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My iPod #542: They Might Be Giants – Hopeless Bleak Despair

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“Hopeless Bleak Despair” is another They Might Be Giants song that takes on the depressing/saddening subject matter with upbeat/happy sounding music. Appearing on the group’s eighth album Mink Car in 2001, John Linnell sings from the perspective of a person burdened by this ‘hopeless bleak despair’.

Placed between “Yeh Yeh” and “Drink!“, two tracks where John Flansburgh sings about the joys of having a good time with a girlfriend and drinking respectively, “Hopeless Bleak Despair”, sung by John Linnell, is something of a sobering listen. The narrator’s life falls apart because of this despair. His family leave him, and he is fired from his job. It isn’t until the final verse where it is revealed, amongst angelic background choir vocals, that the narrator is dead – how he died is not said but we can assume it’s suicide – and was finally separated from it. However, the narrator goes to hell while the despair ‘ascends to heaven’ so even then it gains the upper hand.

The song’s quite funny that way. After everything that has happened to him whilst alive, the narrator can’t catch a break even in the afterlife. You want to feel sorry for him but Linnell’s enthusiastic vocals and the forceful performance by the band pushes those feelings aside, and instead will have you singing along to this poor person’s problems.

My iPod #525: They Might Be Giants – Hide Away Folk Family

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When listening to They Might Be Giants’ 1986 self-titled debut for the first time, the opening drum fill for “Hide Away Folk Family” slightly caught me off guard. The four preceding songs establish the album’s upbeat and sprightly mood that you assume it’s the kind of rhythm and mood they’ll be going for throughout the whole thing. But no. “Hide Away” slows the album’s pacing down, allowing the listener to breathe for a few minutes and really feel the music.

Sung and presumably written by John Flansburgh, the track has a cosy and homey feel to it with a light lullaby-like melody to its lyrics and cute instrumentation. Take away the lyrics which creepily depict a mother and father who are paranoid about their house being burned down or blown up, and you have a perfect instrumental for a child’s bedtime song. The ‘happy music with dissonant lyrics’ trope is one that They Might Be Giants have used countless times; this is another instance in which it is executed with great effect. You wouldn’t realise what it was you were singing about unless you had a very good look at the lyrics.

My iPod #524: They Might Be Giants – Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had a Deal

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“Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had a Deal” was originally going to be released on the Purple Toupee EP, when the title track was to be released as a single in 1989. For some reason the EP was shelved and the song was later placed as the opener to the band’s B Side/Remix compilation Miscellaneous T, two years later in 1991. The compilation is loved by many a They fan due to the fact that for a B Side album, the stuff on there are as brilliantly written and performed as any other song you would find on the three albums they had released by that time.

The song is a tale of a lad who is eager to get his new song on the radio, going to the local DJ to see if he can sort some things out. From the wordy title, you can probably tell that things don’t go as planned. The tale is told accompanied by catchy rhythms, an infectious melody and a delightful Carribean-like (xylophone? glockenspiel?) line and backed up by the witty lyrics of John Linnell. Notice how he cleverly pulls of a ‘Glass Onion’ and sneaks in some references to other TMBG songs in a verse. So much fun.

I could imagine this being a lead single for any album. Seeing as it was to be released with “Purple Toupee”, I assume that it was recorded during the Lincoln sessions. Goodness. I enjoy Lincoln enough as it is, but it would have been cool to have this on there. Though it’s title would have stuck out like a sore thumb on the track list.

My iPod #383: They Might Be Giants – For Science

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“For Science” is a small yet dramatic track, briefly about the sighting of a UFO and soldiers being sent to meet the aliens even though it will end with their inevitable deaths but mostly about a man who begins a relationship with a female alien, knowing that he will be a slave to her love all eternity. This is all done in the name of science.

A track that was created during the making of their first album, “For Science” was first released on the “(She Was a) Hotel Detective EP” in 1988, and then re-released on the groups B-Side compilation “Miscellaneous T” (which is the album I first heard the song on).

Linnell plays the announcer at the start of the track, Flansburgh takes the role of the love-struck man, and “Lt. Anne Moore” – as she is known as on the EP – provides the female vocals.

It’s a funny little track, one that has apparently only been played live by the band three times. They’ll have their reasons as to why that is.

My iPod #369: They Might Be Giants – Finished with Lies

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A person decides that they will never tell a lie again in They Might Be Giants track “Finished with Lies”, the reason being that if no one believes anything they say now they never will in the future. Somehow though in the last verse when the narrator is being checked on by an examiner, telepathy is used to rig the results…. so it looks like it is another one of those unreliable narrator type tracks that TMBG usually do. Seems like this narrator has problems – which is something that is said right at the end of the track that comes before it… I see what they did there.

“Finished with Lies” is a very standard rock tune. Standard band ensemble of guitars, bass and drums with a few erratic synthesizers here and there and backing vocals in the chorus. It is a very simple track, and I like that. Originally the track was going to be something of a slow march which you can listen to on YouTube; it’s an interesting version and makes the lyrics sound a lot more serious. But I do prefer the one on the album.