Tag Archives: they might be giants

#1302: They Might Be Giants – Subliminal

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It’s a story I’ve mentioned/told/referred to in a lot of the past They Might Be Giants posts I’ve done. Originally, the band consisted of two good mates, Johns Flansburgh and Linnell, with their songs mainly relying on a strong combo of accordion, guitar and synthesized rhythm section. This was the setup for a good 10 years of the duo’s career. But then it came to around 1992, when they both decided things needed a little shaking up, and they toured with an actual bass guitarist and drummer for the first time. This “normal” band configuration remains to this day. Initially, a lot of fans accused the two Johns of selling out due to this change. But they persevered, and 1994 saw the release of John Henry, their fifth album, and their first of many to be made in the typical rock band setup.

The LP is They’s longest, clocking in at just over 57 minutes. Up to you whether that’s too long or not. But there’s no arguing that with ‘Subliminal’ as the track setting it off, things get to a generally pleasant start. Linnell’s accordion is the first thing you hear, a familiar sound to listeners up to that point, followed by a real drum kit (double-tracked too) by Brian Doherty, and John Flansburgh’s guitar and new bassist Tony Maimone. The tones of their respective instruments provide a sort of crunchiness to the proceedings. And there’s a whole swinging feel to it. All very catchy. And then John Linnell begins singing about finding messages in the strangest of places, once while flying through the windshield during a car accident and another whilst lying in his bed. Unusual, I guess you could say. But if there’s anything TMBG is known for, it’s not for trying out a ‘usual’ thing.

Buckling the whoever-writes-the-song-sings-the-song practice that tends to go down in TMBG’s discography, ‘Subliminal’, although sung by John Linnell, was originally written by John Flansburgh. A big, big shock, maybe. Well, at least the lyrics were. And then Linnell wrote the music. It’s one of those hugely appreciated times when the two members collaborate to create a piece of work and when we’re all better off for it. As always, a Linnell-sung TMBG composition has a sweet melody to go along with it, but I think the big highlight is when all the countermelodies come in during the repeats of the chorus towards the song’s end. Flansburgh joins in on these in the left channel. I like to think of the whole moment as a sort of subtle mark of celebration. Here was the band at the start of something of a new era, with a proper rhythm section, but the two Johns were still gonna be singing for you no matter what. And then those final choruses play in reverse to play up the whole ‘subliminal’ idea. Perfect way to finish.

#1288: They Might Be Giants – Stone Cold Coup d’État

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On 26th February 2013, I wrote a blog about They Might Be Giants’ song ‘Absolutely Bill’s Mood’. A busy little number, that one. That post was the third one I ever wrote on here. Coincidentally, that was the day that the band’s album Nanobots was made available to stream in its entirety on Rolling Stone, a week before its official release on 5th March (or 4th if you were in the UK like me). You can see me going crazy about it all on that same post. As the big TMBG fan I was at 17, I was excited for sure. As the big 30-year-old TMBG fan I am now, Nanobots is one of the group’s that I don’t return to all that much. It’s not bad. It’s not boring. I’ve always thought the majority of it was okay, with a few jewels shining in the tracklist. And ‘Stone Cold Coup d’État’ was one of those jewels that I think I liked immediately when I heard it on that available stream all those years ago.

A coup d’état is ‘an unexpected or sudden measure of state often involving force or threat of force’, as defined by Merriam-Webster. It’s a term usually associated with the overthrowing of a government by some organization. Though a government isn’t described or depicted in the lyrics of ‘Stone Cold…’, there’s definitely a lot of overthrowing going on. In the track, John Linnell sings of instances where the natural order is flipped, and what we would consider to be the servants in the hierarchy are now in charge. The stars have banded together to take out the sun and the moon. The worker bees have jumped the queen and taken over. An orchestra conductor is killed off, and a single viola takes their place. All greatly exaggerated scenes. Things get real though, when Linnell implies that a son and daughter murder their parents during a pleasant family dinner. Nevertheless, all of these actions are celebrated with a harmonised “Oh, yeah!” Linnell remarks they have “a certain je ne sais quoi”. He asks what the certain je ne sais quoi is. To which the answer is the song’s title. A tasteful use of the French language, I must say.

John Linnell has usually had a knack for writing strong power pop songs. The first one I can think of where it started would probably be ‘Experimental Film’? Though anyone can disagree. But the 2010s seemed to mark the time where he seemed to write one great power pop song after another. Kinda lacking the weirdness and eccentricity that would be found in the band’s earlier work, which some may feel “sad” about. But still enriched in the melody and memorability that makes the great in the first place. ‘Stone Cold…’ is one of ’em. A notable feature about the track is the accompaniment of John Flansburgh’s wife Robin Goldwasser on vocals. She provides the second harmonised ‘Stone Cold Coup d’État’ in the chorus after Linnell sings it first, and then Flansburgh follows after with the higher harmony. I like how he stays on that note after the other two stop singing at the end too. Really belting it out. This is a big high from Nanobots in my view, so I reckon it stands it ground as being the last representative from the album that I write about on here.

