Get Lonely

404. Cobra Tattoo

Alex Russell Get Lonely , , , , , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_xWeSwbmXw

John Darnielle whispers through much of “Cobra Tattoo” as our narrator tries to hold on.

Track: “Cobra Tattoo”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

Erik Friedlander plays cello with the Mountain Goats often and is one of twelve people listed as a “former collaborator” of the band on their Wikipedia page. He played with the band on the only live recording of “Cobra Tattoo” I can find and he really adds to the mood. Someone yells, predictably, as it goes, for “death metal band” but you can excuse that. I only mention it because it’s hard to imagine a more opposite outcome if you ask for that song and instead get a string section with a performance of the quiet “Cobra Tattoo.”

As with much of Get Lonely, you do not necessarily need to take in “Cobra Tattoo” line by line. There are three biblical references, at least, but I contend that you do not need to decipher them to “get” this one. Honestly, the more I think about “Cobra Tattoo” and what I’ve gotten from it over the years, it’s mostly that mood. The first strum is a slam, but then it wanders around. The narrator is out of sorts. The tune meets the mood. It’s a whisper, but it’s an unnerving one.

“What does this mean” and “what is this trying to do” are different questions. You can try to find meaning in the title’s tattoo, but do you need that for “Cobra Tattoo?” You don’t really need it for any of them, but this is a rare one where I have never really sought much beyond the surface. I feel like it accomplishes the mood, which seems to be the point, though that’s not to discount anything you’ve found.

403. If You See Light

Alex Russell Get Lonely , , , , , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHC0hXcXpi8

“If You See Light” stands out on Get Lonely because of the drums, but it’s right at home with the overall message.

Track: “If You See Light”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

“If You See Light” thematically fits with the rest of Get Lonely, but it’s a different sonic experience. It’s upbeat, for one, and the horns and the crashing percussion make it a strange cousin to most of the darkness on the rest of the album. It’s absolutely at home as a song about monsters and lonely experiences as humanity turns their back, but it’s one you might turn to in a slightly brighter mood, as well.

John Darnielle once said in an interview that they made some of the crashing noises by just throwing things like music stands around in the studio. The result is chaotic, which works with the jam, but it’s also difficult to replicate. That’s what makes this such a good studio song, though the live versions allow John Darnielle to stretch his range and scream out the “and no one knows how to keep secrets ’round here // they tell everyone everything soon as they know” part, which I encourage you to seek out.

It’s a cousin to “Up the Wolves,” I think, in that it’s about what you do when you’re pushed to your breaking point. The difference is that in “If You See Light,” the subjects waiting for the crowd don’t feel as confident they’ll be able to withstand the attack. The beat and the drums may suggest triumph, but there’s a strong suggestion that at the end of winter, things are going to go much worse here.

402. Song for Lonely Giants

Alex Russell Get Lonely , , , , , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR5qKuk6xOM

“Song for Lonely Giants” is what it says it is, but it’s also about being very far away from everyone emotionally.

Track: “Song for Lonely Giants”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

Much the same as In League with Dragons, there was an original idea for Get Lonely that does not totally match the final product. In League with Dragons was a fantasy story before it was a larger meditation on aging. It still is both things, but it’s also something about how those two meet. Get Lonely, similarly, was a story about literal monsters before it was a story about lonely people and the lonely things they do. One does not fully replace the other, and the version we have today is actually a mixing of the two ideas.

“Song for Lonely Giants” is from when this was about actual giants, though that’s really an oversimplification. The giant here is a stand-in for a way you feel when you feel too large to be cared for by others. So much of Get Lonely is about loneliness, true loneliness, not just a longing for a relationship or a romantic interest. This is a song about being so far removed that you see yourself as another species, and one possibly too different to relate to humanity. It’s an extreme kind of distance but it’s one that narrators feel all over the songs on Get Lonely. This one, however, has a whole connected poem if you want to learn more.

401. Moon Over Goldsboro

Alex Russell Get Lonely , , , , , , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8fPZ_gBQYs

The stakes are very high and the mood is very low on “Moon Over Goldsboro.”

Track: “Moon Over Goldsboro”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

There is something very personal about Get Lonely. It may be that it was the first new Mountain Goats record when I first heard the band. I listened to this one new with everyone else for the first time and I digested it at a time in my life when I felt very much like these narrators. I was living in Peoria, Illinois, and I was definitely the kind of person who was “talking to you under my breath // saying things I would never say directly.” I am trying to keep this whole project from being explicitly a personal blog, but if you are interested in personal narrative mixed with the story of the Mountain Goats by a better writer than I am, Richard O’Brien’s personal retrospective should be your first stop.

