555. Extraction Point

Alex Russell Bleed Out , , , , , , ,

The Mountain Goats are at their fullest and their best in the after-the-fact scene “Extraction Point.”

Track: “Extraction Point”
Album: Bleed Out (2022)

In the Apple Music liner notes for Bleed Out John Darnielle called “Extraction Point” a personal favorite and says “…what I really like about it is there’s something that just finished happening and you have to put together the details of what it was. And it looks like it was pretty gnarly, but the song is pretty, it’s triumphant.” Obviously, all of that is true. It would be pretty wild of me to say it isn’t. It’s hard to build on things when the man himself is so succinct. He’s doing my job for me.

But beyond the basics, “Extraction Point” is one of those songs that really shows the evolution of the Mountain Goats. The full band here is truly in sync. If you listen for the drums specifically they’re excellent, but if you don’t you’ll still appreciate the entire rhythm section. I’m always a fan of the horns, but sometimes they come across as additional and bonus rather than necessary. Neither is a bad thing, but you really feel the length between the versus here and you get the time to contemplate that the narrator would be feeling in that moment. It’s simplistic to call a song great but I feel like this one is “complete.” The lyrics wouldn’t be totally out of place on an earlier Goats song, but the tapestry and the fullness absolutely would be, which makes this stand out.

554. Mark on You

Alex Russell Bleed Out , , , , , , ,

“Mark on You” is about you, with a mark on you, and what will happen to you as a result.

Track: “Mark on You”
Album: Bleed Out (2022)

The theme of Bleed Out helps here, but “Mark on You” doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s easy to be reductive about stuff like this, but “Mark on You” is a slightly upgraded version of “Foreign Object.” That’s not to say it’s a better song, just a little less likely to be interpreted as a joke. Both of them are about the same thing. The situations are different and the people have different relationships to each other, but in both the characters realize they have been pitted against each other and buddy, it’s time for some violence.

“Mark on You” is after-the-fact. The heist or whatever stand-in for a heist has already happened and everyone has moved on. Despite that, our narrator sees this one loose thread and knows they need to do something. “Can’t trust anybody // even the tough ones crack,” they say, before several times over insisting that they are going to come for you. That’s really all there is to it. You were involved, it seems, and now you need to fear what comes next. On another album we might need more than that, but on Bleed Out and with the strong performances on “Mark on You” we don’t need a single other thing.

553. Training Montage

Alex Russell Bleed Out , , , , , , ,

The concept of a training montage is well-known and is absolutely exemplified in “Training Montage.”

Track: “Training Montage”
Album: Bleed Out (2022)

Bleed Out is a concept album about action movies. “Training Montage” sets up the idea from the jump with a very clear, very strong start. A training montage is a set of shots where a hero who has realized they must become stronger now becomes stronger. It’s a myth, this isn’t really how that happens and it isn’t really ever this simple. But still it’s a recognizable thing and a very easy idea to understand and sympathize with. There’s even some fun fourth-wall breaking with “it feels like it takes forever // it’s maybe five minutes on screen.” Our hero knows they are a hero, or at least they know they are playing one, literally.

Our hero in “Training Montage” insists “I’m doing this for you,” and as always we are forced to take a harder look at that as a motive. Most of the time in the world of the Mountain Goats someone being altruistic is just in their head. Is that the case here? We can’t know, we don’t have enough to go on. Regardless, this is absolute jam and one of the best Goats songs of the last few years.

552. Let Me Bathe in Demonic Light

Alex Russell Dark in Here , , , , , , ,

“Let Me Bathe in Demonic Light” ends Dark in Here on a slightly more positive note than you might guess.

Track: “Let Me Bathe in Demonic Light”
Album: Dark in Here (2021)

There are more than a dozen Mountain Goats songs about literal groups of people from one’s past. Lots of them are about that in the abstract, too, but so many are about remembering where you were with some folks in a different physical setting and what you were like when you were there. “Let Me Bathe in Demonic Light” follows the progression of then to now and even beyond that into the end. We move, literally, but we don’t move on. It recalls “Genesis 3:23” to me, despite John Darnielle mentioning in interviews to think about “Palmcorder Yajna,” because of that reference to two physical spaces but moving between them. That song is more melancholy, but here it’s not about the past and the present. It’s less one becoming the other and more both existing as a bridge.

It’s also a natural closer. After all the darkness of Dark in Here, we find ourselves literally leaving that space and being somewhere else, at the end of the road. It works with a crowd for obvious reasons: “who, who among you, who’s coming with me?” You are compelled to answer and you will find yourself doing just that.

551. Dark in Here

Alex Russell Dark in Here , , , , , ,

The title track “Dark in Here” sets an antagonist as protagonist and asks an enemy to really consider their next move.

Track: “Dark in Here”
Album: Dark in Here (2021)

“You who thirst for action // I will give you some,” our narrator for the title track “Dark in Here” tells their enemies. They seek to challenge the preparations and intentions of all who come for them, constantly reminding any who will listen that they live in darkness and that you might, maybe, need to be a little more certain than you are if you’re going to try to step to them. There are many songs in this theme, but I really have to hand it to “Dark in Here” as the apotheosis of the form.

The lyrics are strong and it feels full without leaning into the almost indulgent sound of some of the other modern tracks. It’s a great track not just because of what it is, but because of the scene it imagines. Picture the standoff from visceral songs like “Werewolf Gimmick” but somehow, maybe, even more intense than that. John Darnielle delivers this one mostly even, which is uncommon for a narrator this angry, which lets the lyrics carry it. It’s a good choice when they’re as strong as they are in “Dark in Here,” and it rewards multiple listens to really sit in the scene.

