Hot Garden Stomp

148. Pure Milk

Alex Russell Hot Garden Stomp , , , , , ,

 

One character tries to convince another to take a midnight ride during the snappy “Pure Milk.”

Track: “Pure Milk”
Album: Hot Garden Stomp (1993)

With a finger-snap beat and the old Casio groove behind it, “Pure Milk” is absolutely a highlight of the early era. It’s the only song from Hot Garden Stomp that you might hear at a live show, but even then your odds are very low. There are a few great performances online you can dig up that show what a modern “Pure Milk” sounds like. It’s different now, with more intensity and fierce guitar, but the improved quality also changes some of the charm.

I’ve said before that no one should start their Mountain Goats journey with the truly old songs, but you might be able to start your journey through the early Goats with “Pure Milk.” The narrator slurs the first verse about getting drunk and stealing tractors to ride into town. John Darnielle embodies his eerie speaker here and you feel the simmering emotions within the character as you listen to it. The chorus of “put your hand on the goddamned radio” feels like a frustrated command.

Some of the early songs are interesting as experiments. Sometimes the charm isn’t in the finished product so much as the joy you feel from John Darnielle. “Pure Milk” is a fully realized idea and the song is that much the better because of it. Like the other “pure” songs, the narrator has a brief idea to get across to one other character. It starts with bravado and a concrete plan but breaks down over the second verse. The narrator’s confidence is shaken by a moment of hesitation. Sometimes that’s enough to derail a plan, but we leave this scene before we know how it ends. Catchy as it is, it’s the fear within it that makes it so hypnotic.

124. The Hot Garden Stomp

Alex Russell Hot Garden Stomp , , , , , , ,

 

John Darnielle doesn’t write songs like “The Hot Garden Stomp” these days, but you can visit his most troubled characters in 1993.

Track: “The Hot Garden Stomp”
Album: Hot Garden Stomp (1993)

Some of the early Mountain Goats songs feature the same type of narrator. It may not be the same character, but it’s at the very least the same type of character: a sad person who is convinced that the right person could save their life with no effort put in on their part. It’s a reductive way to view another person, but it’s also a fairly common line of thinking among young people who haven’t realized the world doesn’t exist to serve their whims.

John Darnielle says that those type of narrators aren’t interesting to him anymore, but “those songs are not without their occasional charms.” There are scattered songs in the early part of the catalog that fit into this category and most of them don’t see the light of day now. “The Hot Garden Stomp” is a foot-stomper and works even now as long as you can separate the artist from the character.

Darnielle says these days of his main character that he’s “not impressed by his suffering” and there is no better summation of that angst than “I hear you talking // shut up.” These days Mountain Goats characters are more complex, but in 1993 it was enough to be furious and sweat in a hot room.

Live versions work better than the studio version in this case. The trip back to 1993 with the tape crackles is interesting, but the howl over “then you came along with your questions, always questions” on live versions sells this old gem. It’s also worth tracking down this recording from Bloomington, IN in 2011 where Darnielle discusses the gender neutrality of all of his characters and why he doesn’t like writing about people with worldviews like this anymore.

087. Going to Norwalk

Alex Russell Hot Garden Stomp , , , , , ,

 

The very early recording of “Going to Norwalk” can be grating to some listeners, but lyrically it provides something for everyone.

Track: “Going to Norwalk”
Album: Hot Garden Stomp (1993)

“It sounded so harsh it was hard to listen to… but I did anyway.” – John Darnielle, 5/27/15, on “Going to Norwalk”

We’ve talked before about John Darnielle’s breakdown of which Hot Garden Stomp songs might be played live again, and that list and the above quote make up the full list of primary sources for “Going to Norwalk.” In the post, John says he is “fond of” the song but that the appeal is in the way the song was recorded originally rather than a reproduction of it. As far as I can tell he mostly stuck to his word and only played it at that one show in Salt Lake City. The quote echoes his feelings, but it also doubles as a nice summary of the early works of the Mountain Goats.

