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!”

192. Going to Bangor

Alex Russell Bitter Melon Farm , , , , , , ,

 

Through a striking (but strange) image, we see two people struggling to communicate in “Going to Bangor.”

Track: “Going to Bangor”
Album: Bitter Melon Farm (1999)

In the liner notes for Bitter Melon Farm, John Darnielle talks about the emotion he hoped to stir up after playing “Going to Bangor” in Holland:

“I had envisioned romantic young Dutch men and women taking to the streets, pulling the old men away from their chess games and forming them into minor league baseball clubs with names like the Dordrecht Wild Ferns or the Ooij Interminable Dysfunctional Relationships.”

He makes a joke after that about it not having that impact. In the usual sources, that remains the full commentary on “Going to Bangor” both from fans and from John Darnielle himself. That’s not uncommon with the early songs, but it’s interesting in this case because it can be interpreted as a judgment on elements of the song. Certainly there are better Mountain Goats songs about “interminable dysfunctional relationships,” but “Going to Bangor” is a worthy entry to the catalog. It belongs in a category with so many other songs about shocking, mysterious imagery. The first verse concludes with “all the signs // are easy to read,” but is that true of a line about wild ferns growing?

There’s a lot to potentially unpack in “Going to Bangor,” but it seems likely that it’s not supposed to be figured out. The second verse is dominated by one character approaching the narrator with a mouth full of cranberries. They drip juice out of their mouth and we view this scene through the eyes of the narrator, who tells us they feel lied to and doubt their partner. It’s rarely this weird, but this is emotionally common ground for the Goats. You can certainly picture people forming baseball teams around it now, even if you couldn’t then.

191. Sail Babylon Springs

Alex Russell Babylon Springs EP , , , , , , ,

The rivers of Babylon may or may not help two desperate people in “Sail Babylon Springs.”

Track: “Sail Babylon Springs”
Album: Babylon Springs EP (2006)

Babylon Springs EP is a truly great record. The only review on the album’s Wikipedia page rates it as a “C+” from a publication whose site redirects now. I would be curious to read that middling review, because an album with “Alibi,” “Ox Baker Triumphant,” and “Wait For You,” commands your attention. It crosses all of the tempos and the moods that John Darnielle and company have to offer.

Directly after the explosive, speedy ode to infidelity’s fun parts “Alibi,” the quiet “Sail Babylon Springs” slows down. We might be in so many other Mountain Goats songs. The narrator stays away from a loved one in the basement (“Prana Ferox”) and they set up a conflict where one waits outside their home in the middle of a grand gesture (“Going to Scotland”). These seem like basic ideas, but it’s easy to draw the connections.

We don’t actually learn much about what’s happening here, but that helps us insert ourselves. “A little too proud // to let the matter drop” could be anything. The second verse closes with the narrator pleading for resolution. “You stand at your window looking down // jump if you want to jump,” they say, but John Darnielle’s voice rises as he repeats “jump if you want to” and we wonder if they actually might.

Babylon is so often a stand-in for something that used to be great but no longer exists. Its use here is as an idyllic source of water that is whatever you need. It’s cool in the first verse when it’s drinking water and it’s warm by the end as a place to swim. Our only hint here about if these springs are actually a cure is the last line, where the narrator says they are swimming “blindly along // through the rivers of Babylon.”

190. Steal Smoked Fish

Alex Russell Steal Smoked Fish, Transcendental Youth , , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle offers some advice for his former compatriots in Portland in “Steal Smoked Fish.”

Track: “Steal Smoked Fish”
Album: Transcendental Youth (2012) and Steal Smoked Fish (2012)

If you’ve been to Portland, you know the Burnside Bridge. “Steal Smoked Fish” follows some of John Darnielle’s younger accomplices as they cross the bridge, see the iconic “White Stag” sign (before it was bought by the city and rewritten to say “Portland, Oregon”), and raid a convenience store. In another song, “two on point, and two on sentry” at the Plaid Pantry might be a metaphor, but here it’s more likely a literal plan of attack.

There are dozens of songs and multiple albums about John Darnielle’s time in Portland. He’s on the record over and over again about the mistakes of his youth, but “Steal Smoked Fish” allows him to return to those days as an omniscient narrator. In this bonus track from Transcendental Youth, the drug addicts and thieves of Portland “feast when you can // and dream when there’s nothing to feast on.” With perspective, we know this is a way to make it through tough times, but it’s tough to sustain that way in the moment.

Even with a reference to “the joys that the lesser days bring,” this still isn’t a song about good times. The days are lesser not just because you’re older now, but because the points of importance were so petty. You can feel Darnielle’s narrator whispering advice to these characters that they won’t take, but there’s still hope. It’s an interesting duality between memories of those times and hope that characters won’t stay in them in places like “disappear in a cloud of dust // but spare a thought for what it covers up.”

Ultimately, these characters are too far gone. John Darnielle introduces the song live as being about ghosts, but it’s still a story of who they were and both what they did and might have done.

189. Tape Travel is Lonely

Alex Russell All Hail West Texas , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle explores the dark side of ignoring your problems in “Tape Travel is Lonely.”

Track: “Tape Travel is Lonely”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2013 reissue)

There are a few things to unpack here before we even tackle the song itself. The title of “Tape Travel is Lonely” is a reference to the 2001 John Vanderslice album Time Travel is Lonely. That album is heartbreaking, especially during the title track as Vanderslice’s fictional brother tells the story of his descent into madness in Antarctica.

