absence of responsibility.”

In BOOK’s accompanying book, graphic designer Paul Sahre (a frequent collaborator on TMBG album covers) transforms lyrics from the album and other TMBG songs into concrete poetry. The typography, with the aid of an early 70s IBM Selectric typewriter, thereby gives the words a visual presence, depicting or complementing their subject. The lyrics of “Brontosaurus,” for example, are arranged to suggest a dinosaur, while “Dog” is a fully realized canine silhouette. For “I Lost Thursday,” Sahre simply replaces that weekday with a blank space each time it comes up.

The 144 pages are also filled with photographs by Brian Karlsson, whose favorite subjects are discarded objects, such as a shard from a broken vinyl LP, a white piano lodged at an angle in sand, and a field of decaying pumpkins, as well assorted people pics. The connection between these photos and the lyrics aren’t readily apparent, but that’s part of the fun of it all.