They Might Be Giants Relaunch Dial A Song And Return To The Vic

• Shervin Lainez
• The two Johns of They Might Be Giants, Linnell and Flansburgh

At the start of 2015, unstoppable nerd-pop geniuses They Might Be Giants relaunched the Dial-a-Song service that had helped them build their devoted audience in the 80s. From 1983 till 2006 fans could call an answering machine whose outgoing message, usually on cassette tape, consisted of an unheard TMBG recording—often a demo or sketch of a song that would later see conventional release, but sometimes a skit or fake jingle. (The popularity of the service led to one of its many slogans: “Always Busy, Often Broken.”)

The video for “Erase” uses the Web app Anchovy, which translates text into color gradients. In this case the song’s lyrics provide the text. Linnell’s diction is pretty good, but I’m including them at the bottom of the post so you can puzzle over them too.

Think of this as solving problems That should never have occurred Please don’t call it strangulationThat is such an ugly word

Finger find the button marked erase Like a deep-sea diver Falling into a mermaid’s embrace Put one box on the sidewalk Then you return with the next And the first one’s gone Everyone gets on the bus out of townAnd the lights start going out one by one