Friday, September 16, 2011
Beachland Ballroom, Cleveland OH
Review and Photo by Michael David Toth
For years, They Might Be Giants’ Cleveland tour stop has consistently sold out weeks in advance. Their 2011 appearance proved no exception, as fans packed in for a roughly two-hour retrospective of the cult band’s quarter-century career.
The band is now touring extensively in support of the new Join Us album, with nine tracks accounting for nearly a third of the show’s song selection. Structuring a crowd-pleasing set list is tough for a band with such a massive back catalog. Join Us is a decent album, but its forced self-promotion was disproportionately weighted at the expense of stronger TMBG classics. This concert ultimately therefore felt a smidgen less satisfying than other Cleveland TMBG appearances of recent years, despite careful attention to an otherwise diplomatic cross-section of the band’s history. Still, the show was well sustained by founding front men John Flansburgh and John Linnell and their instrumentally sharp and vocally crisp band. The two Johns still radiate an exceptional chemistry and dynamic stage presence, more than 25 years out.
The obligatory “artificial encore” began with the monumentally fun and ingeniously catchy “Mesopotamians” from The Else, and ended confusingly flat with the pedestrian “Can’t Keep Johnny Down” from Join Us. Fortunately, a second, potentially “real encore” followed, wonderfully culminating in the schizophrenically epic 1992 masterwork, “Fingertips.”
With a rockin’ guitar/bass/drums band, Jonathan Coulton served as an ideally matched national opener for the Giants’ tour. While much more straightforward and less arty than TMBG, Coulton shares some kindred creative sensibilities. His songs were similarly characterized by a clever brand of nerdy humor laced with enough earnest substance as to avoid being mere novelty. While singing “Still Alive,” Coulton subtly twitched and smiled during a later, quieter instrumental section, where he could hear how many of his fans had been singing along all along. Without drawing big attention to it, he subtly conveyed a deep, sincere mutual appreciation and affectionate rapport with his fans.