Cloisonné
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Track artwork by Paul Sahre
| song name | Cloisonné |
| artist | They Might Be Giants |
| releases | Join Us (Four Advance Tracks), Join Us, Them Ain't Big Eye Ants, Idlewild, 50,000,000 They Might Be Giants Songs Can't Be Wrong |
| year | 2011 |
| first played | July 20, 2011 (218 known performances) |
| run time | 2:40 |
| sung by | John Flansburgh |
Trivia/Info
- Cloisonné is an ancient enameling technique used in decorating metalwork objects.
- John Flansburgh wrote about the song in 2011:[1]
The story behind the song Cloisonné is pretty discombobulated. In an experimental period of putting Join Us together we created a series of electronic beats entirely without song ideas behind them. The idea was to make the tiniest drum machine-based beats that were still exciting. I probably spent twelve hours just editing and tweaking these sounds with no particular song in mind. The lyric is kind of from a Rat Pack point of view—like the guy singing is really into his own swagger, but he's also kind of out of date and out of it. The idea of not knowing what a sleestak is does come from my real life—I am actually exactly a year too old to have watched that show. Having to have Land of the Lost explained to you is slightly undignified, but thus is the fate of those who get old.
- John Linnell spoke about the song in a 2011 interview: "When John Flansburgh submitted that particular song for the album, that in a way defined the direction for me, more than anything, of Join Us. It was sort of the half-way point in the writing. It seemed like he was driving directly off highway, and that was something that was very much appreciated."
- Flansburgh discussed writing the song in 2012: "The whole lyric to Cloisonné is really a cut down of this epic rap/ranty lyric that I wrote out in the middle of the night. It's really just a long 'get off of my lawn, kid' kind of thing, but by avoiding any 'rap' reference it seems far more left field." He elaborated in a 2013 interview:
It was actually written as a boasting, rapping lyric first. It was just free-form. It was about four times as long initially, and then the blue pencil came out. So it's just about some crazy juxtapositions. The one part that is truly autobiographical is the Sleekstak part, which is a bit of teen culture from the '70s that I'm just a couple years too old to know.
- He further stated: "I did not know what a Sleestak was until I met my wife, who does an imitation of a Sleestak, which is, I guess, a creature from a television program called Land of the Lost."[2]
- Flansburgh explained the "Breathing on my dice / Giving me back rubs" lyric in a 2023 Tumblr post:
The dice reference is definitely about good luck. As a non-dice-player I can say it is really straight out of the Frank Sinatra songs "Luck Be A Lady" and "The Lady Is A Tramp," both of which are kind of dice-obsessed–which help set it in the world of gamblers, molls and thugs. The backrub image just seemed like another layer of obsequiousness, and might have been a second pass revision from "giving me good luck" or bad luck.
- The horn arrangement for this song was written by Stan Harrison. Flansburgh: "The collabo with Stan on Cloisonné was very much an experiment. I had kind of under-arranged the song as a simple blues and built it with the notion that Stan could kinda build on top of it, and he rose to the occasion!"[3]
- Linnell played a plastic Yamaha YCL-221II bass clarinet on this song, which "didn't cost too much and stood up to the punishment of the road better than a wooden one would."[4] Live performances of this song are played in a higher key to accommodate the bass clarinet's low notes.[5][6] The low notes on the studio recording are outside of the clarinet's range, and were digitally tuned down.
- The band released a music video for the song in September 2011. It was directed by John Flansburgh and filmed in Pat Dillett's Studio. In 2013 the band posted an "in process" edit of the video, which collected all of the raw footage from the video shoot.
- The music video features a live-in-studio recording of the song, rather than the album version. Flansburgh wrote about the video: "This version of the song is essentially our live band arrangement of the song. John L. is playing a bass clarinet, and we took Stan Harrison's inspired, highly chromatic sax intro and outro and mangled it in our fashion. Our apologies to Stan!"[7]
- This video is the first to feature the restored Mojo Chessmaster guitar since the demo of "Working Undercover For The Man" 11 years earlier.
- In 2015 the band released the isolated vocal track from this song.
Song Themes
Animals, Body Parts, Counting, French, Friendship, Nonsense Words, Numbers, Occupations, Paranoia, People (Imaginary), Personification, Questions, Stories, Titles And Honorifics, Water, Windows
Videos
- Watch it on
- static video of Join Us version - Watch it on - in-studio music video
- Watch it on - in-studio music video "in process"
- Watch it on
(Live at The Pop Machine in Indianapolis)
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. Cloisonné is currently ranked #131 out of 1019. (172 wikians have given it an average rating of 8.87) |
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