"We've played here on a pretty regular basis. And the last time we played here it was great," says John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants from Las Vegas. "It was really our crowd, it wasn't an accident they were there. A lot of times it's odd when you play a place that's a resort destination. Like we've done some spring break shows where you could tell we could just as easily have been [vaudeville legend] Eddie Cantor."

With the release of their latest album, No!, the Giants' Johns (Flansburgh co-founded the band with John Linnell in the early-Eighties) have targeted a daunting new audience that just might have proved too tough, even for the old Apostle of Pep. Despite unleashing their inner children on several tracks over the past two decades, TMBG have never attempted a full-fledged family album prior to No!. And just as the group introduced itself to a new, twentysomething audience through their Internet-savvy a few years back, the Giants are again courting new (and again, younger) fans and their parents with slightly twisted-yet-pretty pop lullabyes like "Lazyhead and Sleepybones" and catchy odes to the imagination like "Fibber Island."

And while some of the youngest of new They Might Be Giants fans might greet the new collection of seventeen songs with teary-eyes and teetering tonsils, old Giants enthusiasts will likely hear the new tracks as part of their larger body of work. For there is plenty of humor ("No plus no equals no/All nos lead to no no no" from the title track), plucky pianos ("Where Do They Make Balloons"), funky, angular-guitar-driven anthems ("John Lee Supertaster") and memorable melodies aplenty that would fit nicely beside tracks from They Might Be Giants, Lincoln or Flood.

Flansburgh took time out from promotional duties in Sin City to discuss No! and how it fits into the They Might Be Giants canon.

It seems that some of your songs dating back to the first couple of albums could be enjoyed by kids as well as adults. What made you decide to make a family album now?

It's an idea that's swirled around the band since we started. In the past we were afraid it would redefine us too much, that people would think we were changing careers. Anytime John or I have done side projects or taken on outside work, people are always like [grave voice]: "So are you breaking up the band?" We've come to realize that it's really easy to confuse people as to what your intentions are. This record is really for everyone. I think it will satisfy regular They Might Be Giants listeners a lot. And if you are a parent of a child that plays some music that drives you insane, I think you would find this record is the perfect solution. Because it's made by a band that understands the value of repeat listening. I think that most children's records are not designed for repeat listening. With all of our records, one of our biggest concerns is not just grabbing the audience's attention, but also writing music that's solid enough that it holds up to the test of time. And so I think it's kind of a rare commodity in the world of children's records.

Did it require a different approach? It sounds like you guys enjoyed making it.

In some ways it was a real challenge and in others it was a total joy to work on, to not have the pop single mandate that's always in the background of what we do. And really it is in the background and it's the most abstract kind of idea, because we've never had any kind of orthodox success. We're just as confused as anybody about our career. But I think when we made music in the past, we really made it in a vacuum. And I really think we're a group that flourishes in obscurity. Right after we made our first album, we started touring and that changed us. What's that scientific principal about an object observed is fundamentally changed even though there is no difference in the actual environment. As a band, we had about as little interest in being a house rockin' good time rock & roll band as anybody. And at the same time, we've spent a lot of time since 1988 touring the world and performing for audiences. We enjoy going over with the audience and putting on the greatest shows we can figure out how to do. And that involves a lot of creative thinking and a lot of standard theatrical practice [laughs]. But ultimately it affects how you approach what you do, whether you want it to or not.

Did you take to the format immediately?

Well, we had a few false starts. We spent a lot of time writing for this record. The first couple of songs we wrote really didn't make it. They were just too odd. It took a little while to find the rhythm that ultimately is the tone of the record. A lot of times when you get a new assignment you can dig into it because it's brand new and your first effort is really the thing. The biggest change was taking out the random death imagery [laughs], that we've leaned on ever since we started. We realized as inspiring as that seems to us, it's also kind of our crutch. But leaving it behind and taking it off the docket as an idea, wasn't as big an adjustment as we thought it would be.

Were there any odd pressures with your own audience in mind? And there seems to be a delicate craft to not underestimating a younger listener.

We don't streamline what we do for audiences, and I think people can tell that. I think it would be very hard to sum up what our audience is, let alone tailor a song to their tastes. So we really take great care to not see too far down the line. In terms of writing music for children, there's nothing worse than that condescending, pandering thing. And I think kids see through that immediately, and it's probably one of the hardest things to explain to their parents and teachers, how completely icky to have things explained like you need some sort of hospice care. We really wanted to tap into the kind of energy that Dr. Seuss had. There's a lot of good examples of children's stuff. I think Schoolhouse Rock is kind of interesting. Though if you actually listen to it, it's kind of the Joni Mitchell of children's music -- some of it is really strange. There's a record called Space Songs; it's this educational record which was written in the Sixties. We actually did a cover from that, the song "Why Does the Sun Shine," which is a big part of our adult repertoire. It's all this scientific information, but it's put forward in this super-delightful way. And it's always been a record that was a real formative example of how to do a good children's record for us.

