Austin: They Might Be Giants at Emo’s
They Might Be Giants return to Emo’s on Friday, November 6, for the second stop of a two-night Austin run celebrating four decades of one of alternative rock’s most inventive catalogs. Doors are at 8 PM, with tickets starting around $81.
Formed in Brooklyn in 1982 by John Flansburgh and John Linnell, They Might Be Giants built a cult following through their Dial-A-Song phone service — a pre-internet way for fans to call in and hear new, often absurdist songs — before breaking into the mainstream with 1990’s Flood, home to enduring favorites like “Birdhouse in Your Soul” and their cover of “Istanbul (Not Constantinople).” The band has won two Grammy Awards, including Best Musical Album for Children, and their song “Boss of Me” became the theme to the sitcom Malcolm in the Middle.
Emo’s has hosted plenty of veteran acts reinventing their live show for a new generation, and TMBG’s current tour leans into that idea directly, built around deep-catalog sets for the band’s famously obsessive, trivia-minded fanbase. The band’s blend of herky-jerky art-rock, nerdy humor, and genuinely sturdy pop songwriting has aged into something closer to institution than novelty act, and their live shows remain as unpredictable as ever, mixing old favorites with reworked arrangements and the occasional cover.
Beyond their Grammy-winning children’s albums, Flansburgh and Linnell have kept up a steady stream of adult-audience records well into their fifth decade as a band, touring behind a catalog that spans more than 20 studio albums and countless EPs, compilations, and one-off singles released through their long-running Dial-A-Song archive. For another dose of Austin’s long-running love of genre-scrambling live bands, Mohawk down the street regularly books acts cut from similarly idiosyncratic cloth.
Doors are at 8 PM for this all-ages show. Expect a packed room and sing-along energy from a crowd that’s been waiting decades to hear some of these songs live.