“Moon Over Goldsboro” is about emotions that you experience and then hopefully move away from. That’s what a lot of Get Lonely is about, but this character is wallowing more than most of the others on the album. There are enough details to piece together the larger story, but we again only get one person’s side. There’s not enough here to know who did what or how much we should believe. “I heard a siren on the highway up ahead // kinda wished they’d come and get me” suggests that the narrator believes things to be beyond saving, but it’s also the sort of thing you say when you know it’s your fault.

400. Get Lonely

Alex Russell Get Lonely , , , , , , ,

“Get Lonely” is about a much more intense emotion than we usually think of when someone says “lonely.”

Track: “Get Lonely”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

Get Lonely is a brutal album. Each narrator, assuming they aren’t all the same person, is experiencing alienation and loneliness. These are people completely cut off from humanity. Many are lamenting a specific relationship, but the reduction of the theme to “a breakup” doesn’t quite cut it for a song like the title track. “Get Lonely” is about something much more extreme.

Sure, the narrator says they will “send your name off from my lips // like a signal flare” but it isn’t just about this person they are no longer with. This is about not connecting with the world at large. They talk about feeling alone in a crowd, which is an oft used comparison but used more literally here. This person actually is out in a crowd and recognizes that they are not like the people around them.

The ending to the second verse pivots towards hope, in a way. The narrator says “and I will come back home // maybe call some friends // maybe paint some pictures // it all depends” and we hear someone trying to dig out of themselves. We hear someone who knows the way out of the darkness, or at least one of the ways. What we don’t hear is a confidence that this will even happen. What makes Get Lonely such a powerful album is the sense that these are real problems a real person is experiencing. This isn’t just the blind rage of a lover scorned and this isn’t angst. This is when internal and external forces combine and cause you to lose your sense of self. This is a bad place and this is a moment where you have to summon up some additional strength to get out of it, spirit willing.

318. Wild Sage

Alex Russell Get Lonely , , , , , , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_V6D1Dd8Kc

In one of his absolute best songs, John Darnielle tells a story about losing grip with reality in “Wild Sage.”

Track: “Wild Sage”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

I’m sure I’ve contradicted this statement elsewhere, but I think “Wild Sage” is the best Mountain Goats song. You could say that about “This Year” or “No Children” or a dozen other ones and be right, but I really think it’s “Wild Sage.” It’s not my personal favorite or the one I listen to most often, but I think if I had to defend one as perfect, it would be this one. It so perfectly captures what it wants to convey and it so effectively delivers the mood it wants you to feel. It’s about mental illness and how you fall into a world that is strange to you when you stop being able to connect with people. It’s about other things, too, but it’s really about that lonely feeling.

“Some days I think I’d feel better if I tried harder // most days I know it’s not true,” is the kind of statement that a lesser songwriter would ruin. If you see the Mountain Goats live in a setting with a piano and with a crowd that can handle it, you will be crushed under the weight of “Wild Sage.” It’s one of the most common live songs from Get Lonely and John Darnielle has frequently said it’s one of his favorites. I saw it once in Chicago where the room was actually totally silent other than his performance. No “woo” yelling or singing, just a group of people picturing their own moments of quiet fear and what this song means to them. There are certainly more fun Mountain Goats songs, but that’s why I don’t think there are any “better” ones.

308. Maybe Sprout Wings

Alex Russell Get Lonely , , , , , , ,

Few Mountain Goats characters let themselves soak in the darkness as much as the narrator in “Maybe Sprout Wings.”

Track: “Maybe Sprout Wings”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

Get Lonely is undeniably a “breakup record,” but that tends to diminish the fullness of what it also is. Just as “Wild Sage” isn’t necessarily about someone who is just out of a relationship, “Maybe Sprout Wings” is about a larger loneliness than just losing a loved one in some way. This is about a more cosmic sense of being alone, removed from humanity rather than just one particular human. There are dozens of songs about quiet loneliness, but few dare to tread the space of “Maybe Sprout Wings.” The lines “I thought of old friends // the ones who’d gone missing” stare directly at the abyss with no metaphor to cloak them. This is about the tough times and how they never end, once they happen. If it was bad, it will always be bad in the past, with ghosts and clouds and “nameless things” to haunt you when you go back to those moments.

I don’t know if all of Get Lonely has the same narrator or not. John Darnielle has both emphatically said that it is and isn’t a “breakup record,” but he’s also said that interpretations of his music are open-ended. Other than the obvious The Sunset Tree where the narrator is usually John Darnielle himself, I think this is the album most likely to all come from the same perspective. If we assume that, we’re at the lowest point of the journey during “Maybe Sprout Wings.” It starts with introspection in “Wild Sage” and ends with an emphatic rejection of hope in “In Corolla,” but this is the moment that foretells that ending. It is the right song for some moments, but may your life have few of them.

