Tag Archives: they might be giants

#1227: They Might Be Giants – Snowball in Hell

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They Might Be Giants’ ‘Snowball in Hell’ from Lincoln is a number that I remember liking almost immediately after listening through that album for the first time sometime in 2010. I had actually heard the track years before when I was an actual kid who had just got broadband in the house and was checking out this Internet radio station on a place called LAUNCH, owned by Yahoo!. Before YouTube existed, if you wanted to listen to music and watch music videos, that site was the place to go. It’s thanks to that site that I have any idea who They Might Be Giants are. ‘Snowball in Hell’ played on a station one day. Being the, I think, 8-year old I was, I promptly forgot about it. Short attention span.

But hearing it again all those years later, in context with the album and fully paying attention, it felt like a song I properly knew and had been listening to for years up to that point. There was a warmth and familiar feeling to it proceedings, it felt like a given that it would be one of my favourite songs on the album. The track revolves around this two-note doorbell “ding-dong” melody, over which John Flansburgh sings about being in a less than ideal situation spurred on financial troubles. He sings with much sincerity, backed by harmonies from John Linnell, incorporating wordplay and lyrical twists that result in a few of the band’s most memorable and devastating lyrics. “Money’s all broke and food’s going hungry”. That’s a good one. “If it wasn’t for disappointment, I wouldn’t have any appointments”. That’s a great one.

The song is also notable for the breakdown, over which dialogue taken from a how-to-organize-yourself cassette plays. Given to him by album producer Bill Krauss for his 25th birthday, Flansburgh went on to find that the tape didn’t contain much in the way of advice. But he, Krauss and Linnell all found it interesting enough to let it have its own little snippet in ‘Snowball’. Permission wasn’t asked to use it. No one’s threatened to sue. And its inclusion goes down as one of many memorable moments in TMBG’s discography. Back in June, a cassette of rough mixes from the Lincoln sessions was found in the archives of a university in Canada, and a work-in-progress ‘Snowball in Hell’ was found on it. As you can tell, the mix is a bit different. The acoustic guitar is given more prominence, a different model drum machine is present and more snippets from the self-help cassette are used. It’s the same song in essence, but sometimes I prefer this rough mix to what ended up on the album. It’s certainly a different approach. All the more happy to know it exists.

#1225: They Might Be Giants – Snail Shell

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They Might Be Giants’ 1994 album John Henry was the first of the group’s to be performed by a full, rock ‘n’ rolling band, as opposed to the synthesized rhythm section and guitar and accordion performed and arranged by Johns Linnell and Flansburgh on the records that came before. I frequent the band’s subreddit from time to time. A common opinion among users on there is that John Henry is a definite favourite. I think it’s swell. In my mind, you can’t go wrong with any TMBG album, really. ‘Snail Shell’ is the second song on there and also had the great privilege of being its first single, the representative chosen to introduce the band’s new formation and sound.

Fans of They know that the two Johns aren’t your usual songwriters who explore the standard themes in their lyrics, and ‘Snail Shell’ is no exception. As I’ve come to see it, the song is told from the perspective of a narrator who becomes extremely grateful after being helped out of an uncomfortable situation by another person. They want to make it known to this saviour that their act of selflessness is appreciated, and they have a bit of an internal crisis in the process. If I were to describe a real-life situation, think if you did something as simple as open a door for someone and they then continued to thank you and ask if they could do something for you in return when all you want to do is walk on and get to where you need to be. This is the song written by that strangely grateful person.

According to the band’s drummer at the time, there was a lot of hope that the song would match the success of ‘Birdhouse in Your Soul’. That tune’s known to be one of the band’s signature numbers. ‘Snail Shell’ not so much. Though I’m a fan of it myself, Linnell’s vocal has this sort of phasing effect that I dig, Flansburgh’s guitar has a scratchy tone to it which makes the sound all the more better when he pulls of those crazy fills and runs, I do have to admit there’s a bit of an creepy feel to it. Think it’s the minor key that’s the catalyst behind it. The music video reinforces it. It doesn’t give much of a ‘first single’ vibe like I’d say ‘Destination Moon’ does for example, or ‘No One Knows My Plan’. Flansburgh had ‘Sleeping in the Flowers’. Probably more suitable choices. The track maybe didn’t bring the commercial success they wanted, but I’ll always be singing along to it. And that’s what this whole thing is all about.

#1194: They Might Be Giants – She’s an Angel

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Well, I think I can simply say that I heard ‘She’s an Angel’ for the first time when I downloaded They Might Be Giants’ debut album on the old computer and listened through that, all the way back in the early months of 2011. Or maybe it was the later months of 2010. Either one. I know it was around that time that I decided to really explore TMBG’s discography. Having frequented This Might Be a Wiki for years before then and witnessed ‘She’s an Angel’ being a mainstay in the top five best TMBG songs as rated by users of the site, listening through the first album would finally give me the opportunity to see what the fuss was all about. I could have easily gone onto YouTube or something and just listened to it by itself. But I wanted that whole album experience.

