They Might Be going back to roots

They Might Be Giants is once again rocking for big people.

Throughout the last decade the Brooklyn-based experimental pop outfit found success with a children’s music series highlighted by the gold-certified “Here Come the ABCs,” the Grammy-winning “Here Come the 123s” and the Grammy-nominated “Here Comes Science.”

In July, though, the group released “Join Us,” its 15th album and its first grown-up outing since 2007’s “The Else.” It’s a back-to-the-roots collection of artfully crafted pop tunes that blur the lines between catchy and cathartic.

“The Else” was produced by The Dust Brothers (Beck, The Beastie Boys), but TMBG – led by the two Johns, Flansburgh and Linnell – self-produced the new album.

On “Join Us,” short, punchy songs are strung together in an 18-track album that clocks in around 46 minutes. The songs are filled with clever wordplay, sneak-up-on-ya dynamic shifts, colorful instrumentation and lighthearted excursions to the dark corners of the mind.

They Might Be Giants lets the freak flag fly on several numbers, but the music remains accessible despite its elusive references to cephalophores, cartography and lizards with human bodies.

Each song is a maze of its own, but you can run around without ever finding the exit and still feel like you’re getting somewhere.

There are all of the oddities listeners have come to expect from the band, but “Join Us” is not exactly a retreat to earlier incarnations. Rather, it is a matured, distilled re-examination of TMBG’s classic formula of nonsensical, geeky, potentially-profound-but-just-fun- enough-not-to-care sentiments that have had a lasting influence beyond the bastions of 1990s alternative rock.

For the album and on tour, guitarist Flansburgh and singer/multi-instrumentalist Linnell are joined by drummer Marty Beller, guitarist Dan Miller and bassist Danny Weinkauf – the same band they been with for the last decade.

In addition to the various children’s music projects, TMBG has appeared as cartoon characters, written music for a robot ballet, topped the iTunes podcast chart and were the subject of the acclaimed documentary “Gigantic: A Tale of Johns.”

It was among the first bands to popularize artist-owned music stores, recently re-established on its website, www.theymightbegiants.com.