With only one hit in their 19-year-long career (1990's goofy Birdhouse in Your Soul), They Might Be Giants are accustomed to being out of tune with the world. This year's album was routinely trashed by rock critics. And now, apparently, even the public at large are attempting to sabotage the band's quest to spread the word of very silly nerd-rock.

"Somebody siphoned the fuel out of the truck," explains bassist Danny Weinkauf, a man whose surname is best said slowly. It turns out, too, that the gangly five-piece have been supplied with fake backstage passes that don't get them into their own dressing room. And one of their cars was broken into.

A lesser (or more sensible) band would take the hint, but TMBG's career is being sustained by an incomprehensible following of hardcore punks and pensioners. While many of them would benefit from a clip around the ear or a serious talking-to, there is obviously a rebellious pleasure in hailing "songs" about serial killer worms delivered in vocals that sound as if they were being delivered through glued-together teeth.

TMBG's supply of good tunes began and ended with Birdhouse, but it takes guts to sing "Some crazy bastard wants to hit me" through a vocoder while being physically assaulted by the front row. As the band abuse accordions and xylophones, and more people queue up to humorously strike blows for serious music, the worrying suspicion grows that part of their following may consist of people who spent their schooldays ganging up on geeks wearing glasses.

The rest, though, are happy to celebrate drunkenness and themselves. As Mexican waves greet an improvised monstrosity about the Irish Centre transport crisis ("Cha-cha-cha-fuel tank, errh!"), TMBG's detractors can at least console themselves with the knowledge that that's at least one Giants song the world will never have to hear again.