Tag Archives: they might be giants

#930: They Might Be Giants – No One Knows My Plan

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They Might Be Giants’ 1994 album John Henry was the first where Johns Linnell and Flansburgh were accompanied by a live band rather than the drum machines and synth-instruments that had been their go-to method up to that point. Upon the album’s arrival, fans were greeted with guitar-prominent instrumentals, an actual bass guitar and live drums, and brass. There’s a lot of horns on this album. Today’s track, ‘No One Knows My Plan’, is one of those tracks to feature them. Brass can sometimes be one of those instrumental groups where, if heard too much in one sitting, they can be a bit overbearing. But you’ve got to appreciate the instrumental melody of the trumpet that triumphantly opens this song. Once you do that, it’s plain sailing from there.

The track arrives at the album’s midpoint, acting as something of an opener to its second half. With its conga-esque rhythms and ascending/descending scale riffs, it helps pick up the momentum after the contemplative turn the preceding song takes. In ‘No One Knows…’, the narrator is planning an escape from a prison cell, and the track is practically the tale of the narrator’s thoughts, feelings and experiences they’ve had while trying to fulfil this act. They tried to escape before, but have since realised that they’ve had to change their tactics. They’re always scheming, but they’ll never tell anyone the full angle. All this described under a skipping drum pattern, a horn group that undergo the role that a rhythm guitar would usually cover, and with a reference to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave put in for good measure.

This one’s been a favourite of mine for the longest time. Not just from John Henry, but out of the whole TMBG catalogue. The melody’s so infectious. Once you’ve got that in your head, it’s hard to get rid of it. I’ll go ahead and admit that the album in particular isn’t one of my favourites by They, but it’s not without its highlights. ‘No One Knows…’ is for sure one of them. Back in the day, someone at the Cartoon Network offices must have liked the track too. It was used as the intro music to Cartoon Planet for a while.

#922: They Might Be Giants – Nightgown of the Sullen Moon

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If you were one of the OG They Might Be Giants fans back in the 80s and around when ‘They’ll Need a Crane’ was released as another single from the band’s Lincoln album, you would have been lucky to stumble upon ‘Nightgown of the Sullen Moon’. The track was one of three B-sides on the They’ll Need a Crane EP, alongside ‘It’s Not My Birthday’ and ‘I’ll Sink Manhattan’. Once the two Johns were signed to major-label Elektra Records, another compilation was then released including all of the B-sides the band had officially released in the form of Miscellaneous T which a brought something of a larger attention to it.

There are a few interpretations as to what this track is about. There’s a selection you can see on the band’s dedicated Wiki page. From my point of view, I always saw it as a description of a person’s transition into the next life after falling into a door in an awkward manner and dying on the spot. Sounds quite tragic, but you’ll see the lyrics and kind of get it. The first verse describes the accident, I would take the titular ‘nightgown’ as heaven pretty much, and the following verse captures the person’s feelings of being within this new environment. They’re not on drugs, but they feel like they’re floating on air. And they begin to feel bored eventually, which shares the same sentiment as that Talking Heads song that’s also about heaven. In typical TMBG fashion, the song’s dang catchy and the melody throughout is off the charts, contrasting with the almost brutal subject. It’s also carried by this great I want to say Calypso-influenced rhythm, that’s accentuated by the introduction of bongos in the final choruses. There’s a lot of syllables John Linnell has to sing in each line, and there are points where you can him hear him inhaling sharply between them so he has enough breath. For a song that’s only two minutes, it’s filled with little things here and there that you can pick out with each listen

Like John Lennon with ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, John Linnell was inspired to write the track of its name after being shown a drawing that a person’s child had drawn. It’s a very poetic phrase, ‘nightgown of the sullen moon’. Reminds me of something you’d see in those classic books. Very unique. But it came as a surprise to Linnell when he found that the phrase was already the title of a children’s book that had been published in 1983. Must have taken some of the magic out of the phrase just that bit. According to the wiki, it’s one of the band’s most popular songs, but they’ve never performed it live. If they ever did, it would be a sight.

#897: They Might Be Giants – Nanobots

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Surprise! Bet you weren’t expecting that were you? No update post to say I’ll be coming back soon, just bam – here it is. Your favourite music blog. Or not, there are many others out there. But in general, I’m well and still kicking. It’s time to start the N section.

And it begins with the title track from They Might Be Giants’ 2013 album Nanobots. That year I was in my final year of secondary school and not having the greatest time, but the release of new TMBG material was a ray of light during that period. It’s not my favourite album of the group’s; at the time of its release I couldn’t help but compare it to 2011’s Join Us, which I still think is one of their best albums now. I think it was just a bit more consistent. But the highs of Nanobots are some of the group’s best songs, I think.