It’s Norwalk, California, and it’s almost a love song. The narrator watches two raccoons run into a gutter and is struck by a thought of someone as the pair stares back. They wander around Norwalk and watch silhouettes behind sheets in old buildings. They’re again reminded of someone’s they’ve lost touch with and “can’t stand it.”

You have the chance to imbue this kind of song with whatever meaning you need it to contain. If you’re reeling and want to reconnect with someone, you can view it as a song about seeing things that seem like reminders and opportunities but aren’t. If you’re hiding and don’t want to reconnect with someone, you can view it as a song about how the natural world plays tricks on us and seems to care when it doesn’t. For my money, the most interesting line is “your California sky” which implies that these characters are still close geographically, so you’re left just considering what non-literal distance separates them.

076. Hello There Howard

Alex Russell Hot Garden Stomp , , , , , ,

“Hello There Howard” finds a sneering indifference in a narrator who is endlessly throwing dice at a craps table. 

Track: “Hello There Howard”
Album: Hot Garden Stomp (1993)

Someone asked John Darnielle if any songs from Hot Garden Stomp would ever be played live again. He gave a very thorough response, song by song, about all of them. He says that “Pure Milk” and the title track are the only ones he does play live, but he leaves the door open with regard to many of the others. “Hello There Howard” earns a “probably no” from the man that wrote it.

The world loves to speculate about these songs, so my job is partly done for me for all but the strangest and oldest songs in the catalog. “Hello There Howard,” as far as I can tell, has exactly no other words written about it online aside from “probably no” from John Darnielle. There is one positive YouTube comment, but that’s it. It’s just not a song that people seem interested in breaking down.

The straightforward ones can be the most difficult. The narrator is clearly at a craps table in a casino and is met by a sad character who asks the narrator to throw the dice. A craps table turns immediately on the wrong throw, but the narrator says “the table is hot // and so am I” and things are going well.

Darnielle loves placing his characters in destructive situations, and a casino is a purely destructive place. Casinos are designed to keep you in them perpetually and to keep you focused on the games. Even if you do win, the reasoning goes, eventually you will lose it all back. The narrator in “Hello There Howard” concludes that it doesn’t even matter what the result of the throw is, and in so doing finds the only way to really survive their actions. They don’t care anymore what happens, which is a very Goats-narrator move.

024. Are You Cleaning Off the Stone?

Alex Russell Hot Garden Stomp , , , , , ,

Two decades later, “Are You Cleaning Off the Stone?” sounds a little rough but still very sweet.

Track: “Are You Cleaning Off the Stone?”
Album: Hot Garden Stomp (1993)

Hot Garden Stomp is a strange release, because unlike most of the early albums there isn’t a clear standout song. Even Taboo VI: The Homecoming, the very first release from 1991 that John Darnielle has repeatedly panned, has “Going to Alaska.” John has told people for years to not look up the first album, but “Going to Alaska” still gets played live now. Nothing from Hot Garden Stomp is really in the rotation anymore.

“Beach House” and “Sun Song” are indicative of the early Mountain Goats style. They’re a little silly, but they’re also dramatic, wordy looks at difficult situations, when considered as metaphors. Well, maybe not “Beach House,” which is mostly about how vicious seals can be, but “Sun Song” is certainly an early prototype for later, more serious songs like “Alpha Rat’s Nest.”

“Are You Cleaning Off the Stone?” fits nicely with the rest of the album and with 1993-era Mountain Goats, then. You can hear The Bright Mountain Choir, the name for the female vocalists from early Goats recordings, and they sound fantastic. There’s no denying the roughness of the cassette recording, but devotes eventually learn to take that roughness as the price of looking through a portal to two decades ago.

The song is a simple one, but that doesn’t detract from the sweetness. My favorite interpretation is that the “stone” is a headstone, and this is a dead character speaking to someone they loved in life. Maybe that’s the case (it would explain how they can’t “hear”), but even if you don’t buy that you have to give it up for one of the all-time great turns of phrase in the catalog: “They tell me your eyes are the same color as they always were // That kind of information just floors me.”