445. How to Embrace a Swamp Creature

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

“How to Embrace a Swamp Creature” is a very relatable song, but you have to be willing to admit that.

Track: “How to Embrace a Swamp Creature”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

The full quote from this show in San Francisco in 2008 is too long to quote here, but I encourage you to go read it in full on the Mountain Goats Wiki or listen to the show. In summary, John Darnielle says that “How to Embrace a Swamp Creature” is about going to see someone you used to know on some sort of spurious claim when really you just want to see them again and you probably want one exact thing that you hope you both want. It’s an adolescent emotion, one would hope, but maybe it’s one you remember in your own life. Maybe you’re more honest with yourself, I don’t know. The live show banter discusses going to get an album from someone but then being honest on the idea that “you could go get that song off the internet like the rest of us.” I mention it both because it’s such a great discussion of the idea and because you can hear the crowd reacting and imagining their own version from their past.

There are a few biblical references in “How to Embrace a Swamp Creature,” which is not unheard of in a Mountain Goats song about secrecy and human relationships. The true narrative is right there in the text, though. You don’t need to track anything outside of what you’re hearing. You just need to cleave out the parts that are the narrator pretending to avoid what they’ve decided is inevitable. We often think of our impulses as immediate things, but I love this song because it chases the feeling from the first moment of your day up until you have to decide what you’re willing to tell this person who used to be someone else to you.

444. Autoclave

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

“Autoclave” sticks with one powerful metaphor the whole way through and comes out all the better for it.

Track: “Autoclave”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

I can’t find any discussion of it, but I’ve always been fascinated by the choice to include a line from the theme from Cheers in a song like “Autoclave.” Here at 400+ entries in this project I think it’s not really necessary that I say I’m willing to give John Darnielle more than a little slack, but I don’t think it’s even required here. If you told me in a vacuum that a song includes “sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name” I would be skeptical. I think if this is a bridge too far for you, that’s fine. For me, it works here, largely because the metaphor of the song is so strong.

An autoclave is designed to heat surgical tools to a temperature that will destroy bacteria, but some specific bacteria actually love the dangerous environment. Darnielle said he saw a comparison there to the kind of people he writes about and it’s definitely true. Right before that line from the Cheers theme, Darnielle pictures a narrator that is locked in a single image of themselves over a throne of skulls with piercing noise in the background. Their heart destroys almost everything that it comes in contact with, thus, “Autoclave.”

The performance here is excellent, as well. Annie Clark of St. Vincent adds some guitar and her signature vocals in the background. The band has done this one a few different ways over the years, but the studio version really benefits from those combined vocals. Clark and Darnielle make very different music, but both of them are distinct and specific and both would agree with a metaphor of a normally hostile situation for love.

443. Heretic Pride

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , ,

“Heretic Pride” is a triumphant, defiant shout back at a world that doesn’t understand you.

Track: “Heretic Pride”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

It’s really crazy to revisit Heretic Pride many years later. My instinct is to say that people didn’t hold it in high enough regard, but I think I’m telling on myself by saying that. Contemporary reviews show that people loved it immediately, as they did most other albums from the period. It’s in between Get Lonely and The Life of the World to Come, two definitely slower and maybe less accessible albums, but the Mountain Goats haven’t really had an album in their modern history that wasn’t loved by critics. I talked about this in the post for “Sax Rohmer #1,” but Heretic Pride the album represents a shift for me as it’s the first album I heard new. I still remember that opening run of the first song exploding, a downshift for “San Bernardino” into familiar Mountain Goats territory, and then the return here for the title track.

“Heretic Pride” is a live show staple now and has been consistently since 2008. It’s truly excellent and it’s a great scream-along, but it also encapsulates what a lot of people want from the band conceptually. The album Heretic Pride is all about people outside the norm and the song “Heretic Pride” is about a specific one screaming into the crowd that wants them dead. “I feel so proud to be alive” is a line a lot of bands could write, but “and I feel so proud when the reckoning arrives” is a Mountain Goats ending. I’ve heard so many live versions of this the live affectations line changing “one by one” to “one by one by one by one” are imprinted on how I sing the song in my head. This one’s for everyone and it’s excellent to hear it in that setting.

442. Sax Rohmer #1

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

After Get Lonely, the Mountain Goats return like a bomb exploding in “Sax Rohmer #1.”

Track: “Sax Rohmer #1”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

Most of the “periods” of the Mountain Goats are imagined. There is an undeniable shift when the band moved away from the home recordings into larger studio sound, but other than that, if you think there is a “change” it’s largely one you’ve decided exists. I’ve talked about it a lot because it really has a huge impact on how you view the band’s music. The way this usually manifests, in my experience, is people set a period where it becomes “new stuff” and then they have feelings about the “new stuff.” Surely this is not an experience unique to the Mountain Goats, but I think it’s an interesting one given the subject matter. John Darnielle has been who he is from the very first tape, though sure, there’s more saxophone now that he’s not one guy recording in a bedroom with his mom interrupting takes.

