THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Brooklyn, NY
May 31, 2015
(The Else album show)

CA-14 cardioids > Church Audio ugly battery box > Line In > Sony PCM-M10 > WAV
Mixed and mastered in SoundStudio > FLAC
Recorded by neil d

Setlist:
01 Sammy intro
02 Climbing the Walls
03 Music Jail, Pt. 1 and 2
04 Upside Down Frown
05 Rhythm Section Want Ad
06 Careful What You Pack
07 Ana Ng
08 Number Three
09 Madam, I Challenge You To A Duel
10 The Cap'm
11 Take Out The Trash
12 With The Dark
13 Bills, Bills, Bills (Destiny's Child)
14 Bee of the Bird of the Moth
15 Damn Good Times
16 Answer
17 Let Me Tell You About My Operation
18 Stompy intro
19 I'm Impressed
20 Birdhouse In Your Soul
21 Erase
22 Contrecoup
23 Twisting
24 Withered Hope
25 I Was Dancing In The Lesbian Bar (Jonathan Richman)
26 Istanbul (Not Constantinople)
27 Drink
28 Particle Man
29 We Live In A Dump
30 Unpronounceable
31 Don't Let's Start
32 The Shadow Government
33 The Mesopotamians
34 encore
35 New York City
36 The Famous Polka
37 Doctor Worm
38 encore 2
39 Can't Keep Johnny Down
40 Robot Parade

Night five of TMBG’s monthly residency at Music Hall of Williamsburg, but the first one I’d attended since the first one way back in January. Things were greatly improved from then: Not only was the band way tighter, having just completed a U.S. tour, but the sound (again from the MHoW balcony) was greatly improved. Add in that I brought the CA-14 mics for this occasion, which are far better suited for the room than the supercardioids I used the first time, and this is a much better recording.

The theme for the evening was The Else, an album whose Dust Brothers production I’m not crazy about (I recall one of the Johns saying he said to the other on first listen, “Well, we’ve just made our least cuddly album ever”), but which is just stockpiled with great songs. In addition to all but one of The Else’s songs (“Feign Amnesia” didn’t make the cut), the two sets (plus two encores) included a bunch of new songs, a smattering of old ones, and a pair of out-of-left-field covers, one of which (the Destiny’s Child song) they’d previously played for The Onion’s AV Club. All in all, a terrific night, and I’m very glad to have captured a good recording of it.

The weather problems Flans refers to early on were a sudden downpour that apparently flooded the venue, leaving audience members lined up outside for half an hour in what was left of the rain while the club mopped up the floor. All was well by the time we entered, though, and no one lost their footing pogoing to “Birdhouse.”

If you like this, go and buy all of TMBG’s albums (especially The Else and their new one, Glean), and considering subscribing to their Dial-A-Song project, which still has nearly six months’ worth of weekly song releases to go: https://www.drip.fm/dial-a-song-direct/story