NEW COMFORT BLANKET EPISODE

John-Luke Roberts on They Might Be Giants' 'Flood' LP.

I bumped into John-Luke Roberts at the rescheduled They Might Be Giants ‘Flood’ anniversary shows a few weeks ago, and he mentioned how he loved the way that the band used ideas of overwhelm, of excess, of a metaphorical ‘flood’ of ideas, and that it connected to something that he enjoyed, and employed, in his comedy. Maybe ‘too much’ was inherently funny.

I’d been blown away by John-Luke’s own exercise in excess, performing all of his Edinburgh shows ever, back-to-back, far too quickly, as his own way of understanding the nature of comedy, performance, and the passage of time. Pushing an idea until it went WAY too far, until it got frightening, and then went all the way back round in a loop and became reassuring – goofily enjoying its own size like some sort of lovable cartoon elephant. Excess seemed to have its own comic energy.

Maybe ‘excess’ was a way to ask questions about how we process a flood of incoming data. We all feel ‘gosh, this really is a bit too much’ from time to time, particularly if we’re prone to overwhelm. Maybe laughter was a way of dealing with chaos. If it all gets ‘too much’, is laughing better than screaming?

Perhaps that was why so many comedians and comedy writers were there in the venue to watch They Might Be Giants do all the songs off ‘Flood’, why so many of us found comfort in the controlled chaos of this geeky little record. Maybe it pushed the same buttons. Fun, wasn’t it? All that… stuff! Reassuring. Welcoming, rather than frightening.

And I thought: well, that’s definitely a podcast.

So now it is.

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It’s here.

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