Ghana

247. Wild Palm City

Alex Russell Ghana , , , , , ,

You can trace the history of “Wild Palm City” through unreleased secret songs, early releases, and The Beatles.

Track: “Wild Palm City”
Album: Ghana (1999)

In the liner notes of Ghana, the compilation that includes “Wild Palm City,” John Darnielle said the song was “early, very early, unlistenably early.” In fact, it comes from the 1991 Shrimper release Back to the Egg, Asshole, a so-called “anti-tribute” to The Beatles. The tape includes other Mountain Goats adjacent artists Franklin Bruno, Wckr Spgt, and Refrigerator and appears to be a joke wherein everyone submitted a song that was then re-titled to appear to be a Beatles track. I can’t find recordings of anything else and the only info online about Back to the Egg, Asshole seems to be one person who bought it because they like Lou Barlow, who contributed the “tribute” to “Revolution 9.”

If that seems complicated, it’s to explain that “Wild Palm City” is one of the absolute first Mountain Goats songs and only exists in this format because Dennis Callaci asked John Darnielle if he could re-title one of his songs “Within You, Without You,” the George Harrison track from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The liner notes for Back to the Egg, Asshole further the joke and say the song “plays with George Harrison’s oh so deep transcendentalness.” It doesn’t, of course, but that’s also part of the joke.

There’s also another unreleased Goats song from the early days called “Escape to Wild Palm City” that has publicly available lyrics but otherwise seems shrouded in mystery. They seem potentially connected, but both are also lyrically reminiscent of a lot of the songs John Darnielle was writing then.

The song is one of the better ones from the earliest days. None of these crazy details about how it came to be matter, but it’s fascinating to consider the history of this two-and-a-half minutes of music as part of the larger catalog.

197. Going to Jamaica

Alex Russell Ghana, Taking the Dative , , , , , , , ,

Communication is key, and the poor substitute of gifts of flowers proves that in “Going to Jamaica.”

Track: “Going to Jamaica”
Album: Taking the Dative (1994), Ghana (1999)

“Going to Jamaica” is the survivor from Taking the Dative. Of the six songs on the album, it’s the one that sounds closest to the band’s later output. As a result, it’s the one you’re most likely to hear during the solo set in the middle of a Mountain Goats concert in this era of the band. Most versions of the song maintain what makes the original work so well, with biting punctuation at the end of each verse and slow, longing guitar.

There is debate about if this song involves the Alpha Couple, but the presence of an Alpha song directly after it on Taking the Dative (“Alpha Gelida”) seems to suggest otherwise. The distinction isn’t all that important, as “Going to Jamaica” hits all of the Alpha themes: desperation, lack of communication, unclear solutions to unclear problems. These two aren’t having the real conversation they need to have and they might still be early enough in that they know that, but it won’t change.

In both verses, the character we don’t hear from asks the narrator when they can leave. The narrator originally says “I’m not at liberty to say,” but changes to “Well, it’s any day now” by the end of the song. Neither of these feel honest, and both are followed by the same next step. As a distraction, the narrator pulls flowers out of the ground or “from the hands of children” for their partner. The same move twice gives the impression that the narrator is winging this and isn’t doing a good job. The camera pans away before the explosion, but we get a good sense of where this story is headed.

196. Wrong!

Alex Russell Ghana, Taking the Dative , , , , , , , ,

The curiously vague, sleepy “Wrong!” describes a familiar feeling without spoiling the universality with details.

Track: “Wrong!”
Album: Taking the Dative (1994), Ghana (1999)

There are very few Mountain Goats songs with an exclamation point in the title. Given what John Darnielle can accomplish in a song with a mundane title, “Wrong!” seems ripe for yelling and screaming. The result is surprising, with a lazy beat and the unmistakable sound of the early keyboard songs. This isn’t an angry anthem, it’s a quiet song sung under one’s breath.

