Concert Review: They Might Be Giants at the Beachland Ballroom

Though they had a couple of commercial radio hits in the ’90s, that’s not why the indie rock duo They Might be Giants has survived for the past 30 years. They’ve survived because they’ve done things on their own terms. That DIY attitude was on full display last night before a sold out crowd at the Beachland Ballroom. During a two-hour performance, the band — singer-multi-instrumentalist John Linnell and singer-guitarist John Flansburgh plus three touring musicians — drew from a wide range of material that included both the obvious (1990’s “Birdhouse in Your Soul”) and the obscure (“Fingertips,” a 21-song suite of short songs from their 1992 album Apollo 18). They relentlessly broke into banter throughout the show, commenting on the gymnasium-like quality of the ballroom. They put on a sock puppet show, and they played a game with the audience that involved making up nicknames for patrons that they identified with a spotlight. As a result, the show was a constantly entertaining hodgepodge of music and mayhem.

This article appears in Mar 13-19, 2013.