The World Is to Dig

Back in Los Angeles
Wu-Tang
Sleep’s Older Sister
Je N’en Ai Pas
Outside Brain
Let’s Fall in Lava
Telescope
Garbage in
Get Down
New Wave Will Never Die
Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)
Character Flaw
Hit the Ground
What You Get
Slow
In the Dead Mall
What the Cat Dragged in
They Might Be Feral

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■ They Might Be Giants
They Might Be Giants (TMBG) is an American alternative rock and children’s band formed in 1982 in Brooklyn, NY, by core members John Flansburgh and John Linnell. Initially a duo, the band expanded in the early 1990s and is known for satirical, offbeat music blending punk, polka, and vaudeville. With 23 studio albums, including their 1986 debut and 1990’s Flood, TMBG wrote the Malcolm in the Middle theme and won a Grammy for “Here Come the 123s”

“It’s great to be back in Los Angeles, to drink a ‘Mrs. Angry’ from the can.” That’s a lyric from the opening track of The World Is to Dig. It is either a dense stack of delightful jokes, or incomplete Dadaist nonsense, depending on your relationship with They Might Be Giants. With a broad enough perspective, it is both of those things simultaneously.

This is the band’s 24th studio album — by some counts — and their first since John Flansburgh survived a serious car accident in June 2022. It arrives with the trappings of their DIY ethic: my promo copy came before they decided on a cover, just 18 tracks that I should probably check haven’t changed in official release. 2021’s Book was an inspired return to form, and their shows since then have been a treat.

I’ll say what I believe and you can push back in the comments: They Might Be Giants are one of the five greatest American rock bands ever. They’re not a bigger cultural force than Nirvana, not higher-charting than Aerosmith, not as acclaimed as Springsteen’s operation, and they never redefined “alternative” the way R.E.M. did at their peak. But for 40-plus years of near-top-tier output — strange, funny, melodically ruthless, cerebrally evocative but lyrically impenetrable — they absolutely have to be in that conversation. The World Is to Dig is the latest exhibit.

It’s obvious to sort TMBG albums into Linnell songs and Flansburgh songs, the way people talk about Let It Be as four solo albums in a trench coat. Linnell sings “Get Down,” the horn-driven groove track that sounds most like a Flansburgh production. Flansburgh takes lead on “Sleep’s Older Sister,” the subdued, Beatles-adjacent ballad that sounds most like a Linnell mood. After 40 years and 24 albums, there’s a bit of a pattern, but the inner workings of John and John are still mysterious. The “Linnell/Flansburgh” framing is a handle to hold, but we don’t know how deeply they collaborate. My sense of this album is that it’s a nice balance.

What you can say: The World Is to Dig is rich with the markers each songwriter has spent decades perfecting. Linnell’s entries are darker and twistier — “Let’s Fall in Lava” wraps a confessional about a relationship inside an encouragement toward accepting death; “Slow” is a half-step-modulating drug trip that somehow sounds like a lullaby. Flansburgh pushes his Motown and Brill Building fixations further than ever on “Hit the Ground,” and “In the Dead Mall” is a flat-out rocker that you’ll wish ran longer than its two minutes. They share vocal duties on a Raspberries cover, “Overnight Sensation (Hit Record),” which doubles as a companion piece to their own 1989 track (“Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had a Deal”) about waiting for a corrupt music industry to reward your work. Forty-some years in, the waiting continues. I think they find this funny, or at least I do.

The World Is to Dig is a late-career high, and thoroughly enjoyable, if you enjoy their work at all. Still silly, still strange, and still offering oblique commentary and melodic heights for the teenage fans who never outgrew them. I am one of those fans. I have no objectivity here and I’m not pretending otherwise.

The World Is to Dig comes out today: April 14, 2026.