John Darnielle says his angriest songs aren’t the screamers, they’re the ones that one character delivers to another in a hushed, furious tone. The classic example is the divorce story “Waving at You,” but “Wrong!” seems like it’s part of that tradition. It’s short enough to quote entirely, but you really just need the first verse: “You know // you know // you see // what’s going on with me // but you don’t do anything // you don’t do anything // you don’t do anything.” This character is at the end of a rope with this relationship and blames their partner even for their own problems.

The lyrics are simple and the music is minimal, which allows “Wrong!” to occupy any space needed for your situation. This could be a married couple headed towards divorce or it could be friends that don’t satisfy the needs they once did. This could be a new couple having their first fight. There aren’t any concrete details, so it’s anything. It’s certainly more universal than some of the more specific images in other songs, which is somewhat surprising for John Darnielle. There are a few songs like this out there that fill in the cracks when songs about a couple in Florida whose lives are crumbling don’t exactly match your current struggle.

195. Chino Love Song 1979

Alex Russell Ghana, Taking the Dative , , , , , , , , ,

The simplest of scenes provides the setting for a connection in “Chino Love Song 1979.”

Track: “Chino Love Song 1979”
Album: Taking the Dative (1994), Ghana (1999)

As far as I can tell, one of the only live performances of “Chino Love Song 1979” was in California in 2014, where the Mountain Goats played all of Taking the Dative in order. The crowd erupts during every local mention and the performance is worth hearing just to hear the blown out, sped up version complete with bass. In the fury of the moment, John Darnielle quadruples the closing refrain. The crowd yells along with him through every version of “I saw you // against the soda machine // I saw you leaning there.” It’s a really simple set of lines, but it says so much with such a straightforward image. You can see it, can’t you? There is no suggestion of how it should make you feel, but it does make you feel something.

The song is 20 years old at the time of that live show. John Darnielle misses or specifically removes a few lines, which really drives home how important that closing image is. The rest of the song is mundane, especially with descriptions of everyday life like “the traffic on Riverside Drive was thin // but by no means nonexistent.” The cars don’t matter and the sunflower that consumes the second verse doesn’t matter. These images and surrounding details are just there to get us to the moment where one character sees another one.

If it’s autobiographical, John Darnielle was twelve years old in 1979. It doesn’t need to be about him, but one wonders what late-twenties John Darnielle thought about himself as a younger man if so. It requires two steps outside of our own existence to imagine another person imagining another version of themselves. Whoever it is, it’s astounding how much we get out of simple images and a casual setting.

 

194. Standard Bitter Love Song #8

Alex Russell Ghana, Taking the Dative , , , , , , , , ,

“Standard Bitter Love Song #8” borrows a threat from an accused witch to talk about teenage love.

Track: “Standard Bitter Love Song #8”
Album: Taking the Dative (1994), Ghana (1999)

Lloyd Center is a three-story mall in Portland, Oregon. It’s an odd blend of ideas: the skating rink where Tonya Harding learned to skate, a for-profit college, a defunct Sears, and professional offices. It’s also a mall in Portland, which seems like an impossibility based on what we all think of when we think of Portland. Its Wikipedia article has a section titled “Crime,” though, so it makes sense as a location in a Mountain Goats song.

There are a few songs that share the “Standard Bitter Love Song” title, though there may not be eight. That doesn’t stop the existence of “Standard Bitter Love Song #8,” where one character pines over another at Lloyd Center. Most of the songs with this title structure are even angrier than normal Goats songs in this vein, and this one is no exception. Our narrator has “a mouth full of anger” and curses the couple with the damning “God will give them blood to drink.”

The refrain appears to come from The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, where a character who is sentenced to death for witchcraft condemns their accuser with a similar line. It’s a gallows threat designed to leave those who will survive you with a chilling fear, which makes it perfect for the overblown emotions of a young person who feels spurned at the skating rink.

The song holds on this image. The narrator sees them leave and looks over the railing. The power of the standard bitter love songs is their ability to make dramatic images seem so perfect for mundane problems. Someone shoots a kite with a shotgun in one of them, but we get why. You grow out of these emotions, but when you’re skating-rink age, what’s more relatable than a lonely Friday night?

