Tag Archives: they might be giants

#1367: They Might Be Giants – Three Might Be Duende

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Hearing They Might Be Giants’ ‘Three Might Be Duende’ today reminds me of the summer of 2011, when it was a new song alongside the other 17 that made up Join Us. When The Else had been released in 2007, I’d completely missed it and didn’t get round to listening to it until years later – I think due to it being done in the time when TMBG were doing music for children. I was unsure of how the music would sound like. Plus, I was 12. But in 2011, I was 16 and eagerly waiting for Join Us since April of that year when ‘Can’t Keep Johnny Down’ was released as the first single. This album was their big return to adult-oriented music for me. I was on holiday in the US when it was released. I got by through listening to 30-second samples of each song, I think, on iTunes. Maybe somewhere else. I liked what I heard. This guy called Anthony Fantano reviewed Join Us and gave it a five out of 10. Wonder what he’s up to these days. I returned home and downloaded the album straight away. At least once I got over the jet lag.

‘…Duende’ was probably the first song to be previewed in a way from the then-upcoming album. A 13-second clip of the band working on the tune, then known just as ‘Duende’ was uploaded to their official YouTube channel in June 2010, more than a year before Join Us arrived. Someone must have that saved somewhere. Otherwise, TMBG made the video private and it’s lost in space and time until they make it available again, which I’m thinking is unlikely.* Fast-forward to July 2011 and there’s ‘Duende’ in the tracklist, now with the longer name, ‘Three Might Be Duende’. To this day, what this song is about completely evades me. From what I can tell, each verse depicts four characters whose names are introduced in the respective first lines. It was only in 2017 that John Flansburgh revealed that the last verse was about the grim reaper. I remember an interpretation that saw the track as a tale of three people who work together to make a creative team. I think I can get that. But there are too many words put together in strange ways that’s made it difficult for me to decipher. How they sound together is what what makes the song great to me.

This song is one of the few in the massive TMBG catalogue to feature vocalists other than the two Johns themselves, with singers David Driver and Michael Cerveris respectively taking lead vocals on the second and third verses. John Flansburgh covers the other two. Sometimes I was sure it was him singing all the way through even if the liner notes told me otherwise. It’s not like TMBG would lie, I don’t know what I was thinking. Driver has a this sort of gritty tone to his voice which makes a great contrast to Flansburgh’s straight delivery in the first verse, and Cerveris’s bassy voice in turn makes for good contrast with Driver’s. A great range of vocals on show. Also, a key change happens as every verse comes along, going from G sharp to C sharp to F sharp to straight B for the celebratory ending. I think that’s pretty cool. Altogether, it’s a wordy song – that I don’t think even TMBG expects anyone to fully take in – paired with music that’s constantly shifting, set to a marching rhythm and sung by three distinct vocalists. I just don’t know what more you’d want. Does the job for me.

*The video’s right here.

#1357: They Might Be Giants – They’ll Need a Crane

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‘They’ll Need a Crane’. A TMBG classic right here. It’s another track of theirs I came to know through Launch.com. Whenever it played on the radio, it was always listed as being on the band’s Dial-A-Song: 20 Years of They Might Be Giants compilation rather than the studio album it originated from. Same went for ‘Ana Ng’, ‘Cowtown’, and ‘Purple Toupee’ on the one occasion I think it played on there. Cue to many Christmases and birthdays when I asked for that compilation but never got it. I think it was a rare one to get over here in the UK. But unlike ‘They Might Be Giants’ where I heard the song once and didn’t hear it again until years later, ‘They’ll Need a Crane’ also had its music video – featuring two young Johns and a band of distinguished old fellas playing and rowing boats in Battery Park, New York City – available to view on the site’s video service. So, if the 2004 broadband connection was good, I could watch that whenever I wanted.

‘…Crane’ is on the band’s second album, Lincoln, the 14th track on there, and another by the band to tackle what you can consider to be an emotionally heavy subject – a tragic breakup – with catchy, upbeat music. Linnell sings about the situation of “Lad” and “Gal”. The two are together, but there’s a sadness lingering in the relationship that takes a toll. Gal sometimes says things to Lad that hurts Lad’s feelings. An argument is depicted in the song’s minor-key bridge where Gal walks away from Lad in frustration after the latter suggests to go to a restaurant where “the other nightmare people like to go”. And by the final verse, they’ve gone their separate ways with Lad looking at other women and Gal drowning her sorrows with Jim Beam whiskey. The whole situation’s likened to the destruction and gradual reconstruction of a building, both aided by the metaphorical crane that’s referred to in the song’s title.

‘They’ll Need a Crane’ has one of those melodies you feel you must have heard before somewhere. When I first heard the song way, way back, I thought it was one I knew like the back of my finger. I would have been eight, but I think I had a grasp of what a good song sounded like at that somewhat negligible age. The tune’s from 1988, but it’s like it should have been around for much longer. Gotta thank John Linnell once again for this one. And John Flansburgh too, because why not. Only makes sense that the song was released as a single during the band’s Lincoln era in February 1989, four days before Valentine’s Day, funnily enough. I don’t think that’s coincidental. The band played the track for their network television debut on Late Night with David Letterman around the same time. But I’m gonna embed a 2011 performance of it just for comparison’s sake with the music video at the top.

