Goths

490. Abandoned Flesh

Alex Russell Goths , , , , , , ,

The bands mentioned in “Abandoned Flesh” aren’t as important as the emotion and the larger story they form.

Track: “Abandoned Flesh”
Album: Goths (2017)

I’ve said something like this in most of my posts about songs from Goths, but “Abandoned Flesh” is a great song whether you know the scene or not. The entire premise of the song is about the “forgotten” bands of the goth scene, specifically “Gene Loves Jezebel,” a band I have never heard of outside of this song. The song goes into great detail about the band, to the point where it references a specific thing on their Wikipedia page, which now contains a reference to this song and the fact that this song references that page. It’s turtles all the way down.

There are almost a dozen specific references in “Abandoned Flesh” and I am here to tell you that, much like almost every instance across the catalog of the Mountain Goats, you do not need to know these. You do need to know that they create a world, which is more important than the world itself. The band Red Lorry Yellow Lorry is referenced in the middle of the song as being on the record label “Cherry Red, I think.” They are, now, and were on others, but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even matter in the song, given the “I think.” I love these specific pushes back against the need to find every answer. This, like most of Goths, isn’t really about these bands. It’s about the world that was and probably won’t be, again, but will remember, sorta. “You and me and all of us // are gonna have to find a job” is a funny line, but it’s also the bridge between the 1980s and what came next. You can remember, and should, but then you have to leave.

489. Rage of Travers

Alex Russell Goths , , , , , , ,

“Rage of Travers” is longer than most Mountain Goats songs, but there’s a thematic reason for the length.

Track: “Rage of Travers”
Album: Goths (2017)

“Rage of Travers” is the longest song on Goths and, as far as I can tell, it’s one of two songs (along with “For the Portuguese Goth Metal Bands”) on the album that has never been played live. The beat is great and hits you right away, but you end up sitting with this one for a long time, obviously, as it’s almost six minutes long. Six minutes would be enough for almost all of some of the early EPs. It’s impossible to say you don’t feel the length here, but that feels intentional to me. The narrator here, Pat Travers, feels like they can’t connect with the world they once knew. We feel that loss. We sit with it.

John Darnielle mentioned “Rage of Travers” in an answer to a question about the album and said that he wanted the music on the album to be “good & interesting & harmonically complex” specifically to make the moments where you register what the lyrics are talking about more powerful. It’s the perfect explanation of why “Rage of Travers” is what it is: You are supposed to feel it more than think about it. The core of it, that this guy was huge and feels the scene shifting where he will no longer be huge, is all over Goths. It’s also tied up in so many human fears, even beyond the loss of fame that a musician would worry about. It needs to feel a little longer than the old explosion songs and stomping, screaming ones so you can take it all in.

488. Paid in Cocaine

Alex Russell Goths , , , , , , ,

“Paid in Cocaine” may not be the kind of song you’d expect, but it’s a perfect fit for the characters on Goths.

Track: “Paid in Cocaine”
Album: Goths (2017)

It’s impossible to overstate what Matt Douglas has brought to the Mountain Goats. You hear it on the album cuts, obviously, but you feel it in the live shows. I’ve heard of some fans who don’t dig the “full band” sound with drums and horns, but I think those people are clinging to something that isn’t going away. If you need to hear the John Darnielle and limited friends version of the band, there are literally hundreds of songs you can go back to, forever. I understand the urge to resist change, but a song like “Paid in Cocaine” isn’t going to work without horns.

I’ve gone back to Goths a few times recently and “Paid in Cocaine” is one of the few that never catches me. Some of it is the chorus, the repetition of “Long Beach, can you hear me?” is well performed, but not all that memorable. The verses, though, tell a story that you don’t need me to elaborate on, but you can really see. The title tells you what’s happening, but lines like “as happy as I’m ever gonna be,” said about times that might not seem all that happy through a certain lens, really fill out the vibe. It’s the horns that bring it together. This is miles away from the first few albums, but you have to view this as a different story. It’s still so specific and still so clear that it’s unmistakably Mountain Goats, even if it’s all keyboards and saxophone.

487. Wear Black

Alex Russell Goths , , , , , , ,

“Wear Black” is about the trappings of youth, but it’s also about what you keep forever.

Track: “Wear Black”
Album: Goths (2017)

There are other songs on Goths about the difference between the look and the feel, but “Wear Black” is a direct confrontation with that idea. This song finds a young John Darnielle insistent that he will wear black, literally, but also figuratively, as the way he engages with the world. You see this in lines like “check me out, I can’t blend in,” which might seem like a concern, but at the moment it’s more likely to be a badge of honor.