The first album I heard new was Heretic Pride. I heard a few songs at my first live show in 2007 and I bought the album the day it came out. “Sax Rohmer #1” opens the album and I think you’d have an extremely hard time finding even those hardened old folks who have thoughts about “new stuff” who wouldn’t feel the hair on their arm rise over that final chorus. It’s a remarkable song, polished and full and explosive even with lines like “every moment leads towards its own sad end.”

This song was my first chance to act jaded. It’s such a huge pivot from Get Lonely, at least in energy if not in other ways, but it’s excellent. Even when something surprises you from John Darnielle, it’s worth looking inward first.

441. Family Happiness

Alex Russell The Coroner's Gambit , , , , , , ,

“Family Happiness” uses Russian literature as a jumping off point for a very familiar Mountain Goats situation.

Track: “Family Happiness”
Album: The Coroner’s Gambit (2000)

“Family Happiness” is linked in my mind to “Waving at You.” They aren’t necessarily really connected, but whenever I hear one of the loud, screaming ones I think about how John Darnielle once said that people think those are the ones he really feels, but he thinks it’s more the quiet ones like “Waving at You.” There may be an exception to be found to that rule and it may very well be this one.

John Darnielle’s voice cracks during the scream at the end, but all through “Family Happiness” you can hear the strain. This one is loud, fast, and both definitions of “furious.” These two people share a car and a relationship, but not much else. “When I mouth my silent curses at you // I can see my breath” would be an all-time barb except for what immediately follows and slams home the hate with “I hope the stars don’t even come out tonight // I hope we both freeze to death.”

The title comes from Tolstoy, who is also referenced in the text, but the narrative here is recognizable in other Mountain Goats songs. What maybe sets this one apart is the repeated phrase “you can’t make me go to war.” At the end of the first verse, this seems to be the narrator insisting that no matter how bitter their lover becomes they will not give in and give them the satisfaction. By the end, we see that was never an option and it becomes less effective as a supposed defense. We only have one side of this argument, but it’s safe to say no one here is blameless in how we got here.

440. We Were Patriots

Alex Russell The Coroner's Gambit , , , , , , ,

In a panic hidden in plain sight, two people refuse to face their fear in “We Were Patriots.”

Track: “We Were Patriots”
Album: The Coroner’s Gambit (2000)

The best live version of “We Were Patriots” is this one, which Jon Nall himself taped in Tallahassee, Florida in 1998. The studio version is good, but that live one really unlocked this song for me. I can’t quite pin down what it is about the studio version, but John Darnielle sometimes introduces it as “a quiet song” when he plays it live and those versions feel the same to me. That one night in Florida in 1998 is different. The song explodes the way the characters in it seem to be exploding. After finishing it, John Darnielle mentions that these are the Alpha Couple, more or less, though that is up for debate and isn’t really the point, anyway.

You can experience “We Were Patriots” without paying too much attention. If you do that, it may not really click. Much of this song is a sing-song “la la la” repetition that could be read as filler to be replaced later. It’s deliberate here, or at least I choose to read it as a deliberate space for the listener to imagine what is intended to take its place. These people are in danger. They are not really contending with that danger. La, la, la.

What makes that live performance work for me is the passion, but you may not need that for it to work for you. Probably you can engage with it as intended and find that same creeping dread and that same staving off of the inevitable. I am going to admit that I couldn’t, but now I hear it there in the source material. I suggest you try both, but, as always, don’t stay too long in this space.

439. There Will Be No Divorce

Alex Russell The Coroner's Gambit , , , , , , ,

“There Will Be No Divorce” is the only Mountain Goats song that uses the word “divorce” in the title, and not how you’d expect.

Track: “There Will Be No Divorce”
Album: The Coroner’s Gambit (2000)

“There Will Be No Divorce” is a love song for John Darnielle wrote for his wife. He introduces it as such at live shows, though the specific dedication changes a little bit each time. There’s something wonderful about a love song in the Mountain Goats catalog where you often have to stretch the definition a little bit to make it work, but here you do not. This is a beautiful series of images and the delivery and mood firmly tell you this narrator loves this recipient. You could leave it there. That’s really all you need.

To go deeper, this is the only Mountain Goats song with the word “divorce” in the title. It’s a joke, of sorts, and I take it to be one on the rest of John Darnielle’s songs. What better joke could there be from the man that eventually wrote “No Children” than to write a love song that seemingly calls out that it’s a surprise that two Mountain Goats characters aren’t facing down the end of a relationship?