193. Orange Ball of Peace

Alex Russell Ghana, Taking the Dative , , , , , , , , ,

“Orange Ball of Peace” lets us inside the mind of someone we wouldn’t normally want to visit.

Track: “Orange Ball of Peace”
Album: Taking the Dative (1994), Ghana (1999)

In June of 2014, John Darnielle played the entirety of Taking the Dative at a show in San Francisco. If you listen to it, you’ll hear the glee in people’s voices as they realize that he’s just playing it all the way through. Every now and again (and mostly in California), the band revisits a very old album and surprises a crowd. Some bands do this with “classic” albums where the audience knows every song, but John Darnielle likely has other motivations. At the 20-year anniversary of Taking the Dative, it’s as likely as anything else that he just wanted to see if he could still play all six songs.

This is the only chance to hear certain songs. Songs like “Wrong!” aren’t live show staples. The same is true for “Orange Ball of Peace,” though it is more recognizable overall as one of the four “Orange Ball” songs. It’s the standout of those, too, if for no other reason than the chorus: “I’m a fireman // I’m a fireman.”

Our narrator had expectations placed upon them as a young person. “They wanted me to be a lawyer,” they tell us, but no dice. They throw off all expectations and become a “fireman.” The second verse clears up that they mean they’re setting fires as they “watch the flames climb higher” and feel smoke get in their eyes.

“Orange Ball of Peace” may just be a short song about an arsonist, but it’s an interesting demonstration of economy of language. We don’t know why this person does what they do, but the first verse makes us sympathetic. That reversal of first to second verse allows us to find a dark situation fun, which you can hear over the crowd as they scream “I’m a fireman // I’m a fireman!”

164. The Only Thing I Know

Alex Russell Ghana, Orange Raja, Blood Royal , , , , , , , ,

Amid strumming and breezy harmonica, “The Only Thing I Know” confronts the totality of the end.

Track: “The Only Thing I Know”
Album: Orange Raja, Blood Royal (1995) and Ghana (1999)

The Orange Raja, Blood Royal songs are unique because of the accompaniment. Alastair Galbraith heard John Darnielle play live and thought he was so honest and inspiring that he wanted to work with him. It turned into four songs and a friendship. He shows up on other Mountain Goats songs, but he’s most recognizable here.

In an interview about the collaboration, John Darnielle says that these four songs were written in “a very particular time he knew lots of details about.” One of the beautiful things about John Darnielle is that a statement like that is extremely specific in origin, but extremely malleable to your own purposes. He means it one way, for sure, but it’s vague enough that these four songs can be confirmed to, yes, for sure, be about what you need them to be about.

The harmonica on “The Only Thing I Know” gives the feeling of a breeze. It weaves in and out and creates an almost lazy vibe through this very serious conversation. One character tells another that they know they’re leaving and that’s just reality. “That is just about the only thing I know about you,” they say, which is the kind of heartbreaking thought we use to wound others. You can imagine the pain in both directions as a lover admits that not only the closeness required for love is gone, but so is the familiarity required for even friendship.

John Darnielle’s delivery across Orange Raja, Blood Royal is almost haunting. He gives these narrators such a miserable view of their situations and he wants it to be inescapable. “How much do I love you,” he asks in “The Only Thing I Know,” but it feels more like a useless plea to get someone to stay than an actual admission of love.

150. Pure Gold

Alex Russell Ghana, Songs About Fire , , , , , , , ,

One lover tries to keep another one by warning them that the way out of their love is on fire in “Pure Gold.”

Track: “Pure Gold”
Album: Songs About Fire (1995) and Ghana (1999)

There are many “pure” songs and they are not strictly connected. They may not share exact characters or locations like the Alpha songs do, but they are similar in that they all feature exactly two people talking about exactly one thing.

John Darnielle is on the record about his characters being interchangeable by nature of having no stated gender. It’s easy to describe a Mountain Goats narrator as “he” because John Darnielle sings in first person and is male, but by design he almost never tells you that the speaker is a man or the recipient of the message is a woman or anything of the sort. Most characters could be anywhere across the spectrum of gender and could be speaking to anyone.

