They Might Be Giants keeps the tempo going at 23 albums

After 23 albums, They Might Be Giants are still kicking. “Book” is the band’s latest entry. It comes after a trio of records released in 2018, after which the band took a few years to regroup before returning. “Book” is another great entry in the band’s already-stacked catalogue.

The two masterminds behind the band are John Flansberg and John Linell, who both sing and play guitar and keyboards, respectively.

I’m always a sucker for bands who incorporate both keyboards and guitars yet I’m often disappointed by the end result. Many times it ends up being that one of the two dominates the mix and the other is underutilized.

Thankfully, the two Johns play off each other well. The mix is balanced and both instruments get the chance to take the lead and trade off between playing melodies and rhythms.

They Might Be Giants aren’t the most technical players, but they do know how to work together as a band, and that’s a skill not every ensemble has.

One of the strengths of the band’s approach in regard to how keys are implemented is with timbre.

A variety of different instruments and keyboard settings are used to give a high amount of variation in terms of timbre.

Organs, pianos, electric pianos and synth bass are a handful of the various key-based instruments used throughout the album.

The band also uses samples and woodwind instruments to help further add to the sonic diversity. The album’s tracklist is fairly long, yet all fifteen songs manage to stand out from each other largely thanks to that diversity.

At a first glance, the album might not seem like the most experimental. If you’ve listened to a They Might Be Giants song before, you’ll likely know what to expect. And that’s not a bad thing, necessarily. But there is actually a lot of creativity going on under the surface.

The band experiments with song structure really heavily on some of these tracks and breaks away from the traditional verse-chorus-verse structure. “I Broke My Own Rule” shoves a bridge in between two verses, for example.

Choruses are hidden and put in unorthodox parts of the song. Not every song is ambitious in this regard-some stick to a more traditional formula-but there’s enough experimentation to keep you engaged.

Furthermore, despite the high number of moving parts in these songs, they don’t tend to drag. All of the songs land in the two or three minute range, and there’s no dull moments.

I’ve never really cared for lyrics myself, but I know that many listeners consider them the most important part of a song. Those listeners are not the intended audience here.

They Might Be Giants, with the exception of their string of educational albums for children, usually like to write songs about nonsense. Go leaf through the lyrics to “I Lost Thursday” or “If Day for Winnipeg” and try to find a coherent narrative. There’s not a lot of meaning to be found in that department. But regardless of lyrical content, the vocals are still quality.

It’s not about what they’re singing, and more so how they sing. And the slew of catchy vocal lines and harmonies are more than enough to win me over.

This is not a band who seeks to write about the pressing issues of our time. They want to write catchy indie-rock songs. Thankfully, that’s one thing they know how to do.

The standout track on the album, in my opinion, is “Brontosaurus.” This is one of the only songs on the album I can sort of extrapolate a meaning from. It’s a song about a lonely dinosaur.

The harmonies on the chorus and the horns help supplement the already-strong foundation provided by the vocal melody to create the strongest tune on the album.

Besides that, the rest of the album all stands up to an overall high level of quality. I consider fifteen tracks to be a bit higher than what I normally want on an album but none of the songs on the album are worth cutting, so I can’t complain.

They Might Be Giants have already proven themselves as one of the forefathers of the indie genre, and one of the movement’s strongest acts.

This album helps to cement their reputation further. For old fans and those who have never heard of them before, “Book” is a great listen regardless.