They Might Be Giants’ 1990 album Flood includes a track that is more or less the band’s theme song in the form of ‘They Might Be Giants’. The number contains the lyric, “They might be rain, they might be heat, they might be frying up a stalk of wheat.” Then fourteen years later, a song under the name of that little phrase at the end there appeared as the penultimate offering on The Spine. Whether John Linnell was thinking of the specific lyric or just wrote this song coincidentally has never been confirmed. It’s not a big deal to think about, really. What matters is, I like ‘Stalk of Wheat’ quite a bit. On an album where the songs are very much on the usual rock band setup, ‘Stalk of Wheat’ arrives out of left field as this swinging showtime number with horns and this thing called a Flex-a-Tone.

The image that usually comes to my mind when listening to ‘Stalk…’ is a man performing it onstage in a theatre of some kind, suit and top hat on, pulling out the jazz hands for extra effect in places. An entertaining situation, I’d say. But when you look into ‘Stalk of Wheat’ a little further, you’ll see that the narrator conveyed isn’t having such a great time. Nothing is working out for this person. Journeys feel too far of a travel, they have no one to turn to who can lend a helping hand. Once they were a young buck who had big plans, but now only have those dark thoughts that linger. And with no money and no job that would help raise funds of any kind, they’re at a point in life where they have no idea in hell that would make things better.

All that being said, the song’s so damn catchy, you’ll find yourself singing along to a person’s downfall in record timing. Filled to the brim with these easy rhymes, wordplay, alliteration and earwormy melodies, and set to the upbeat, happy-go-lucky tempo, it’s the sort of track that wouldn’t sound out of place in a musical. You’ve got the backing vocals chiming in with parts of a lyric before Linnell finishes them off, very much like how a backing character will randomly put their two cents in during a song. And speaking of the lyrics, they range from sincerity to the absurd. A ‘moose denied’ or a ‘bunny that’s broke’ aren’t phrases you’ll find in everyday usage. But in the context of this song, they sound just swell. Just another reason why The Spine shouldn’t be looked down on when looking into the band’s catalogue. And there’s a video of the two Johns performing it live on a TV show back in the day. Ain’t that nice?