The Else is the twelfth studio album by They Might Be Giants, released digitally via iTunes on May 15th, 2007, and on CD July 10th. TMBG sat down to begin work on the album in early 2006, and spent over a full year recording, writing, and producing it. John Flansburgh: "We were very lucky that we could approach this project without deadlines or release schedules hanging over our heads. We wanted to be sure this was an album that was our best effort from beginning to end and I am very excited to report I believe we've actually done it!" The Iraq War was an influence on the songwriting process for the album. John Linnell: "That period was also in the wake of Iraq War, so we were kind of feeling bad all the time because of the shitty government that we had. Normally that kind of thing won’t have a very direct relationship to our own theme, but there's a number of songs on The Else that were a reflection of how horrible everything seemed at the time." John Flansburgh: "Before that project had a name, all my files were just in a folder called 'During the War.' It's not the topic but it is the backdrop. It was the thing that's happening that's just sort of poisoning everything around it." User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.