When the phone inside your ribcage rings, it’s not for me (They Might Be Giants show report)

Maybe the band I’ve seen play the most times, certainly the band with the biggest time gap between the first time I saw them and the latest (December 1989 to September 2026.) I saw them sometime in the last ten years but I may not have recorded it here; here’s a brief report on the 2009 show, which, like this one, was at the Barrymore, and which, like this one, featured a snippet of “The Famous Polka” (“When the phone inside your ribcage rings, it’s not for me”) as part of another song. They have such a long catalogue now that some of the songs that used to be every-show stalwarts weren’t there; no “Don’t Let’s Start,” no “She’s an Angel,” which may be songs that don’t go well with their current horn-heavy arrangement. (But why not bring back “(She was a) Hotel Detective,” which would sound great with this band?) No “Particle Man”! And they didn’t play the song that got me into the band in the first place, the song that taught me something about how superficial quirkiness can trick…