“California, Californiiiiaa!,” sings John Flansburgh into the phone. He’s in the Catskill Mountains, a couple hours north west of New York City, in the little old house he and his wife have called their weekend getaway for 20 years. “There was a time when there was a permanent frost between December and February,” he says, noting the 70 degree weather outside. “But there’s no snow. It is the most beautiful day. The gift of global warming."

Flansburgh says he’s feeling a bit punch drunk from doing so many interviews — we spoke the day after his longtime band, They Might Be Giants, surprise-dropped their nineteenth studio album, Phone Power, on March 8 — and he sounds a bit like a kid waiting for the school bell to ring so that he can finally be free to run around outside and play. Stuck inside, he takes our interview as an opportunity to play instead.

“I’m going to perform the role of the embittered, petulant rock veteran,” he says with a laugh. He holds up the rock veteran end of things, though rather than embittered, Flansburgh is humble, hilarious, and quite open about his thoughts — especially on Kanye West, who he thinks is a genius who has potentially lost his mind,and Missy Elliott, who he missed dearly during her decade-long break from music, and Pharrell, who he thinks is “pretty dreamy.”

For the past 25 years, They Might Be Giants have been one of the most prolific and experimental acts in alternative rock. In 1990, the band released their third studio album, Flood, which was certified platinum in the U.S. In 1999, with the release of Long Tall Weekend, they became the first major-label artists to put out an album solely in mp3 format. In 2002, they won a Grammy for “Boss of Me” after the track was used as the theme to the iconic aughts sitcom, Malcolm in the Middle. This kickstarted a long career of making music for television and film, including the theme to The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. And last year, the band revived the “Dial-A-Song” project that was first kicked off in 1985, by releasing a new song every week via answering machine for an 844 phone number.
“I’m really grateful to have lived long enough in this internet world to see the evolution of social media. Doing a project like that feels so fruitful,” says Flansburgh discussing the changes he’s witnessed in the music industry since he and his bandmate of 25 years, John Linnell, first formed They Might Be Giants in the 1980s. “When we started touring nationally in 1988, it was kind of like getting thrown in the deep end of the pool,” he says. He has many priceless tales about him and Linnell learning how to cultivate a stage presence as unconfident twenty-somethings, realizing the importance of vocal exercises, and discovering the template for success that he claims all veteran bands from Anthrax to Dreamtheater had to learn in order to get to where they got in their careers.

He says the template has changed drastically over the past three decades, and so have fan of They Might Be Giants. “The truth is, the people who came out to our shows 25 years ago aren't going to shows anymore,” he says, poking fun at his own age, too. “[Phone Power] is a very good calling card for the band, like if you know nothing about They Might Be Giants and you go online and download this album, it would be a very solid introduction to what we’re doing. To give it away is just part of our never-ending quest to renew our audience,” he says, explaining the group’s choice to release the album as a pay-as-you-like digital download.

The album is a turning point for They Might Be Giants in several ways. Phone Power is a return to the realm of adult alternative after the release of their 2015 venture into children’s music, Why? — which Flansburgh laughs and says has a “never-ending them of just disobeying your parents.

The track “Bills, Bills, Bills,” a cover of Destiny’s Child's 1999 smash hit, is a reflection of the band's lesser-recognized roots in hip-hop, R&B, and soul. “We were working with the same drum machines that De La Soul and Run DMC were. Those sounds were the same sounds that we were figuring out. I think we’ve always felt a weird kinship to drum machine based music,” says Flansburgh. “The truth is, as guys in our 50s, we grew up with R&B. There’s so much soul music that feels very natural and normal to us.”
The track “Daylight” presents a departure from the version of They Might Be Giants that people have come to know for the past three decades. “The song is really about addiction and being really lost in addiction. It’s not like I've been an addict in my life, but I know people who have,” says Flansburgh. “I’m sure people will listen to that and be like, ‘Oh, that's an unusual topic for you guys. You guys are the happy guys.”

But, as far as evolving goes, They Might Be Giants are pros, and they don’t have any interest in allowing their history as a band to dictate what comes next. “I don’t even want to think about the limitations of They Might Be Giants as a band," says Flansburgh. "I just feel like as a songwriter, you don’t want to be the one building the fences around you.”

They Might Be Giants play at 9 p.m., Friday, March 25, at the UC Theater in Berkeley. $30; more info here.