“Tape Travel is Lonely” is one of the previously unreleased tracks that made it onto the 2013 reissue of All Hail West Texas, and John Darnielle reveals in the liner notes that this one was cut because it ended abruptly while he was recording and he never went back to it. He doesn’t outright say it should have made the album, but he suggests it. It’s possible that the title stems from the process of digging back through old material and picturing who you were when you created the originals. Darnielle says this one didn’t have a title, so you can picture him listening to this song and appreciating the feeling his producer and collaborator Vanderslice imagined for his character in Antarctica.

The song itself is a lot of scene setting, even for the Mountain Goats. We see a “party” that’s all homegrown vegetables and sweet wine on the porch. In most songs, these would be idyllic images and we’d picture a nice night spent with friends in the country. Darnielle hammers the guitar and holds on the last word in lyrics like “the tensions build // air currents throb” to let us know this is not that kind of scene. It’s a fiercer version of “Fault Lines,” in a way, as the narrator’s building anxiety and growing drunkenness peak with a plea for the mosquitoes to suck the remaining blood from his body.

188. Cao Dai Blowout

Alex Russell New Asian Cinema , , , , , , ,

“Cao Dai Blowout” is a ghost story that’s hiding a larger lesson about processing complicated feelings.

Track: “Cao Dai Blowout”
Album: New Asian Cinema (1998)

“Cao Dai Blowout” is about one narrator processing their father’s memory. They refer to a ghost that destroys all in its path, from street lights to simple items in the narrator’s home. The song builds with with guitar, banjo, and keyboard. The result is an effective rising as the narrator escalates descriptions of the ghost. “When the ghost of your father comes to town,” they moan, “what the hell else can you do?”

The payoff is a rejection of religious assistance (“when the priest came to call I sent him on his way”) and a surprising resolution. Many Mountain Goats songs build to a decision and veer off just before the climax, which allows us to wonder what specific problems narrators have and how we might feel about their actions. “Cao Dai Blowout” shows us a narrator that asks what can be done when overwhelmed with the presence of a dead parent and goes so far as to answer the question: “I let him set up shop.”

Caodaism is a Vietnamese religion that believes in an ultimate resolution where humanity and the divine will be as one. Supposedly, many prophets (including holy figures in most other world religions) have tried to tell us of this eventual moment, but we cannot yet perceive of this perfection. According to Caodaism, we will all reincarnate again and again until we are each ready to understand this and transcend.

The connection here to this song’s title is unclear to me, but it does draw to mind the smaller scale way we relate to our mothers and fathers. We will all be faced, eventually, with the decision of how to process their existence. John Darnielle offers up a solution to absorb all of it rather than fight, as this moment will happen until you do.

187. Sarcofago Live

Alex Russell Satanic Messiah , , , , , , , ,

“Sarcofago Live” gets to the heart of what matters to a fan and how other things fall away.

Track: “Sarcofago Live”
Album: Satanic Messiah (2008)

You don’t have to like everything that your heroes like. John Darnielle loves boxing, metal, and Amy Grant. It is possible to love the music of John Darnielle without loving any of these things. I do not love any of those things, especially. I’m not against them, they just aren’t holy to me.

“Sarcofago Live” is a song about a Brazilian metal band called Sarcofago. Wikipedia defines them as an “extreme metal” band. All of their members have outrageous pseudonyms. There is an extended description of their first album cover and the designer who balked at putting a crown of thorns on it. They clearly earn their “extreme” descriptor.

I have never heard a Sarcofago song. I don’t think it’s crucial to hear one to understand this song. I’ve never seen Pinklon Thomas box, but I love “Pinklon.” I eventually saw the movie detailed in “The Lady from Shanghai” but the song didn’t change for me after seeing it. One requires many reference materials (a Bible chief among them) to get all of the references in a Mountain Goats song, but it doesn’t always change the impact.

“Sarcofago Live” finds characters who want to take part in the only thing that matters to them at the end of the proverbial rope. They are in a “concrete room” and they are waiting. They need no food. They need no task. They just need Sarcofago. I am confident that it is good music, for the people who need it. Nothing is purely good or bad, it is what it is for people who find it and need it. There may be no more meta interpretation of a Mountain Goats song, but what fan doesn’t know what it means to wait for the only thing worth waiting for?

186. Jam Eater Blues

Alex Russell Jam Eater Blues , , , , ,

The simple pleasure of delicious jam offers a brief respite from — what else — Tampa in “Jam Eater Blues.”

Track: “Jam Eater Blues”
Album: Jam Eater Blues (2001)

The difference between jam and jelly is that jam has more pieces of actual fruit, so it’s chunkier. That’s why it’s easy to picture the narrator in “Jam Eater Blues” pawing jam out of a jar with just their hands as they ponder the world and their place in it.

“Life is too short to refrain from eating jam out of the jar” is a fine summary of the Mountain Goats’ mentality. Even the darker moments of the catalog affirm the need to act quickly and the importance of living without reservations. It’s the kind of statement you can see John Darnielle making and writing down in a notebook, wondering what he’ll end up using it for later. Then it shows up perfectly as the refrain in “Jam Eater Blues” and leads surprisingly into a song about the challenges of love.

Our narrator says they won’t stay up waiting for someone to come home, but they will eat jam. They won’t leave the windows open to take part in the world, but they will eat jam. They won’t live out their days in Tampa, a common symbol of dead ends in Mountain Goats songs, but they will eat jam. “Life is too short to let it go to waste like this,” they tell us, “but I never tasted jam before that tasted like this.” We can forgive the this/this rhyme because it explains the character so well. The vagueness of who is coming home and what Tampa and open windows mean to the narrator are in stark contrast with the pleasure of jam out of a jar. We don’t know what these problems mean, but we know what pigging out in joy to escape them feels like.