It’s often ambiguous if the characters are lovers or friends. In “Pure Gold” we can assume because one character says they often hold the other one, but sometimes we don’t even get that much. Rachel Ware adds vocals to a few lines and reinforces that it is two people communicating, but really it’s just the narrator asking someone not to leave. “Hey, don’t touch the door, because the door will surely kill you” is a striking opening line, but it’s also a look into this narrator’s situation. It’s a love song, kinda, but it’s a close-to-the-end-of-love song.

Relationships across the Goats catalog are often in states of disarray. It’s no surprise that the “Pure Gold” couple struggles, but it’s interesting as a look into unreliable narrators. John Darnielle often uses song structure to point out that we only get one side of the story. We know from the lyrics that the other lover here doesn’t see the exit as such a dangerous thing, no matter how many times they’re told that the door is literally on fire.

147. Pure Sound

Alex Russell Ghana , , , , , , , , ,

 

A chance meeting on Taylor Street tells us everything about one person and nothing about the other in “Pure Sound.”

Track: “Pure Sound”
Album: Ghana (1999)

“Pure Sound” was released in 1995 on Goar Magazine #11. Just about any search for more details becomes recursive. You will only find Goar Magazine #11 mentioned in relation to the two Mountain Goats songs on it (“Pure Sound” and “Creature Song”) and vice versa. 1995 was 22 years ago at the time of this writing, but it may as well be totally lost to time for all the good research will do you.

Both songs live forever on Ghana, the compilation of many loose tracks up to 1999. Ghana spans a lot of time and even more distance thematically, which makes it difficult to approach as one work. Rather than thinking of “Pure Sound” as an oddity, you can consider it as one of the “pure” songs, which are grouped as intense, brief looks at conversations.

“Pure Sound” never made the rotation. You won’t find it on fan lists of their favorite songs and you won’t hear it at live shows. It doesn’t have room for the full band to blow it up into an experience but it also doesn’t seem like it would benefit from the intense, three-song guitar solo sets that John Darnielle does now. It seems right at home in the mid-to-late 90s version of the Mountain Goats, where sad narrators realize their fate too late.

The narrator meets with someone, but the meeting is accidental. John Darnielle delivers “I was in between times” with his trademark whine and the desperation of the moment becomes apparent. So often we don’t get any window into the other character and “Pure Sound” is no different. The narrator is smitten, so much so that they hope they can halt time to extend the experience of an accidental meeting on Taylor Street, but of course, they can’t.

143. Please Come Home to Hamngatan

Alex Russell Ghana , , , , , , , ,

 

One lover relies on the power of specific geography and memory as they invite a lost love back to a broken relationship.

Track: “Please Come Home to Hamngatan”
Album: Ghana (1999)

Hamngatan is a road in Stockholm, Sweden. The name means “Port Street.” I’ve never been to Sweden, but based on the map it seems to be a department store neighborhood near the water in the center of town. Pictures make it look nice and inviting. There’s a TGI Fridays.

It’s a testament to the importance of specificity that the narrator in “Please Come Home to Hamngatan” wants their beloved to come back to this specific street in Sweden. It’s not a neighborhood that could be tied up in cultural consciousness, likely even if you live in Stockholm. It seems like another situation where John Darnielle wants us to realize this is one specific person talking to one other specific person, but doesn’t need us to know what Hamngatan means to them so much as that they are very real to each other and were real in that exact location.

“Please Come Home to Hamngatan” was released in 1996 on a compilation with 23 other songs. On Ghana three years later, John Darnielle describes his characters as “sick” and says “I wish I could do something to help them.” Maybe they’re the Alpha Couple and maybe they’re just two people forcing a broken relationship onwards, but either way they are familiar. They care about each other and about their specific place they lived one day, but given the subject matter of jewel thieves, snake oil salesmen, and adulterers, we can be sure their testimony is unreliable.

What’s most compelling is the street in Stockholm. Imagine a place that you know but couldn’t describe in a way that would explain it to someone else. That’s Hamngatan and that’s this relationship. The narrator wants a lover back despite knowing that going home again either literally or figuratively may not be fulfilling.