Concert Reviews
The duo treated Boston to two marathon sets and a double encore to kick off a two-night run at the Lansdowne venue.
They Might Be Giants played a pair of marathon sets Friday night. Jon Uleis
June 6, 2026 | 3:09 PM
4 minutes to read
I like to imagine that if you were to look inside the heads of John Flansburgh and John Linnell, the two halves of indie rock royals They Might Be Giants, you’d find a Pee-wee’s Big Adventure-esque Rube Goldberg Machine filled with bells, whistles, dips, and loopdy-loops where an everyday observation could enter and on the other end will pop an idea that nobody else is quite capable of.
What other band would embrace the task of universalizing the concept of a palindrome through song? Why would it ever occur to anyone to make a four-and-a-half minute song consisting of more than twenty roughly-ten-second genre-bouncing movements? Who else would look at a plug-in nightlight and think, “hey, that thing looks like it has a secret to tell”?
On Friday night at the House of Blues, the duo, joined by an eight-piece band, showcased the machinery of their inner workings, bringing new perspective to their classics and unveiling tunes from their latest record, April’s The World Is to Dig.
The band kicked off the evening with the salacious chunk-funk of “S-E-X-X-Y”, a groove that culminated in John Linnell pulling out a clarinet to join the three-piece horn section for a composed outro. And with that, not only was the night underway, but the album of focus for the first set was revealed as 1996’s Factory Showroom.
The structure of this tour includes TMBG spotlighting selections of one of their 24 albums in the first set and then opening up for entirely different second sets each night. From the album opener, Linnell led the band straight to the album’s closer, “The Bells Are Ringing” before launching into the jolty pop rock of “New York City”, a cover of Vancouver twee-pop collective Cub. The tightly-composed “Spiraling Shape” was a welcome challenge for the band, while the riff-rock of “XTC vs. Adam Ant” and the caffeinated pogo-punk of “Till My Head Falls Off” showed the band’s grasp of garage sensibility.
It’s not often that an indie rock band allows itself to have a sense of humor, and it’s a refreshing quality that’s signature to They Might Be Giants. This was a frequent and welcoming presence throughout the evening, exemplified in tunes like the breezy soul of Flansburgh-led “Pet Name” or “How Can I Sing Like a Girl?”, a tongue-in-cheek lamentation about wanting to have a wider vocal range without the unwanted side-effects of objectification.
They Might Be Giants also must be considered for the stage banter Hall of Fame. The duo is in constant dialogue throughout the set, sprinkling in musings about Yelp reviews, memories of growing up in the Boston area, and playfully referred to Factory Showroom as “an album that highlights a special time in our career: rock bottom”.
Late first set highlights included “Wu-Tang” and “Hit The Ground”, selections from their new album The World Is to Dig. Before setbreak, the band recorded a video of themselves playing quirky early-era composition “Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love” backwards—a delightful gimmick that got even better upon playing the video back in reverse to kick off the second set as a means to judge the band’s accuracy.
The second half of the show was a great testament to the band’s career-spanning versatility, weaving through the jumbled time signatures of clap-along folk tune “Number Three”, Linnell’s accordion-fueled “Subliminal”, and the Bond-coded “Spy”. Favorites from 1990’s Flood, the band’s most celebrated record, were among the most well-received of the evening, including the baritone half-march-half-waltz “Whistling in the Dark”, the acoustic-driven harmonies of “Letterbox”, and the infectious chorus of “Birdhouse in Your Soul”.
The hook-laden “Can’t Keep Johnny Down” and John Henry B-side “Out of Jail” were playful additions to a set that showed the band’s skill for simultaneously hyper-focusing on genre and blowing up the conventions of that genre altogether. Throughout the second set, the three-piece horn section provided additional texture and energy to a songbook that already offers such variety and eccentricity.
The band treated the crowd to not one, but two encores, grooving through Raspberries cover “Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)” and 1994 favorite “The End of Tour” before returning to the stage for showtune-y crowd singalong “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” a mouthful of a tune that’s all but canon to the TMBG faithful.
For many, Friday’s sets were simply the appetizer for Saturday’s show, which many in attendance will likely return for. Standing alone, however, the performance acted as an ode to the experimentation and dynamic curiosity that has long become synonymous with the band and their catalog. And If nothing else, it was an impressive and welcome reminder that the mechanics of the duo’s hive mind have only continued to expand.
Setlist
Set One (Factory Showroom spotlight)
- S-E-X-X-Y
- The Bells Are Ringing
- New York City (Cub cover)
- Spiraling Shape
- XTC vs. Adam Ant
- Till My Head Falls Off
- Pet Name
- Exquisite Dead Guy
- Metal Detector
- How Can I Sing Like a Girl?
- James K. Polk
- Wu‐Tang
- Hit the Ground
- Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love (played live backwards)
- stelluB
- Synopsis for Latecomers
- Brontosaurus
Set Two
- Sapphire Bullets of Pure Love (played on video in reverse)
- Let Me Tell You About My Operation
- Birdhouse in Your Soul
- Wearing a Raincoat
- Don’t Let’s Start
- Can’t Keep Johnny Down
- I’ll Sink Manhattan
- Whistling in the Dark
- Number 3
- Subliminal
- Out of Jail
- Letterbox
- Spy
- Get Down
- Where Your Eyes Don’t Go
Encore 1
- Overnight Sensation (Hit Record) (Raspberries cover)
- The End of the Tour
Encore 2
Istanbul (Not Constantinople) (The Four Lads cover)
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