Tag Archives: they might be giants

#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?

#1261: They Might Be Giants – Spiraling Shape

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And continuing talk about They Might Be Giants songs that leave me wanting more, today’s song is ‘Spiraling Shape’, the ninth song on the band’s Factory Showroom album from 1996. The track is almost four minutes longer than ‘Spine’. But when it reaches its end where everything cuts to sudden silence, I usually think “I could listen to that one again.” And I usually do. When I first came round to listen to Factory Showroom, in about 2010 or something, ‘Spiraling Shape’ appeared to be one that fans considered to be their best according to the Song Ratings list on the the band’s fan-run Wikipedia site. In the top 20, I want to say, even back then. I won’t say it was an immediate hit on the first listen. I was probably being a dumb hater. Usually was at 15. But then it was those listens that followed that got me thinking, “Yep. This song is a good one.” Something along those lines.

Another TMBG number written by John Linnell, the track is about a little thing known as a ‘fad’ – an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short-lived; a craze. Thank you, Google, for that definition. And in the case of the song, this enthusiasm is for the titular subject. People see this spiraling shape, immediately stop what they’re doing and are drawn in to this hypnotising presence that looms before them, like lambs to the slaughter. Perspectives from the people who haven’t yet experienced the shape but have heard what others have said about it, those who did but were left disillusioned by it, and those who know they could even come to harm by being allured by it are told. And the melodies utliised throughout are oh-so sweet. “The spiraling shape will make you go insaaaaaane”, Linnell sings. “Everyone wants to see that groovy thiiiiiiiing”, Flansburgh replies. There are some pitched-up Linnell harmonies that show up to in the midst of it all. You’ve gotta love it. I know I do.

The song actually has origins as early as 1992. In that year, They Might Be Giants made a demo for the song ‘Rocket Ship’. Quite the groovy number about travelling in a rocket ship that may or may not crash during its journey. Linnell switches up his vocal during the verses to make it sound more unusual than normal. But then suddenly out of nowhere, the chorus that would end up being used in ‘Spiraling Shape’ starts playing seemingly out of nowhere. Two somewhat disparate sections brought together to make a whole. Linnell recognised the greatness he had achieved with this section, reserving it for use at a later date. The parts making up the verses were never used again. Maybe they will be one day. It’s looking more likely that they won’t. But just goes to show that if a complete song doesn’t seem to work, as long as there’s one memorable part within it, you can always recycle it to make it its own thing some time in the future.

#1260: They Might Be Giants – Spine

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They Might Be Giants’ The Spine was the first album by the band that I owned physically. A lot of TMBG fans might ask why. The Spine, for whatever reason, isn’t considered to be one of their greatest moments. Was released in a bit of a wilderness period they were going through. Honestly, my request for the LP stemmed from desperately wanting to hear the transition between ‘Au Contraire’ and ‘Damn Good Times’ in an uninterrupted fashion. And it contained ‘Experimental Film’, which I found through Homestar Runner. I always had good times with the cartoon. But within the album is a number of strong songs, ones that I consider to be up there as some of the group’s best. Others not so much. But that’s how it usually goes with music.

Now a lot of people may argue that ‘Spine’ wouldn’t go in the category of best songs by They Might Be Giants. And I would probably agree. But there was a point where I was just singing it to myself out of the blue and on a frequent basis. So this obviously meant that I liked it without even really trying. ‘Spine’ is only 30 seconds long and is more of a transition piece between the album opener, aforementioned ‘Experimental Film’, and third song ‘Memo to Human Resources’. But even as that, I still get a kick out of it. It’s the first of two songs about the essential anatomic structure in our bodies. This one sung by John Linnell. ‘Spines’ by John Flansburgh comes around later on. I have it in my head that the two songwriters coincidentally wrote songs about the spine in their own respective free times, and once one had found out that the other had done the same, then it only seemed reasonable that the album they’d do next would be named The Spine.

In the six lines ‘Spine’ is made of, I think John Linnell is trying to depict a man going through a stressful time of some kind. Mentions of dragging feet across a back and walking fingers through a mind. Doesn’t sound like things are going according to plan in this narrator’s world. The band’s performance sounds quite heavy, but I put that to the fact that everything’s bunched up in the centre channel. Gives the whole atmosphere a very crowded feel. Initially, I thought it was a whole other singer on the track. Maybe someone the Johns knew and thought would do a good job. Really, it’s just John Linnell really delivering the words from his stomach, as opposed to the more nasal tones he usually provides. Just as soon as you feel the song progressing and feel like it’s going somewhere, it ends and you’re left wanting at least a minute more. At least when you’re in my shoes, that’s the case. But I can make do with what we have.

#1255: They Might Be Giants – Space Suit

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If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you’ll have noticed the Giants’ stuff being a frequent occurrence here. I like their music a lot, to put it simply. 1992 marked the year that John Linnell and John Flansburgh had been playing together as the band known as They Might Be Giants for a decade. And in the same year they released Apollo 18, the second under their major-label contract with Elektra and their first self-produced record. Out of the first four albums which saw the two Johns performing everything except the rhythm section, Apollo 18 is the one sounding the most like a full rock band playing together. A bit of a precursor to what would arrive on their next album, when they actually did become a full rock band. But to cap Flansburgh and Linnell’s studio material as a duo off, they close out Apollo 18 with ‘Space Suit’, a reworking of the very first song the two made together when they created the band in 1982.

Things get a little bit hectic nearing the end of the album. One of the most notable moments on it comes in the ‘Fingertips’ suite, a collection of 21 little snippets of choruses and musical segments inspired by the jingles that play in the background of infomercials. That suite ends with the minute-long ‘I Walk Along Darkened Corridors’, which is played out to be the dramatic closer of the piece with Linnell putting on a faux-operatic voice alongside an emphatic “organ” and clarinets. But then ‘Space Suit’ comes along to properly end things in the form of a swinging, suitably spacey, 6/8-time instrumental, emphasising the ‘one man on guitar, one man on accordion’ setup the band originated with all those years prior.

John Flansburgh once had a guitar teacher in the early ’80s named Jack DeSalvo, who taught him a bunch of chords to use whenever convenient. With the chords he learned, Flansburgh went on to write ‘Space Suit’, but with its jazzy origins, it was originally titled ‘I’ll Remember 3rd Street’. The recording of the ‘3rd Street’ demo can be heard below. Much, much different from how it would turn out some years later. I can simply describe ‘Space Suit’ as an instrumental that consists of two parts, the one that has that ascending scale and the other containing the main melody, played by John Linnell’s accordion for the first time and then accompanied by Flansburgh’s vocals (buried deep in the mix) second time round. Makes it sound like the accordion itself is singing. Really enjoy when those cymbal crashes pack an extra punch about 40 seconds in. Put these all together, makes for some good listening.