Before a live show in 2017 in California, Darnielle introduced “Wear Black” by saying that he was sentimental about singing it in front of people who knew him back in the day. So many songs that are clearly about John Darnielle’s youth are specific to his experience, but this one is one you can probably feel even if you weren’t goth. It even gets more complex than that, as we must consider the urge to call things a “phase.” Maybe you age out of the eyeliner and the attitude, but you are who you are. What “works” on you as a young person works because of the person you stay when you grow up.

The key moment is in the final verse. The narrator, John Darnielle or someone much like him, says “wear black to the intervention,” which tells us that people around them are trying to help. But you need the next line, said with some humor if not outright spite, “wear black back to the car.” Maybe you’ll get past some of this, but some of it is something you can’t take off.

486. Unicorn Tolerance

Alex Russell Goths , , , , , , ,

“Unicorn Tolerance” deals with the difficulty of being true to yourself while playing a part.

Track: “Unicorn Tolerance”
Album: Goths (2017)

Given the length restrictions here, I try not to get too far off topic, but allow me a brief aside for “Unicorn Tolerance.” Decades ago I went to a meeting where a few dozen folks got together as part of a subculture I liked. I was put off by the crowd and I left, more or less, out of embarrassment. At the time, it was my own, for them, but now, I recognize it as a generalized feeling of being between the image of oneself internally and the projected reality of earnestness. It’s very hard to take off your armor, even if you want to just enjoy yourself.

“Unicorn Tolerance” is John Darnielle singing about “the thing I’ve been trying to beat to death // the soft creature that I used to be,” but, importantly, also, “the better animal I used to be.” This isn’t a value judgement, but it is a statement about that earnestness. If who you are is someone with great esteem and respect for unicorns, for beautiful, mystical things in general, even if that doesn’t exactly gel with the leather jacket and the cloves, you should not fight your better nature. The drive to be, for real, what you are trying to appear to be, on the surface, is powerful. This isn’t a problem, except if it costs you something that you really shouldn’t be willing to lose. “Unicorn Tolerance” reminds you of this, which you’ll hopefully come back to when you’re done looking cool.

485. We Do It Different on the West Coast

Alex Russell Goths , , , , , , ,

The youths of California put their own spin on things in “We Do It Different on the West Coast.”

Track: “We Do It Different on the West Coast”
Album: Goths (2017)

I have always liked that “We Do It Different on the West Coast” serves as a sort of mission statement for why Goths exists. It’s a song about how everyone, everywhere, can discover something. “Trellis modulation for the children // there’s a whole new world just up around the corner” describes a time that feels almost unthinkable now, where people in the proto-online days where just learning how to connect with people about very small things that made those worlds suddenly, and forever, bigger.

The title refers to Darnielle’s youth in California, where he learned to love the goth subculture before he had the term “goth” to call it. He describes a time where you would hear unverifiable things from far away and you could pick and choose what to believe. The world of “We Do It Different on the West Coast” allows not just for regional pride, but for any truths that break your beliefs to not necessarily need to be strictly true. Whatever the best story is, why not have that be the story?

The two-minute breakdown here is great, but has always struck me as a little out of place. The chorus is the title repeated four times and the verses tell a rapid, but tight story. At a live show, even a song like “Maize Stalk Drinking Blood” can explode into a full-band thing, but this is a rare instance of that being the “official” version. It’s a sign of shifting style, and not unwelcome, but it does always surprise me when I go back to this one.

484. The Grey King and the Silver Flame Attunement

Alex Russell Goths , , , , , , ,

“The Grey King and the Silver Flame Attunement” is a big title for a little moment, but one worth considering.

Track: “The Grey King and the Silver Flame Attunement”
Album: Goths (2017)

“The Grey King and the Silver Flame Attunement” barely digs into the fantasy element beyond the title. It doesn’t really need to, because it’s really just an indelible image that John Darnielle saw once: a guy, with fangs, who was clearly more about this life than he was. Who among us hasn’t had a similar experience?

I remember seeing guys at basement shows when I was younger that constantly reminded me that I was never going to be the coolest guy in any room. The thing about these experiences is that they don’t require you to believe that for them to matter. It’s not really about you puffing up your chest and getting knocked down. It’s more about the unstoppable power of someone who knows no one can knock them down. I knew someone once who would ash a cigarette on anything. They were into drag racing. As Darnielle says, nearly in full whisper by the end, “I’m pretty hardcore, but I’m not that hardcore.”

