Tallahassee

041. Tallahassee

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , , ,

The title track on Tallahassee opens the album with a mournful look at a love that won’t save two people.

Track: “Tallahassee”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

“In the case of “Tallahassee” it seemed like a scene-setting song: it introduced the principal characters, established that there’s been a movement from the other side of the country to here, and took one last look in the rear view at the thing they once had that’s now in collapse.” – John Darnielle, on why the title track is first on Tallahassee.

The only part of Tallahassee that doesn’t happen in Florida happens in Nevada. The Alpha Couple (the common term for the couple on the album) is leaving their home and headed to the place where what’s already fallen apart will finally become impossible to deny. By verse three, the couple admits “there is no deadline // there is no schedule // there is no plan we can fall back on,” but we know they’re wrong about the next line: “the road this far can’t be retraced.” It can be retraced through dozens of other Alpha Couple songs, but they aren’t ready to do that. Not yet.

There is an inevitability to the sadness in both of them. Most Alpha Couple songs are bathed in descriptions of a dark future, so they never really seem to doubt how it will all end. That said, there’s more tied up in why these are “love songs” in “Tallahassee” than so many other places. The verse-ending “And you // you” is delivered with as much love as John Darnielle can muster. Even though you know how the story will end — it’s never a good sign when you say “prayers to summon the destroying angel” on the way to your new home — you have to understand the love these people once shared. It’s easy to see Tallahassee as an angry record, but its title track acts as a dirge for the best parts of The Alpha Couple.

033. Southwood Plantation Road

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , , , ,

 

“Southwood Plantation Road” sees The Alpha Couple’s defiant, giggling last attempt at love when it’s already far too late.

Track: “Southwood Plantation Road”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

Geography is extremely important to the Mountain Goats, but whether that’s literal geography or not, well, that’s another matter. “California” means the actual state of California as often as it means “something generally good.” “Florida” generally means an unpleasant end.

The most important piece of mythology in the catalog is The Alpha Couple. The Annotated Mountain Goats has done all the work for you, but at the most basic level they are two people who used to love each other and are now together through hate, inertia, alcohol, and a love of self-destruction. Most people don’t realize a relationship was destructive until they get out of it, but both the Alpha Male and Alpha Female (they are never named, and those distinctions are as lovely as they are ironic) know it’s horrible and they don’t want to stop.

Tallahassee isn’t the full story (there are dozens of other Alpha songs) but it’s the story of their end in a decaying house in Florida. The house was inspired by the name of a real street — Southwood Plantation Road, which is an uninteresting stretch of wooded backroad — and an actual house (on a different road) that John Darnielle saw on a visit to Florida. In “Southwood Plantation Road,” the Alphas move into the house that would be the tomb of their love if it hadn’t died long ago. They make claims they can’t believe. One of the only truths they actually share is “I am not going to lose you // we are gonna stay married.” Are they “in love?” It’s really impossible to define what it is at this point, and their emotions for each other mean different things to different listeners. In this house, in this song, though, they are drunk and they are giggling and they are going to stay.

017. Have to Explode

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , , , ,

“Have to Explode” represents final moments and how no one ever realizes they’re in one until it’s too late to react.

Track: “Have to Explode”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

The most interesting thing about “Have to Explode” is its placement on Tallahassee. It’s track eleven, sandwiched in between “International Small Arms Traffic Blues” and “Old College Try.” Those two are as close as Tallahassee gets to pure love songs. They both use drastic comparisons to searchlights in Hell and powder kegs to show that the Alpha Couple, the couple in Tallahassee and so many other songs, really was once in love. They still are, in fact, though that love is something else now.

The screaming, angry, drunken songs like “Oceanographer’s Choice” and “No Children” get all the love because it’s more fun to be angry than it is to be sad. It’s important to live in balance, however, and “Have to Explode” walks the listener from one almost-love song to another. It’s tense, like the fuse it describes and the explosion it forecasts. The entire action of the song is the Alpha Couple alone in the bathroom, sweating out booze that they rightly call “poison” for themselves. They stare at the towels they stole from the hotel and stay up all night not really talking to each other. It’s before the dawn of “Old College Try” when they make their last stand and before the midnight of “Oceanographer’s Choice” where they finally say what they already know in “Have to Explode.”

We never recognize these moments when they happen in our lives. We can only look back at last chances, and the Alpha Couple is no different. It may already be too late, but this is the song for that final night you remember. This is for the last moments in a relationship that aren’t necessarily happy, but they aren’t yet what they will become.

007. No Children

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , , , ,

 

Both a love song and an anti-love song, “No Children” is iconic because it is “sweet in the way of rotting things.”

Track: “No Children”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

You do not have to speculate about “No Children.” It is the most famous song in the entire Mountain Goats catalog, with the possible exception of “This Year.” It’s mostly that “No Children” mixes dark lyrics with bright melody and delivery, but it’s at least partially that you can take the song whichever way you like. The darkest among us can find some beautiful statements about intensity and dedication beyond reason in there. The average person can recognize — no matter how sweet that person is — the time in their life they could look out over everything and say “I hope it stays dark forever.”

John Darnielle wrote the song because he felt that many songs about love weren’t genuine. He’s often quoted as saying that he wanted people to have a song for that moment in their love that they would need a song like “No Children.” It’s brutal, no doubt, but it’s honest. It’s universal. It’s powerful for the refrain of “I hope you die // I hope we both die” but even though that’s what you’ll scream and pump your fist to, it’s the rest of it that sells the message. It’s the rest that complicates that cry from the center of the darkness.

The most important lyric in the song is “hand in unlovable hand.” The couple in “No Children” is The Alpha Couple, two people found in dozens of Goats songs that drive across the country to try to save their marriage in a tiny house in Florida. They drink and fight the inevitable in a crumbling house all over Tallahassee and other songs on previous albums, but “No Children” is a romantic view of their end. It gets darker — much, much darker — but in “No Children” they still feel some kind of love.