What does being funny in music (rock or elsewhere) mean? Being sardonic, sarcastic, tongue in cheek, just cracking a ‘simple’ joke ? Does it mean making fun of somebody else’s music or a certain genre? Do the lyrics or music have to include the elements of humor?
John Linnell and John Flansburgh, who operate as They Might Be Giants, often go for broke on their albums, trying a few or most of the above.
The thing is, doing humor in music leaves you exposed as an artist – you cannot rely on just being funny – your humor, in whichever shape it comes in, has to be in balance with you music and songwriting to work. The two Johns in question, who have been operating as TMBG for some 40 years or so now, have always tried to reach that balance, and as could be expected, they had a varied level of success trying it.
And they keep on trying it on their latest album The World Is To Dig. So how did they fare here? Actually, quite a bit better than on some of their previous offerings. Maybe it is decades of music (and humor or whatever) experience that works here, but it actually works throughout the album. The duo kept to their usual songwriting process, with each of the Johns crafting individual ideas in their home studios and then jointly fine-tuning the song and lyric ideas jointly.
Here it more or less throughout the album – which has a hefty 18 tracks – with the best examples like “Garbage In” and “Get Down” actually achieving that lofty goal of a perfect balance between having good music and funny, witty lyrics at the same time.
When artists try to describe their music, they often either embellish or try to simplify things. But on The World Is To Dig, TMBG have done neither and instead trusted their process. Flansburgh explained: “This album, like our first album, was all made by the same people at the same time in the same place. It has its own musical universe. Even as songs pull apart and get further afield, it became naturally cohesive. Our most successful records hang together in very natural ways, and this album has that continuity.”
And yes, the first TMBG first album still ranks among the best of their 20+ studio albums to date, but this latest one is up there somewhere too.