The horns fill this one out and there’s a lot to love around the edges, but my favorite bit is the untold story behind the lyrics “…and good friends // most of them good // most of them friendly.” You may not be The Grey King himself, but your crew is worthy of note then they require a disclaimer for both “good” and “friends.”

483. Andrew Eldritch Is Moving Back to Leeds

Alex Russell Goths , , , , , , ,

“Andrew Eldritch Is Moving Back to Leeds” is what it sounds like, but it’s really about what’s next for all of us.

Track: “Andrew Eldritch Is Moving Back to Leeds”
Album: Goths (2017)

When I first heard “Andrew Eldritch Is Moving Back to Leeds,” I assumed it was a fake name and a character. The urge to pretend here is strong, but I don’t know a single thing about this world. I’m sure Goths hits differently for people who are fans of this style of music, but you do not need to know a single damn thing for this to work. Andrew Eldritch was in The Sisters of Mercy, a band that curiously seems to be rather insistent that they are not goth. I absolutely am not the right person to pull on this thread, but it’s a curious note for a title character on Goths.

Whether you know anything about this world or not, “Andrew Eldritch Is Moving Back to Leeds” is a towering lyrical achievement and probably the best song on Goths. John Darnielle sings seven full verses (depending on how you break it up and what you consider part of the chorus, but this is not really the point) all full of detail. We get a full picture not so much of Eldritch, but of the act of coming back home and accepting a change in life. I feel this is one of Darnielle’s absolute best works, especially the verses about kids leaving for the big city and finding that “everybody tests the membrane // but no one pushes through.”

482. Rain in Soho

Alex Russell Goths , , , , , , ,

“Rain in Soho” introduces Goths with a bang, but also an insistence that it will not explain itself.

Track: “Rain in Soho”
Album: Goths (2017)

The idea of “eras” of Mountain Goats music is a simplistic one that I’ve talked about before here, but it’s one I find hard to resist. Beat the Champ leans somewhat into bigger, grander musicality, but not in the way Goths does. That suggests to me a shift that maybe the band doesn’t feel. Kyle Barbour, the legendary archivist who ran The Annotated Mountain Goats, said that the band “moved on stylistically and thematically” in 2017. I have to agree.

When I first heard Goths I had no idea what to do with it. I liked it, especially “Shelved,” but I found most of the subject matter so alien that I couldn’t even tell that some of the references were references. It’s been almost five years now and I find it only marginally more approachable. The first song, “Rain in Soho,” is a great example of why.

The chorus references “the Batcave,” which is a club from Soho that was the origin point for the subculture that runs through the album. A young John Darnielle was fascinated by it, but most people who hear this song will have never heard of it. That never mattered before and certainly does not on Goths, but on this song it feels like almost the point. This is a place for the lonely who have no other place. If you’re not in the know, that feels like a you problem.

301. For the Portuguese Goth Metal Bands

Alex Russell Goths , , , , , ,

You don’t need to know much about Portuguese goth music to appreciate “For the Portuguese Goth Metal Bands.”

Track: “For the Portuguese Goth Metal Bands”
Album: Goths (2017)

In the leadup to the release of Goths, I remember when John Darnielle excitedly released “Andrew Eldritch is Coming Back to Leeds.” I’d never heard of Andrew Eldritch. It’s a really specific song about a topic I knew absolutely nothing about, which is not uncommon as an experience when listening to the Mountain Goats. You may or may not know the boxer Pinklon Thomas or the wrestler Ox Baker. You may not have seen The Lady from Shanghai. I don’t know that you have to be familiar with the subject matter to enjoy the song, but it helps.

I don’t listen to the kind of music John Darnielle listens to. If you follow him on any social media platform, you’ll see that he’s excited about new and old music all the time. He recommends recordings enthusiastically and seems to take in more music than anyone I know. It’s a great way to be and it’s really cool, even if it isn’t always to my tastes. I’m not a fan of any of the bands referenced on Goths and I’m not even really all that familiar with the scene. It doesn’t matter, especially for a song like “For the Portuguese Goth Metal Bands.” This is so specific that most people won’t be familiar, so it has to be talked about with some universality.

It’s a song about being big in one place but still aspiring to have something else. John Darnielle says he wouldn’t expect to draw huge crowds in Japan and likens that to a band that’s enormous in some countries but might not play big rooms in America. It’s an interesting space to get lost in, even if you have no idea who Celtic Frost is.