299. Woke Up New

Alex Russell Get Lonely , , , , , , ,

In one of the best-loved songs the Mountain Goats ever wrote, “Woke Up New” examines a relationship the day after the fact.

Track: “Woke Up New”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

I haven’t run the numbers, but I think it’s safe to say “Woke Up New” is the most popular song on Get Lonely. I think “Wild Sage” is the best song on the album and maybe the best song John Darnielle has ever written, but people love “Woke Up New.” Any time it’s played at a live show you will find couples embracing during it, which I really will never get used to seeing. It’s a crushing, brutal song that John Darnielle describes as being about one of the worst moments of his life, but the delivery seems to pass it off as a love song in some ways. There’s certainly a reading where these people are entranced by not the appearance of sweetness but the love they have being reflected in the fear of the loss of it, but it doesn’t really matter. A younger, angrier version of myself judged these people, but that’s the wrong way to live your life. They like the song, that’s all.

“Woke Up New” hit me immediately when I listened to Get Lonely, but as I spent more time with it I gravitated to the quieter, less accessible songs. “Woke Up New” is a phenomenal song, but it’s not one that I find puts me in the headspace that “Wild Sage” and “In the Hidden Places” do. It’s a breakup song like most of them are, but it’s one that feels like a story about a time rather than a demand for you to relive the time. John Darnielle often jokes in live shows about how he’s happily married and has all these songs about divorce, and depending on where you’re at on the timeline you may find “Woke Up New” to be exactly what you need.

293. New Monster Avenue

Alex Russell Get Lonely , , , , , , , , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN18tLSdPdQ

An actual monster is different than a figurative one, and “New Monster Avenue” asks us to take the monster’s side.

Track: “New Monster Avenue”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

Get Lonely started as an album about monsters, at least more literally than it ended up being. The finished product is pretty clearly a breakup album, though you can get into some fights with folks depending on how insistently you believe that. “New Monster Avenue” was the first song written for Get Lonely and thus keeps the monster theme more directly than the rest. The character is a monster, sure, but they’re someone we’re meant to sympathize with and to feel for their plight. This isn’t an unfamiliar position for John Darnielle to take, and he frequently introduces the song by talking about how he’s pro-monster.

John Darnielle sings all of “New Monster Avenue” high, but by the final verse he’s as high as he can possibly go. The delivery of “fresh coffee at sunrise” plays with what’s a pleasant image to most of us. The narrator of “Half Dead,” the song that directly follows “New Monster Avenue,” has a cup of coffee when they wake up, too. Neither of these characters is comforted by this moment. John Darnielle wants us to feel like the monster on the outskirts of town that the townsfolk fear and want to destroy. Even the morning pleasantries we rely on aren’t a given if everyone has branded you a monster.

We leave “New Monster Avenue” at the climax. The townsfolk are there with torches, which is always the fear if you’re the monster. All of Get Lonely is about not being able to relate to people and about how that can deepen your already deep fears, but “New Monster Avenue” is from a unique perspective. This monster is just trying to live. Not every Get Lonely narrator is this unambiguously right.

252. In Corolla

Alex Russell Get Lonely , , , , , , ,

The saddest Mountain Goats album ends with “In Corolla,” a brief prayer, and then one final walk.

Track: “In Corolla”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

Get Lonely is an extremely difficult listen. There’s a great story that has never seemed true to me (but great stories never really need to be) that John Darnielle asked the author of the Get Lonely review for Pitchfork what they thought about the new album. The reviewer said they were still processing it and John Darnielle asked if they had a girlfriend. They responded affirmatively and John Darnielle said “I hope she leaves you. Then you’ll understand it.”

Even as a joke it seems a little blunt for John Darnielle, but that’s what makes it a great story. Get Lonely is the “sad” Mountain Goats album, and while that’s certainly calling this the wettest water to a certain degree it’s also a critical designation. Characters are further out away from humanity here than on most of the other albums. By the final track, we should be prepared for anyone to tell us anything, so long as it isn’t good.

“In Corolla” is crushing. The story is very simple, but it seems to take people some time to admit what’s happening. Most online discussion features a few people who push back against the narrative and insist the character is speaking in metaphor or something, but, no, this is a song about someone drowning themselves and knowing “no one was gonna come and get me.”

There really isn’t much more to say than that. I’ve always been partial to it, as I am most of the album closing tracks, but it’s best not to look too closely at “In Corolla.” The band used to close live shows with it, briefly, which has given way to songs like “Spent Gladiator 2” in recent years. Be careful to come back to the shore, even when you feel like you want to keep walking.