Taking the Dative

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!”

070. Alpha Gelida

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

 

The Alpha Couple is in Nevada during “Alpha Gelida,” scaring each other before the really scary part to come.

Track: “Alpha Gelida”
Album: Taking the Dative (1994), Ghana (1999)

There is continuity in the catalog of 500+ Mountain Goats songs, but John Darnielle has often said that he doesn’t consider it possible to find one true version of it. It’s a journey, not a destination, and whatever threads you find seem to be generally okay with him. That makes a process like this more like storytelling and less like history, but even so there are primary documents. In an introduction for “Alpha Gelida” in the summer of 2014, John described the song as “one of the songs that looked towards Tallahassee.” He said of the Alpha Couple that “they’re from California, but they go to Nevada, and that’s where they get married.”

The specific details of the horrible/wonderful couple at the heart of most of “the Alpha series” of songs aren’t important, but the specificity of their journey is part of what makes it more than a story. These aren’t real people, but they’re every single bad relationship everyone has ever had. They’re the horrible darkness in all of us that we’re afraid, sometimes, is all there really is.

That’s why the details matter. In “Alpha Gelida” they’re drinking in Nevada and, like John, they’re avoiding Tallahassee. It’s a horror story, filled with biblical versions of destruction (“let the young lions come out // let me break their jaws” is from Psalms) and smells of popcorn and cheap coffee. You can smell the room as one of them focuses on the fridge. They are drawn to it, as all characters in horror stories are always eventually drawn to something with evil overtones. John has said at shows that he doesn’t know what’s behind the fridge here, but you can hear in the quiet, intense delivery that even if it isn’t specific, we’re supposed to understand how they feel.