Thermostat: When Brains and Machines Misfire

A parable of mood swings, grief, and brokenness.

Thermostat lives on an album where even the tray art feels like a cryptic parable.

It doesn’t get much more deep cut than track sixteen out of twenty. That’s where you’ll find Thermostat, tucked away on They Might Be Giants’ John Henry.

I know I keep mentioning it every week, but I can’t separate this record from the fact that I lost my uncle to suicide as a teenager. John Henry came out just months before that happened, and it was what I was listening to when I got the news and while I was stumbling through grief in the aftermath.

Every word and sound from this album passed through the filter of that loss. It’s why these songs still carry such weight for me. They’re permanently stained by that experience.

Once Again, Holding a Song as a Mirror

Thermostat has always felt like it was about mental health and emotional regulation. Like so many TMBG songs, it’s vague enough that listeners can project their own stories onto it.

For me, as a teenager wrestling with my own depression, growing up in a family full of mental health struggles, and then reeling from a family suicide, Thermostat was catharsis. It tapped into my rollercoaster brain and gave sound to my unsteady feelings.

Here’s the first verse:

When the hands that operate the motor lose control of the lever
When the mind of its own in the wheel puts two and two together
When the indicator says you’re out of oil
Should you continue driving anyway?
There’s a thermostat that regulates the temperature
That might not be reliable
That should be disconnected

For me, it reads like a parable: systems failing, the narrator wondering if they should keep “driving,” questioning whether disconnecting might be the only option. As a teenager, I couldn’t help but hear my uncle’s story in those words.

Grief as a Broken Thermostat

When someone you love dies by choice, grief doesn’t move through neat “stages.” It surges and collapses like a busted thermostat. Anger flares - How could he do this to me? Denial rises - It must have been a mistake, a crime, something other than his decision.

Meanwhile, depression smolders, this time stoked by a “valid” reason to sink deeper. My emotional thermostat which was already struggling, was now truly broken.

For me, Thermostat became a song about survival inside a body and mind that won’t regulate properly, and about someone I loved who decided to disconnect from life altogether.

Of course, Linnell never names suicide or depression. That’s the trick. You can project the darkest parable onto this song, or you can accept it as being just about a busted thermostat in a car. Both readings are true for the listener, and both are safe inside the abstraction.

It’s the same duality that makes so many TMBG songs stick: fun on the surface, devastating underneath.

Cleverness in the Details

One of my favorite details come from the lyric “as I was just telling you a minute ago,” which lands exactly at the one minute mark in the track. It’s a tiny, clever detail that makes smile, even as the song reminds me of hurt feelings.

The arrangement of this song? Gasp. It’s incredible. Horns blaring, Linnell’s flanged-out vocal fading like a voice consumed by static. The song lulls you with a pause, then slams the chorus back in as if to say: you thought it cooled down? Nope. Crank it again.

Almost like a nervous system sparking out.

For me, Thermostat will always be about mania, grief, and the uncle I lost. For you, it might just be an incredible song about a faulty thermostat. Maybe both are true.

Either way, the chorus keeps working:

Turn it up, turn it down
Turn it up when the cold brings you down
When the heat bothers you, turn it down
Turn it up, turn it down…

What do you hear in Thermostat? A parable of mental swings, or just a car part that isn’t working? Drop it in the comments.

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