The only title of a Mountain Goats song in Hebrew, “שקט” finds a narrator who is fed up and has to say something.

Track: “שקט” (Be Quiet)
Album: The Hound Chronicles (1992)

There is only one song, as far as I know, with a Hebrew title in the Mountain Goats catalog. It’s “שקט” which technically has no subtitle, but is often called “Be Quiet” as the translation of “Sheket,” the title in English. A lot of fans mistook the Hebrew for the word “ape,” so you’ll still see this song called “Ape” in some places. I do not read or speak Hebrew, but Kyle Barbour’s The Annotated Mountain Goats, which is currently down as I write this, includes a note on translation that the word can mean “be quiet” or “quietness” or “it is quiet.” You have to make some assumptions here, but the text really suggests “be quiet” is the correct one.

This is weird, even for the early jams with the presets and the loops. The song also loops internally, with only minor word choices different between the two verses and a repeating chorus. It’s simple, but the beat behind it makes it feel very urgent. “I can’t be quiet,” our narrator says, “I can’t be quiet anymore.” We feel this urgency, and then there is about a full minute of sirens and escalating laser noises. I can’t say that I enjoy this part, but it does raise my heart rate. There aren’t any Mountain Goats songs where I can’t find at least something to love, but the breakdown in the middle of this one is hard to listen to decades later. That’s fine; much of the first album is, as well. It is at the very least interesting, and the choices John Darnielle was making then led to the ones he makes today.