Getting Into Knives

512. Picture of My Dress

Alex Russell Getting Into Knives , , , , , , ,

“Picture of My Dress” is a small part of a big story, but also illustrates how John Darnielle thinks about small moments.

Track: “Picture of My Dress”
Album: Getting Into Knives (2020)

You don’t need to wonder about “Picture of My Dress” at all. The poet Maggie Smith tweeted this in December of 2018. A few weeks later, John Darnielle replied with a screenshot showing he had written a song inspired by it. I’m sure there are other songs with some degree of primary text, but I can’t think of one where you can go independently see the inspiration, with a timestamp, and the resulting song in progress. We may have lost the era where you could find a random cut on Napster, but we’ve gained something else.

The songwriting here is the apotheosis of John Darnielle’s style. For my money, aside from maybe the extra-long line in “Distant Stations,” there is absolutely no song I’d single out to explain to someone what John Darnielle’s writing is like beyond this one. The concept is a simple, but grand one, as a woman drives across the country with a wedding dress. She engages in the mundane, including what could be a frustrating experience enduring an overwrought pop love song that instead is absurd. She orders an extremely specific Burger King order. What do we get out of knowing she gets extra mayonnaise, and why are there three full lines about a fast food sandwich?

If I have a thesis to this whole thing, it’s that specificity is what defines the Mountain Goats. It doesn’t matter that she gets this sandwich, it matters that she stops in the middle of a crushing confrontation of her own life to do something else, something small. Her life, like your life, is very big. But it’s also rolling your eyes in a Burger King, trying to find more napkins, even on one of the biggest trips you can imagine.

511. Get Famous

Alex Russell Getting Into Knives , , , , , , ,

“Get Famous” asks you to consider if you could, or maybe should, well, get famous.

Track: “Get Famous”
Album: Getting Into Knives (2020)

Just before the two-minute mark in “Get Famous,” John Darnielle says “listen to the people applaud” and there is a tiny sound of applause in the background. When Getting Into Knives first came out, a review called this out and now I hear it every single time I listen to the song. I can’t find that review now and I don’t think it matters if you can, but that point is one I keep coming back to when I listen to the album.

Depending on how you count, John Darnielle and various collaborators and bandmates over the years have released or been featured on more than 70 releases, but I find Getting Into Knives one of the toughest to personally connect with. I don’t want to blow that applause sound effect out of proportion, but when I listen to “Get Famous,” I wonder why that is. The Wesley Willis reference is excellent, I like the music video, and I think the message here is funny, but not silly. It’s a great song.

Darnielle’s delivery makes this one for me. The backing horns are great, sure, but the snarl on “you” in “you should be famous” changes the meaning and really gets at the blessing/curse element of fame. It’s just also a song that speaks for itself, which is probably why things like putting applause on the word applause drove some reviewer nuts enough that they had to draw attention to it, and while that detail doesn’t really matter, there’s not quite enough of what I love about most of the other singles here for this one to be one of my favorites.

510. Corsican Mastiff Stride

Alex Russell Getting Into Knives , , , , , , ,

The Mountain Goats go in a new direction, or don’t, depending on your perspective, with “Corsican Mastiff Stride.”

Track: “Corsican Mastiff Stride”
Album: Getting Into Knives (2020)

I have opened and closed the window to write this one more than a dozen times over the last few months. I find it very hard to talk about Getting Into Knives, and “Corsican Mastiff Stride” specifically. It’s a jaunty little song, quick and explosive, but it resists further discussion. But is that the song or is that me?

I’ve told this story before, but years ago I saw a bartender that had a huge Mountain Goats tattoo on their arm. When I complimented it, they said they don’t really listen to them anymore. I found that surprising and almost unthinkable. I was reminded of it during my third time listening to Getting Into Knives as I bounced off it again. It wasn’t that I disliked it, it’s that I just couldn’t find purchase. We’ve spent a lot of time on this site talking about if the Mountain Goats have “phases” or not, but I tend to think that they don’t so much as listeners have different tastes. It is possible to think The Sunset Tree is worthy of permanence on your skin but just think Getting Into Knives is not quite the same thing.

“Corsican Mastiff Stride” is a dance number. It’s a great song that will find you hitting the “replay” button. It’s a perfect introduction into an album that serves as the brighter (sort of) side to Dark in Here. John Darnielle and the band have been exploring larger, sweeping, fuller sounds over the last few years and seeing songs like this one live will sell you on that direction. I love the vocals and the snap-along beat, and I’m going to have to accept that any “challenge” to Getting Into Knives is with the listener.