Flood by They Might Be Giants

They Might Be Giants' third album, Flood, surfaced on January 15, 1990, and it was the first record the duo made for a major label, Elektra. John Linnell and John Flansburgh didn't sand off any of their oddness for the big leagues; they just got better toys. Seasoned producers Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley came aboard, the sessions moved to Skyline Studios in New York City, a far better equipped room than anything the pair had worked in before, and home-taped scraps of sound got fed into Casio FZ-1 synthesizers and programmed into the songs.

The sound didn't change much from the earlier records, but everything is sharper, brighter and denser with hooks. "Birdhouse in Your Soul" is a pure sugar rush, "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" bounces like a party record, and "Particle Man" and "Your Racist Friend" show how far the pair can stretch between playground singsong and something with a harder edge. "Birdhouse" and "Istanbul" were the singles, with "Twisting" pushed as a promotional track at home.

The push behind it brought TV appearances, videos and an international tour, and plenty of kids first caught the band through Flood, including young viewers of Tiny Toon Adventures. Critics liked it, the charts were kind if not wild about it, and over time it became their biggest seller and the album people mean when they say the band's name. In 2013 it was reissued in a CD series covering all four of the duo's Elektra albums.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.