#1356: They Might Be Giants – They Might Be Giants

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The song ‘They Might Be Giants’ by the band They Might Be Giants is another by the group that I discovered at a very early age, one that stuck with me for the longest while, and then eventually one that I sort of revisited while also going into it with fresh ears years down the line. If you’ve read another They Might Be Giants post on here where I’ve mentioned this website Yahoo! used to run back in the day called Launch.com, the story there is very much the same here. That was the site that introduced me to They Might Be Giants when I was eight years old or something. I frequently used the internet radio service on there, tracks by TMBG would show up at the same kind of rate, and a lot of the time I liked what I was hearing. ‘They Might Be Giants’ was one of ’em. Heard it in 2004. Didn’t get to listening to the album it was on until 2010. I was always asking for TMBG compilations in those six years for gifts with little success. So when I discovered the art of downloading in 2009-10, I went to town.

The band’s self-admitted theme song was written much earlier than 1990 when it was released on the band’s third album Flood, their major-label debut on Elektra Records. John Flansburgh and John Linnell had initially recorded it in 1985 for possible inclusion on what was to be their self-titled debut record, but left it off thinking the theme song on the first album would be ‘too weird’, and thought about recording it for their second album Lincoln too. When it came time to making Flood, the band were now on a major-label, they enlisted seasoned producers to help them, they had the bigger budget, and they had the, I assume, better equipment for the recording process. So it only made sense to revisit ‘They Might Be Giants’ with all this at hand. But even still, Flansburgh recalled it being an incredibly complicated piece to put together again because of the elements contained within the music. Particularly on the vocal front. There’s a lot of ’em.

I think I once watched an interview with the two Johns where one of them explained their band name as a remark someone might say upon looking out of a window and seeing these strange presences in the distance. “Hmm, they might be giants”. Along those lines. So ‘They Might Be Giants’ explores peculiar alternatives that these presences might, ranging from in-jokes like “Dr. Spock’s back-up band” to the nonsensical “rain” or “heat” to the possibly conclusive answer of “big, big, fake, fake lies”. John Flansburgh takes lead vocal. John Linnell provides a lot of the backing. Not sure who between the two delivers the deep “Boy” vocalizations. I’m thinking Linnell. The “Hang on tight” samples are from a self-improvement cassette tape the band acquired for a miniscule amount of money. Everyone’s chanting ‘They Might Be Giants’ by the song’s end, and by the sound of the sudden vocal change, the actual giants might be getting involved too. It’s a triumphant number, and also acts as a bit of a call-out to their fans. You see, with the major-label move, there were those that were worried that the band were gonna change. Sell out, as they would say. Their theme song placement was a tactical move of reassurance that they weren’t. At least not for a while.

#1354: They Might Be Giants – Thermostat

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This entry for They Might Be Giants’ ‘Thermostat’ makes it the last representative from the band’s 1994 John Henry album that’ll ever appear on this blog. Makes it nine songs from there in total, just less than half the overall number. We had a good run. One of the first tracks I ever covered here was from there, it goes back a long way. Speaking from my own point of view as They Might Be Giants fan, I know John Henry is a big fan favourite. Mine, not so much. Maybe in the middle somewhere for me, which in a discography of 23 studio albums doesn’t mean all that much. I have my favourites on there, but I’m never compelled to listen to the thing from front to back. It was the first one made after Johns Flansburgh and Linnell expanded their duo setup into a full band with a real bass guitarist and drummer. They sounded like a proper rock band, but it feels like there’s a little less variety. A lot of horn sections on display throughout, if you feel any way about those.

And talking about horn, there’s quite the presence of them on ‘Thermostat’. Unlike a few other numbers from John Henry – ‘Meet James Ensor’, ‘Destination Moon’, ‘AKA Driver’, which I’d known of since at least 2004 through a different set of circumstances – ‘Thermostat’ was one I came across when I was properly getting into the band’s discography in 2010/2011. Was really into my pirating albums from various websites phase around that time. Streaming wasn’t around, it’s all you could do. Anyone remember mp3crank.com? Going off-topic. As the 16th track on a 20-track album, ‘Thermostat’ comes at a point where, on any other album, you would probably be wandering how the whole package would end. But luckily, the song keeps things rolling to keep your focus going. I think, initially, it was its chorus and melody that caught my attention. The act of controlling the temperature on a thermostat is sung to you by John Linnell quite comprehensively. The fact that it’s about a faulty thermostat in a car that’s in the process of crashing didn’t set in till a bit later.

What I’d consider to be the focal point of the entire track is Linnell’s vocal and melody. He’s such a master of the latter, I don’t know how he does it. Like, he uses an entirely different melody for the second verse than the first. That’s not something you get a lot. But then there are other aspects in ‘Thermostat’ that I pick out and think, “Hey, that’s quite cool’. Like how John Flansburgh plays only three notes on his guitar that ring out during the choruses. How the chorus itself is technically in 10/4 timing. Or that slight phasing effect on Linnell’s voice during its last moments. It’s a solid album tune. The song hasn’t been played live by TMBG since 1995. I don’t know if that means something. I think people would get a kick out of hearing it, even if it might not be considered to be the biggest highlight. But I know if there’s any group of people out there who appreciate their favourite group’s deep cuts, it’s They Might Be Giants fans.

#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.