All that said, a lot of fans interpret this differently. I was surprised in reading about this to see that people seem to view this as another unreliable narrator and read the title’s joke in a much darker way. I don’t see it, but I don’t want to rob anyone of their take on a great song. If you think John Darnielle is being coy here, who am I to stop you? I just think “like God was going to catch you by the ponytail” is a lyric you deserve to hear, regardless of what you think it means.

438. Shadow Song

Alex Russell The Coroner's Gambit , , , , , , ,

“Shadow Song” was written for one person who is no longer here, but for you, it can be for anyone.

Track: “Shadow Song”
Album: The Coroner’s Gambit (2000)

I have to be careful with “Shadow Song.” If you know yourself well, you can understand what I mean if you think about what your version of this is. When I sit down to write these, I do my research and I sit with the song itself, even if it’s one I’ve heard a million times. I do not need to listen to “Shadow Song” again, but I honor my process and I do the thing. “Shadow Song” is about death, but it’s also about talking to someone that you think probably can’t hear you anymore. Like much of The Coroner’s Gambit, it is directly speaking to Rozz Williams, a musician and a friend of John Darnielle who passed on. It does not need to be that for you. It should be, I feel, at least a little bit, to respect the intention and the dedication, but it is probably about someone else for you.

There are other, more specific songs in the Mountain Goats catalog that fill similar space. The generality of “Shadow Song” is what really does it for me, though, and that’s not something I would say for a lot of John Darnielle’s music. I had a good relationship with my own father, so “Pale Green Things” does not make me think of him. He did pass on at a time in my life that was a crossroads, so “You or Your Memory,” however, does. “Shadow Song” is not, for me, about one person, but it’s a constant symbol of whoever is on my mind most recently. It’s a beautiful song, but it’s also so clearly about what it is about that it forces you to pay attention and to insert someone. Spend a few minutes with them, whether they can hear you or not.

437. The Coroner’s Gambit

Alex Russell The Coroner's Gambit , , , , , ,

The title track “The Coroner’s Gambit” is right at home on an album about death and memory.

Track: “The Coroner’s Gambit”
Album: The Coroner’s Gambit (2000)

I suggest that you look up the liner notes for The Coroner’s Gambit. The liner notes are always worth reading for a Mountain Goats album, but in this case specifically they include a direct address to Rozz Williams, who has passed on and is honored by several Mountain Goats songs. I think a few years ago I would have spent this space discussing Williams and the details of that further, but now I think it’s best to leave it at the liner notes themselves. John Darnielle says that if Williams is a ghost now, they should find him in Iowa and help themselves to everything in the fridge and the booze on top.

The album is about death and the title track is no exception. The placement of the title track directly after “Island Garden Song,” a thoughtful, solitary experience, and directly before “Baboon,” an angry, insistent one, is a mystery to me. I suppose you can’t go straight from this to “Shadow Song,” though I am going to do exactly that in this series. “The Coroner’s Gambit” is about Death, the figure, as well as death, the experience, and the personification has always made this a less emotionally challenging song in my eyes. It’s not lesser, by any means, but it doesn’t aim for the gut the way so many songs about death do. You are left with that repetition, though, and you are left wondering how attractive the offer would have to be for you to be unable to turn down someone you know to be the reaper.

436. Island Garden Song

Alex Russell The Coroner's Gambit , , , , , , ,

The surface of “Island Garden Song” is a sad moment, but it asks you to consider what you get out of the experience.

Track: “Island Garden Song”
Album: The Coroner’s Gambit (2000)

John Darnielle once said that “Island Garden Song” is about finding something useful in isolation. Obviously, from where I sit in 2021, this idea means something different now than it did when he wrote it decades ago. We are isolated now. We are less so than we were a few months ago, but we are still very isolated. It feels like this may be permanent, in some ways, and it is difficult to imagine finding the strength to be excited in the ways we let ourselves be excited before.

That feels grim, but “Island Garden Song” penetrates through. The narrator here is not hopeful, necessarily, but they are dedicated. That dedication is important. “My garden will grow so high” is an insistent phrase and one that we are given to assume is positive. However, the narrator follows this with “that I will be completely hidden.” This is productive in ways we recognize and then destructive in surprising ways.

The Mountain Goats have spent decades writing music that a new listener might find sad. Themes of divorce, loneliness, pain, and disconnection run through most of the albums. This is not music for your best moments. But is that really all of it? “Island Garden Song” is a song for a dark day, maybe, but it’s for a day that you absolutely need to meet with the right energy for it to be useful. You may need to hide, but that’s just because you’re charging up.