Nanobots Tracklist
Nanobots is the 16th studio album from They Might Be Giants. Uncharacteristically for the band, the album’s title comes from an album track, as the second track shares a title with the album. The album was released on March 5th, 2013 on Idlewild Recordings — the band’s independent imprint — with Megaforce Records in the US. The album was also separately released on March 8 in Australia through Breakaway Records and on March 11 in Europe, through Lojinx. One week before its physical release, Nanobots was released digitally for streaming in its entirety through the band’s SoundCloud, announced by Rolling Stone. Prior to this, “Call You Mom”, “Black Ops” and “Lost My Mind” were released through the advance digital Nanobots EP in January 2013. The EP, released through Amazon.com and iTunes, was met with fairly positive responses.
Source:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanobots_(album)
“Nanobots” Q&A
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What has the band said about this album?
In 2015, Flansburgh and Linnell spoke to Spin about their albums to that point. Here’s what they said about this album:
There are themes of death and science running throughout Nanobots, and the tiny songs were callbacks to “Fingertips”; it feels almost like a sequel to Apollo 18. Was that a conscious revisit?
Flansburgh:
As short as three minutes is, for some songs it’s still too long. Keeping a song short locks some mystery in there that a longer song can lose. A track like “Nouns” needs to be short. If it was longer it runs the risk of being cloying, but at its jingle-length, it doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Death references come up for interesting, and occasionally not-so-valid reasons, and this kind of relates to the short song thing. A song like “When Will You Die?” has a very clear idea that is worked through the whole song. But in some songs that will remain nameless, both John or I will be facing a tightly constructed chorus and verse and then not really have a clue how to build it out to get to another chorus. Sometimes when that third verse has you cornered, you just have to shoot your way out.