550. Lizard Suit

Alex Russell Dark in Here , , , , , , ,

The act of fitting in is different than the feeling of fitting in, as we see in “Lizard Suit.”

Track: “Lizard Suit”
Album: Dark in Here (2021)

If you feel like an outsider for any reason at all, the Mountain Goats have a song for you. If you feel like an outsider for every reason at once, they have “Lizard Suit” for you. Our narrator cannot understand this world and is putting in an awful lot of effort to push through that feeling. They wait even at the end of the train line for the crowd to thin out before they dare exit. They have found a way to make it through, but it’s playacting.

My favorite line is “let my habits form the shapes of days.” You can feel the strain in that line. This person is reacting to the point where the reaction has become a way to survive. Surely you can relate to that on some level, but hopefully not to this degree. The instrumental cacophony at the end feels like the natural summary of the structured, careful approach we see through the lyrics. You can go through the motions every day and you can allow that to be a sort of instruction manual, but inside, you’re better off admitting to yourself what’s underneath.

549. Before I Got There

Alex Russell Dark in Here , , , , , , ,

“Before I Got There” finds the scene of a dramatic event just after the drama unfolds.

Track: “Before I Got There”
Album: Dark in Here (2021)

A lot of Mountain Goats songs are about what happens right before the explosion. Especially in the early days, you get the sense that many of these narrators are experiencing the dread of anticipation and they see the train coming but cannot get out of the way. In “Before I Got There” we see the aftermath. This person was involved, in some sense, because they said that they have “failed you, sweet young men” and they show up just in time to smell the burning and to see the bodies.

Just as anticipation lets the audience imagine what comes next, here we have to fill in the blanks. We get so many physical details, down to the specificity of “heavy tracks up to the lip // just to prove that they were crawling,” but we do not know what happened or why. We can imagine a conflict and we have multiple references to an altar to tell us this is a holy place to some (and thus not to others) but we do not know exactly what this narrator missed. We don’t need to, of course, and the wail of Darnielle’s delivery drives home what this narrator tells us directly.

548. The Slow Parts on Death Metal Albums

Alex Russell Dark in Here , , , , , , ,

Similar to “This Year,” someone drives home and anticipates a new world in “The Slow Parts on Death Metal Albums.”

Track: “The Slow Parts on Death Metal Albums”
Album: Dark in Here (2021)

John Darnielle has called “The Slow Parts on Death Metal Albums” the most autobiographical of the songs on Dark in Here and it’s not difficult to see why. It’s a literal song about the things that make up the title and as a result it draws some obvious connections to other parts of the catalog. Beyond that, there are direct references across it just like the similarly autobiographical “Younger.” Some of them are to Goths songs, but “Never Quite Free” gets checked in the closing lyrics. The extended Mountain Goats universe collapses in on itself at times, but this is rare.

In that light, “The Slow Parts on Death Metal Albums” feels a little bit like a sister song to “This Year.” We don’t know how old Darnielle is in this one or if it even is literally him, but it’s someone driving home and getting lost in the music and “toxins” of some sort, trying to face the world they’re headed back into as they leave one they feel safe within. Your music may not have been this and your home life may not have been that, but the reason “This Year” works is because everyone can relate to turning into that driveway. This one’s not a belter, but it’s space to picture that sensation with some more room to stretch out.

547. To the Headless Horseman

Alex Russell Dark in Here , , , , , , ,

“To the Headless Horseman” finds a rider who acts as a manifestation of something that never goes away.

Track: “To the Headless Horseman”
Album: Dark in Here (2021)

It feels a little abstract and your takeaway may be different than mine, but “To the Headless Horseman” seems to be a song about the sliding doors effect of who you could have been. The narrator imagines a stranger passing them on the road constantly and thanks God for bounty hunters who don’t take their marks down. We hear that this person fears being caught in a sense and that they feel like they’re just evading the proverbial hangman over and over. Sure, there’s space for some literal reading there with the title, but the obvious jump is to what put you in that headspace in the first place.

You imagine yourself living day-to-day because of the grace of some other force, but that thing visiting you could be part of your past. It fits with many other Mountain Goats songs to imagine a person haunted by their choices and their past self, pictured here as a spectral force. The struggle is not just with the memory but with the ways that memory manifests. It’s not a literal ghost, but in a sense it is the ghost of who you were when those things happened. This is a song that has enough room for very diverse readings, but I feel that specific shudder in this narrator.

546. When a Powerful Animal Comes

Alex Russell Dark in Here , , , , , , ,

We are at a crossroads in “When a Powerful Animal Comes,” and we must look forwards and backwards.

Track: “When a Powerful Animal Comes”
Album: Dark in Here (2021)

It isn’t true of every song on Dark in Here, but “When a Powerful Animal Comes” feels like a song the band could not have written even a decade before. A lot of that is the growth of the band’s fuller sound, but it’s also that this would have been a real screamer once upon a time. If you just read the lyrics, how would you imagine John Darnielle would deliver the lines “those people in the mountains // they will never know what hit them?” Here it becomes almost contemplative rather than the threat it presents.

Backing vocals in early Mountain Goats songs felt like they served a different purpose than they do here. On “When a Powerful Animal Comes” they seem to reinforce that this is a group that’s going to challenge another group. There’s conflict brewing, but there’s also a chance for reflection. Our narrator senses the turning point they are at and, indeed, is forcing the point by their approach, but recalls that “life is short and life is hard and life is sweet.” The literal conflict here could be a few different things but the reflective point feels straight out of Songs for Pierre Chuvin. It’s been hard, it will be harder, but there were moments there, weren’t there?