With The Dark
From This Might Be A Wiki
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| song name | With the Dark |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | The Else, Them Ain't Big Eye Ants |
| year | 2007 |
| first played | May 31, 2007 (56 known performances) |
| run time | 3:17 |
| sung by | John Flansburgh |
Trivia/Info
- This song adapts multiple different songs previously written by the band:
- An unreleased, live-only song from 2003 titled "Puppets Gonna Fuck You Up" sung by the Deeply Felt Puppet Theater was slightly rewritten for the song's second stanza. Its lyrics were notably altered from "Busting my puppet hump / grinding my puppet stump" to "Busting my pirate hump / rocking my peg leg stump".
- An unused track written early on for the They Might Be Giants Podcast titled "Mono" had its instrumentation recycled for this song. It was officially released in 2012 on Podcast 56.
- The original version of "With The Dark" written and recorded in 2006 was adapted for the song's acoustic introduction. The full verse included the extra lines "Try to sleep, try to mend it / You're just losing ground". This version was later performed after The Else's release, although shortened, as a part of LEMUR's "Robosonic Ecletic"[1] series at the 3LD Arts & Technology Center in 2007, while the full version would return for the band's Quiet Storm sets in 2020. The demo recording was released publicly on the They Might Be Giants App in October 2021.
- In an interview with KMSU for the 2024 They Might Be Playing They Might Be Giants marathon, John Flansburgh would comment on the sound effects heard in the song's introduction:
"With The Dark" has − at the beginning of it − a field recording that I made underneath the BQE, which is a highway that ran right next to my apartment. I was underneath, basically recording the trucks driving overhead. It doesn't sound like trucks, it just kind of sounds like a storm.
- Hine Mizushima was commissioned by the band to create the video for "With The Dark", and it was produced from December 2, 2006 to late March 2007. The final video incorporates lots of traditional TMBG imagery, such as the squid and spaceship from the front cover of Apollo 18, as well as John and John's heads mounted on plaques, similar to the animal heads mounted in the video for "Whence That Wince".
- Mizushima vented in a 2007 blog post on her blog shortly after the video's release, stating that the video's aspect ratio was cropped from 4:3 to 16:9 by the band, presumably to make it feel more cinematic, and that the video was heavily compressed during its upload.
- John Linnell mentioned in an interview with Spare The Rock, Spoil The Child that, at the time of the interview (May 5, 2007), this was his favorite song from The Else.
Song Themes
Accents, Animals, Artificial Body Parts, Dreams, Fire, Love, Onomatopoeia, Problems With Liner Notes, Recycled Material, Sea, Writing
Videos
- Watch it on
- Official music video, by Hine Mizushima - Watch it on – Recorded live on June 2, 2007 by TDK (acoustic version - with LEMUR)
- Watch it on – Recorded live on February 28, 2009 by CapitalQ
Current Rating You must be logged in to rate this. You can either login (if you have a userid) or create an account with us today. With The Dark is currently ranked #130 out of 1022. (141 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.88) |
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