The song is from the told from the perspective of a person who feels they might have fallen for a lady who might just be perfect and is having a bit of an internal crisis about it. The narrator asks questions how this could have happened. They think someone must have sent her. If so, why her over anyone else? “Surely, this doesn’t happen to anyone else.” I don’t want to type out the whole pre-chorus here, but that’s the part of the song where all these questions and feelings happen. And now that this narrator has found this person, does that mean they now have to do anything in order to keep them around? Like that old hypothetical, “If I jumped off a cliff, would you do the same?” But in this song’s case, it’s a building.

You know, before just now, I thought this track was sweet and earnest, but I think I’ve just recognised the hint of paranoia and anxiety behind the lyrics too. John Linnell, the vocalist and song’s writer, refers to a ‘they’ numerous times throughout. But who is ‘they’? The ‘they’ apparently sent this woman to cause the narrator this distress, and now that the narrator has realized the lady’s an angel, ‘they’ might have to do something to the narrator so the word doesn’t get out. A 1984-ish thing going on. But you as a listener wouldn’t think it. As soon as those slide guitars come in on the first pre-chorus, giving a floaty feel that instantly lifts the song’s mood, any sort of questioning you may have goes out of the window. I’ve always enjoyed Linnell’s vocal take on here too. I like the sort of portrayed awkwardness with the trail off the “I’m worried that something might happen to me if anyone ever finds… out” line. I enjoy how he hams up the “Why? Why did they send her” on the second pre-chorus. It’s all very dry and understated, but very impactful. TMBG’s first album is quite off the wall, something that I truly enjoy about it, but it’s nice that ‘She’s an Angel’ exists to reel things in for the few moments it lasts for.

#1184: They Might Be Giants – Shape Shifter

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In preparation for the release of They Might Be Giants’s BOOK album in 2021 – or because it had just been released, I can’t quite recall – I went ahead and listened through the band’s whole discography via Spotify. Missing out the children’s albums in the process, though. Now, TMBG’s one of my favourite ever groups, there are so many posts on here for songs by the band that back that up, so a lot of their albums I knew front to back already. But that wasn’t the case when it came to their 2016 album, Phone Power. That was the one record of theirs that I had never heard in full before. 2021 was the year to change this.

Back in 2015, TMBG revived their Dial-a-Song project – which initially existed in the ’80s as a literal thing where you could dial a number and new/old/in-the-works They Might Be Giants song would play through the phone speaker. But now this was the 21st century. But now there was a website and phone apps where you could easily access the stuff, and the band announced that a new song would be released every week throughout the year. ‘Shape Shifter’ arrived as the 52nd and last song in the “new” service, being provided to the masses on the 28th December 2015. The majority of the tracks were then compiled into three albums, Glean, Why?, and the aforementioned Phone Power, where ‘Shape Shifter’ can be found as the 15th track. The album isn’t a favourite of mine, by any means. It does sort of feel like a compilation rather than an album that was properly thought out. But ‘Shape Shifter’ was a hit to me from the jump.

The track has this grand showtune atmosphere about it, introduced by these processed John Linnell harmonies leading into the verses where he then adopts this more loungey, crooning tone to his vocal. The track concerns a person witnessing people and objects changing all around them. It may be a whole big metaphor about not being able to keep up with the times while people, technology, nature, whatever is constantly evolving. Or it’s literally about a man disturbed by his clarinet turning into a purple tentacle. It’s all entertaining stuff. I think the only irk I have about the track is that it could sound so much larger than it does. The horns that come in near the end are clearly synthesized. And I feel like the use of an actual brass section would have been amazing. And those Linnell harmonies I mentioned before could sound so much wider, have more of a booming presence. But hey, what do I know? The way it is, I’ll take it any day of the week.

#1171: They Might Be Giants – See the Constellation

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Apollo 18‘s one of my favourites out of the first four They Might Be Giants albums, which consisted of just John Flansburgh and John Linnell backed by a synthesized rhythm section while the two handled their respective guitar and accordion. It’s got a real rocking feel throughout, with the usual fake drums and bass sounding much less so than they did in albums before. Plus, the theme of space is very much reinforced by the packaging, the LP’s title and a few of the songs on there. Makes it feel quite complete in that regard.

‘See the Constellation’ is one of those numbers that lean into the whole space theme the album has going for itself and might just be one of the harder, pepped-up rockers the band have in their whole discography. Quite psychedelic too. Starting off with a guitar riff paying homage to The Monkees’ ‘Pleasant Valley Sunday’, the track soldiers on with a smacking snare drum punctuated by chopped up samples of Dee Dee Ramone doing count-ins for Ramones songs. Tremolo’d guitars come in during instrumental breaks, there are these twangy synth sitar strums that arrive in the mix too. The psychedelia is laid on thick. But it works tremendously well.

Lyrically, there’s not a lot of fat to chew, but the imagery’s very nice. The first verse is directly inspired by a promotional photo of an artist who was on the same label as the Giants at the time. The second is a short snippet of a memory of the narrator trying to look up at the sky past the city lights. And the third and final verse seems to come from the constellation itself, the guy made of dots and lines, the figure to whom which the whole song is dedicated. John Flansburgh signs off with the psychedelic question, “Can you hear what I see in the sky?” And after a moment of calm, with Dee Dee Ramone still chirping at the back, the track blasts off with an explosive instrumental coda that trails off into the night. This is a very fun one. And there’s more to come from this album in the future.