‘Nanobots’ is the second track on there, and introduces a theme of reproduction that appears here and there throughout the record. John Linnell is the lead vocalist, but is accompanied by some harmonising robotic backing vocals by John Flansburgh. Thinking about how just a bit weird it is to think that we were put on this earth to just make more of ourselves, Linnell wrote the track comparing the act of reproduction to the emerging technology field of nanorobotics. There’s a certain type of music that the song’s rhythm and guitar progression reminds me of… I want to say calypso? I’m probably way off, but I’ve had that thought for years. And as the song progresses, there’s a tasteful horn section that comes in, mirrors the chorus melody and adds another warm layer to the track’s proceedings. All in all, it’s a very pleasant two minute and 44 second affair.

I’m a bit rusty, so forgive me if the post’s a bit short. I’ll get into it though. Still got a lot more songs to come. Below’s the official video for the song, directed by the man who wrote ‘United States of Whatever’.

#891: They Might Be Giants – My Man

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Mink Car, the album by They Might Be Giants, gets a bit of an unfair wrap among the band’s following. It’s seen by some to be the not so best one by a fair few. It hurts to say ‘worst’ just ’cause I don’t think the band have a bad album. There were a lot of songs the band had recorded during its making that probably should have ended up on the final tracklist, and quite a few songs that appeared on the final tracklist that probably shouldn’t have been there at all. Looking at you in particular, ‘Mr. Xcitement’. But there are some external factors about the album that kind of overshadowed its release. The major one being that it was released on September 11, 2001. No one was really thinking about the music that came out that day. And Pitchfork gave it a 2.8/10 on their website, which is just silly.

But for me, there’s a reasonable amount of tracks I enjoy on there that make it a worthy listen. ‘My Man’ is most probably my favourite one on there. Though its story is a bit depressing, told from the point of a man speaking to his body after he’s been paralyzed, the bubbly keyboards, engaging melody, and general sort of cheeriness to its delivery give it that usual TMBG mark. The track seems to never have been performed live. That may say something about how the band feels about it, I don’t know, but because the track’s located on what’s considered to be their least greatest moment I’m very sure that it doesn’t get the appreciation it’s supposed to.

The lyrics are pretty self explanatory. The first verses describe a man who’s trying to move his leg but finds that he can’t, coming to the conclusion that he’s “fallen out with his head”. Then these strident sections come in where the band falls in with these chugging violins, with another narrative voice comparing our bodies to ocean coasts with submarine cables that need to connect to other shores in order to work properly. There’s more from the man trying to come to terms with what’s happening to him, and then the doctor comes in with the wham line “There is no way to repair the break”. He won’t walk again. To be honest, it’s a sad damn song.

#887: They Might Be Giants – My Evil Twin

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A lot of times when I’ve posted about They Might Be Giants, I state which out of the two Johns (Flansburgh and Linnell) wrote the track I’m discussing at that particular moment. “Oh, this was written by Linnell”, “Flansburgh wrote this one”, etcetera, etcetera. Well, ‘My Evil Twin’ – the fourth track on the band’s fourth album – stands out from many other songs of They as an actual sort of collaboration between the two. John Linnell came up with a bunch of music, made it all MIDI, and then gave the disc to John Flansburgh who provided the melody and lyrics on top. The result was a peppy, quite hard-rocking number about the misadventures with an ‘evil twin’ who may or may not exist.

This track’s a confusing one. Who is the evil twin that Flansburgh sings about? The lyrics describe the good times that he and this twin have, playing hangman until the early hours of the morning, vandalizing their neighbour’s property. Just a couple of examples. Then they sleep through the day and carry on their mischief in the evenings. This closeness between the two scares Flansburgh because it almost seems like they’re one person, but then at the end it’s revealed he’s never actually met the twin. Maybe it’s an imaginary friend, and it isn’t meant to be that difficult to figure out. I listened to a podcast the other day that suggested that the track is possibly about John Linnell in a secretive, puzzling way. Linnell does harmonise throughout, and then he takes the lead vocal for a short moment on the ‘My Twin’ bridge… maybe Linnell is the twin and he’s been existing all along. It’s all a bit up in the air.

Produced at a time when the duo were possibly thinking of ditching their synthetic rhythm section and getting a proper backing band to play with them live, the track sounds like it’s performed by an a four-piece band even though that’s not the case. The drums sound like an actual drum kit. The bass sounds like a proper bass guitar. But then you listen to some off the rhythms those drums pull off and realise it would be incredibly difficult for a real person to replicate. If they did, they would need a lot of stamina. But I would say it’s that combination of the real-sounding rhythm section with the TMBG approach that makes the song stand out just a bit. Same goes for many other songs from that album. Though that’s for another time.