Tag Archives: they might be giants

My iPod #215: They Might Be Giants – Cowtown

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“Cowtown” is the second song from They Might Be Giants’ second album “Lincoln”. I first heard the track on the old LaunchCast radio/website that Yahoo used to own. I won’t go on about that; I’ve talked about it before in many posts that I can’t be bothered to link into this sentence.

I was probably about nine/ten and what instantly struck me, apart from the galloping clarinet introduction, was the overall tone and mood of the song when John Flansburgh starts singing the chorus and the rest of the instruments come in. There is something very warm, inviting, and full of pride about it. Almost got me thinking Cowtown was an actual place that existed somewhere, and if it didn’t could someone think of a plan to construct it right away.

Although primarily written by Linnell, both Johns sing the track which is great because their voices work of each other so well. And with so many rhymes in the lines and lyrical wordplay, it is a shoe in with the many They Might Be Giants tunes that rely on those kinds of things on… well, almost all of their albums. But the first four especially.

My iPod #209: They Might Be Giants – Contrecoup

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Today’s track is brought to you by They Might Be Giants, a band I have written about many times in the past. This time, it is “Contrecoup” from their 2007 album “The Else” that I will be typing about for today’s entry.

They Might Be Giants seem to be able to come up with songs about just about anything. Shoehorns with teeth, spiraling shapes, stomp boxes, you name it. Even though those things all sound silly to the ear, those are tunes that you better believe have a lot of thought put into them. You wouldn’t be able to create with a song that is from the perspective of a nightlight in a child’s bedroom. That idea would never occur.

This song however was made really easily, and was created way before its proper release in 2007. Two years prior, John Linnell was on a radio show. The show said, make a song using the words ‘contrecoup’, ‘craniosophic’ and ‘limerent’. The track was made then and there. It was changed up a bit for “The Else”, but that is the story of how “Contrecoup” was born.

Musically, the song is quite calm. It chugs along at a sturdy pace driven by an acoustic riff with light guitar and keyboard vamps. The song does troll you nearing the end when it suddenly starts to build pace…. it fades out to silence, but I’m still left satisfied.

My iPod #189: They Might Be Giants – Circular Karate Chop

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“Nanobots” is They Might Be Giants’ sixteenth studio album which the band released earlier this year in March. I was already hyped for its release due to being a massive TMBG fan, and due to the fact that the four songs that the band had revealed before its release date assured me that good things were to come.

The band then went on to stream the whole album their SoundCloud account a week before the album was officially released. How swell. My excitement could not be contained. I went onto that site as soon as I heard.

“Circular Karate Chop” is the second song penned by John Flansburgh to appear on the album after “Black Ops”. It is a real rocker in contrast to the latter, which goes for a more… ‘experimental’ approach. By ‘real rocker’, I mean it contains electric guitars, hard-hitting drums and keyboards which remind me of something I have heard in a cartoon before. Maybe Scooby-Doo, I can’t remember.

It is probably my favourite Flansburgh song off the album. Just a cool pop rock track. Sounds similar to something from the “Factory Showroom” album.

My iPod #173: They Might Be Giants – Certain People I Could Name

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Today has been very unproductive. Had my breakfast about one, a shower at four…. apart from that I have just stayed in bed. All this because I was out last night for a very special event which I can barely remember going to now. What a shame.

That also meant I was could not type up my daily post. But it is all fine now, I am putting up another one later on.

It’s They Might Be Giants again, this time with the song “Certain People I Could Name” from their 1999 album “Long Tall Weekend”, the first full-length album to be released exclusively on the Internet if you didn’t know.

It was originally recorded for the previous album “Factory Showroom” but was left out.

The band’s website states this about the track: “A piano driven song with subtle charm from the Factory Showroom era. Don’t really know how this got put aside, but I suspect it was probably more due to its mid-tempo than its high quality.”

I cannot really add much to that. Listen for yourselves. 😀

My iPod #172: They Might Be Giants – Celebration

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Here is another celebration. This time by They Might Be Giants, for about the fourth time already in the ‘C’ series. The fun never ends.

“Celebration” is a Flansburgh penned ‘They’ song, and is an observational commentary of a night out in a club but filled with imagery and vocabulary use that only the two Johns could ever think of. That’s about all there is to it, really. I make it sound very tame, but the disco beat of that chorus, Flansburgh’s vocal manipulation and the catchy ‘oh-oh-ohs’ are only a few of things that make the tune one of the most enjoyable from “Join Us”.

Listen out for a Phil Collins drum fill that occurs near the end.