Were there any other guiding lights?

I grew up kind of in the shadow of the Cambridge folk scene. Pete Seeger had a children's record. There was a Folkways record for children, actually a ten-inch vinyl record I had as a kid. But there was actually a record that meant more to me, called Come For to Sing, put together by Eric Von Schmidt, who was also a fantastic illustrator. It was all traditional folk songs that were appropriate for kids. Well, actually, not all of them were. "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" is almost like reading a Poe story to a child. It's very dark. But there's one song, I assume it's an old Irish song, and the core of our "Fibber Island," comes straight from that song. It's about celebrating the joy of imagining fantastic things. It has a great message, which is don't just use your mind to understand the physical world, but use it to explore you own imagination. And that's something I think can't be emphasized enough. There's too much attention paid to things like how to tie your shoes and not enough on how to dream.

The video components of the CD are vibrant.

We have a great relationship with the Chopping Block, which is the graphic design company that does our Web site [www.tmbg.com, as well as the new No! site, giantkid.net]. We are bona fide control freaks and we can get uptight about everything we do. One of the great things about our relationship with them is that we have no fear. We can just put in a request in the most general way, and they'll come back with something exciting, but also something that suits the band. The visual element of the disc is really wholly their creation. I think most of my critique to them was trying to make it just a little less psychedelic and a little more obvious because they're really on the cutting edge of a lot of internet graphic design stuff and things that don't rely on words.

Did you test run the CD with any kids?

Well I think John's son, Henry, has the whole album memorized. In some ways the album represents my identity with him, because he hears the album much more than he sees me. It's very sweet and interesting, and we have a very real connection that way. We ran it by some other friends' kids too. We definitely did some beta testing. With the interactive elements, we realized that kids are so oriented towards gaming that they only look for the game within this stuff. And that was in a way disappointing. Because we were trying to put together stuff that would be more ambient. But they're taught right away to be goal oriented with the computer. To complete the task or find the thing. And I'm not sure how good that is, but it's just sort of the way it is.

Will this album make for unorthodox tour plans?

We're doing a lot of in-stores that are not related to gigs. We're anticipating that a lot of our regular audience will come out, but we're also hoping families will come out and bring the kids. The oldest fans, that's the way they can experience the band now, because they're not going to shows anymore. Our club audience is essentially twenty years old, people who discovered us through the Internet, which is great. But doing in-stores has always been a great way to get to the people who are more homebound out of the house.

Any anxieties about the shows?

We've actually started rehearsing for those, and it's actually kind of different. I've never really performed for audiences of children before.

I imagine they can be demanding.

Well, yeah, it's scary because, speaking of pandering, I don't know how to strike the balance between doing things that will keep them interested and active. I don't know how much "everybody jump up and clap your hands" you gotta do. And the people in the audiences are always different from each other. I imagine there's going to be some four-year-olds and some eight-year-olds, and they're obviously different from each other. So I don't know; I wonder if I should work on my balloon animal skills some more, because I want to go over.

Are you going to work a family night into your annual Thanksgiving week shows?

Well you know, when we're playing for people who are drinking, we usually feel free to swear [laughs]. But we're going to be performing a lot of the No! songs in the show, because they're really appropriate for our show; there's some pretty rocking songs on the record. So we're pretty confident that the interest is going to be there. I don't know, though, do you know about kids shows? They're really different, you only play for a half hour. If you play for longer than that, they're gonna fall asleep. I mean, we do two-hour shows for adults, which is a completely different concept.

And you seem to be in that odd spot where people who bought your first record might attend shows with new fans.

I think our entire career is "we are the other way of doing it," pretty much all the way down the line. And that's very exciting for us. We're happy to be an example of something that works outside of the regular way it works. Just simply because of the contempt we have for the world.

So all things considered, would you try this sort of album again?

Oh yeah. I would be super-psyched to do another one. We're actually working on our next adult album right now . . . and it's quite adult. It's interesting, you do something like this, and then you can go back to exploring adult images again. It's really good to keep yourself challenged. I think I've come to realize one of the reasons so many bands fade out is they feel like they only do one thing well. We probably only do one thing well -- or we may not even do it that well -- but, more importantly, we pretend that we can do more than one thing well.

And don't you have an anniversary coming up?

Yeah, we have a big anthology set coming out in the fall that's kind of a big deal. We're actually celebrating our twentieth anniversary as a band this fall, and we're going to tour behind that, a big national tour. We're doing a big tour in July and August and then back out again in October and November. Basically, wherever you live, like it or not, we're coming to your town [laughs].

ANDREW DANSBY
(June 19, 2002)