#1283: They Might Be Giants – The Statue Got Me High

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I could probably say that ‘The Statue Got Me High’ goes down as one of my favourite songs by They Might Be Giants. There was a short, very brief time when I didn’t get it that much. And that was when I was about 10 and watching the music video for the first time, on the Internet, on Yahoo’s old music service website. I don’t know what it was, there’s a lot of stuff happening in the music video and the song itself is quite busy in its structure and momentum too. I think it was all too much my little, tiny head to take in. But fast forward about five years to late 2010 when I was downloading the band’s albums and got to Apollo 18, ‘Statue’ started playing and I was into it almost immediately. I think it was the first time I’d heard the track since the attempt those years prior, but it felt like it should have been a certified favourite for all of that time.

Another TMBG track mainly written by John Linnell, ‘Statue’ is about a man who stares at a monument until his head explodes. And that’s pretty much the gist of it. There’s something about the wording of the song title that seems kinda clumsy about it. A sentence like “it got me” isn’t one you hear in everyday situations. But how Linnell sings it is where it becomes very convincing as a phrase. It’s like he’s shouting it from the highest rooftop and wants everyone to know about the situation he’s in. Or the narrator, whatever. It’s a song where I very much enjoy Linnell’s vocal performance. It’s one where he’s belting out the notes from his chest one moment and then singing in a standard baritone, sort of mirror the intensity/moments of relaxation in the music, all while maintaining these glorious melodies and recording these harmonies and backing vocals that add these layers of substance. As much as I like all the instruments behind them all, I think this song’s massive strength is in that vocal work. All so jubilant and earwormy, in general.

I want to say that I read somewhere that Linnell had a daydream depicting this scene and was inspired enough to write a song about it. Though, I may be making that up. I guess that’s how most songwriters fulfill their craft. They make up scenarios and write songs about them. But sometimes I think about how John Linnell can write songs like ‘Four of Two’ or ‘My Man’. And it’s like, yeah, maybe he just has daydreams about a person strangling themselves to death while looking at a clock, or another person suffering from spinal paralysis, and has an urge to write about them. Even the song ‘Unrelated Thing’ is about a woman daydreaming in the middle of a tremendously boring date. They’re not your typical song topics, but that’s what sets the Giants apart from nearly everyone else. And a large majority songs usually turn out good too. I just don’t know how they do it.

#1269: They Might Be Giants – Stand on Your Own Head

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Nearing the end of They Might Be Giants’ Lincoln, the band’s second debut album released in the September of 1988, comes the song ‘Stand on Your Own Head’. Now, I’ve always thought it was a good one, and I’m sure there are a lot of Giants fans out there who feel the same way. You wouldn’t find it being regarded as a major highlight, but it’s appreciated all the same. My view, it gets a bit of a raw deal being sandwiched between two of the album’s most well-known tracks in ‘Shoehorn with Teeth’ and ‘Snowball in Hell’. I’d go for this one over the former any day, and maybe you could tell because I’m writing about ‘Stand…’ and haven’t done a post on ‘Shoehorn’.

This one here is another TMBG track mainly written by John Linnell. I’ve come to think of the lyric as some kind of wordplay exercise, taking idioms and everyday phrases and then turning them upside down. Or “on their heads”, you might say. And you can go through it line by line. At least, almost. “I like people, they’re the ones who can’t stand”, I guess is a turn on “I hate people, they’re the ones I can’t stand”. It’s a bit of stretch on my part, seeing as that’s not really an everyday phrase. But what’s more obvious comes in the lyrics for the chorus, “Stand on your own head for a change/Give me some skin to call my own”, which calls to the “Stand on your own two feet” phrase and provides a combination of “give me some skin” and “a home to call my own”. And then there’s the “You’ve made my day, now you have to sleep in it” in the second verse, a reference to making a bed and lying in it. The other parts about smoke signals and suing for custody, I’ve still not been able to pin down. But they sound good nonetheless.

The main musical highlight in this tune is the prominent feature of the banjo, which is rarely used in any other They Might Be Giants song, if it even is at all. The band’s Wiki side credited its playing to John Linnell. I never thought much of it. I listened to a podcast one day that questioned whether this credit was correct. There are TMBG songs that have Linnell playing guitar and he isn’t all that proficient in that, so it did make me wonder whether the credit was true too. But then a few years ago, a TMBG live performance from 1988 was released on YouTube, and right there in the thumbnail was Linnell with banjo in hand alongside John Flansburgh. Though whether he’s playing the intricate part during the choruses is still up for question. If you were somewhat displeased with my own take on the song, luckily I found this track-by-track breakdown of Lincoln while writing this. Linnell’s recollection of the track might just be more useful than mine.

#1268: They Might Be Giants – Stalk of Wheat

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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?