Babylon Springs EP

211. Ox Baker Triumphant

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John Darnielle sings a song for the bad guy in all of us in “Ox Baker Triumphant.”

Track: “Ox Baker Triumphant”
Album: Babylon Springs EP (2006)

Wrestling’s story involves the same beats as every other kind, but it benefits from more black and white narratives than other types of performance. The “heels” of wrestling often have to be very obvious to get an idea across quickly to an audience.

Ox Baker was a heel who punched people in the heart. You only need to hear one Ox Baker promo to understand him. He hates you and the goodness you represent, and he’s here to punch everyone who stands in the way of his dominance. When John Darnielle introduces “Ox Baker Triumphant” he often talks about the power of that idea. Ox Baker isn’t here to set up a complicated battle between good and evil and he isn’t here to win you over. He wants to punch your good guy in the heart. You don’t really get more to the point.

“Ox Baker Triumphant” is exactly what it says on the label. Ox Baker has been betrayed by the world he loves and he is here to get revenge on everyone and everything. Given what we know about Ox, we can assume he saw this coming. He demands that the others click their heels in a mock attempt to go home before yelling “I bet you never expected me!”

Darnielle’s soaring delivery on the studio version and the blown-out fury on most live versions accomplish the same thing. We get a sense that Ox Baker is done with all this and that his retribution is well-deserved. For all the time the good guys will get in later Goats songs, “Ox Baker Triumphant” reminds us why we love to watch the moments when people get pushed to their limits. It doesn’t really matter what he came to do in the first place, now it’s his time to shine.

191. Sail Babylon Springs

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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.”

167. Alibi

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John Darnielle presents a simple case of infidelity as a love song in “Alibi.”

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

There are so many songs about cheating in the Mountain Goats catalog. I haven’t done the math, but it seems like they even out when you consider the different perspectives. Most songs about infidelity are songs of pain from the perspective of the wronged, but John Darnielle is equally interested in the cheated-on and the cheaters.

“Alibi” focuses on the fun part. One character leaves work late and drives to someone’s house to sleep with them. This is identifiable behavior, and the repetition of “I had been waiting all day” feels earnest. You might even recall a time you did something similar and smile at the memory.

You might feel differently about “and I was like a patient on a table // headed for the light.” The mood here is all explosive joy and anticipation, but there’s also some fear that the narrator won’t face. The chorus reveals that they have “an almost airtight alibi” which is also the first suggestion that this isn’t something purely wonderful. It’s a love song, but this character also relates their behavior to giving in to the power of death, so it’s not all sunshine for these folks.

After the first chorus, our character hides their car, creeps around, and likens themselves to “a men prepared to jump beneath a train.” These are less relatable emotions. The couple talks about shutting the window in favor of a fan and it’s clear that they accept how secretive and wrong this is.

“Your boyfriend’s out of town until Tuesday,” the narrator says, and excitedly repeats “and nobody saw me come in” twice. Wrong as it may be, it carries the feeling of a pure love song until you remember the absent third character.

095. Wait for You

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DTtO-pUxng

“Wait for You” closes an EP on a quiet, hopeless note as a character waits for someone who likely isn’t coming back.

Track: “Wait for You”
Album: Babylon Springs EP (2006)

The Babylon Springs EP covers all the emotions the Mountain Goats love to cover. “Ox Baker Triumphant” and “Alibi” open the album with rousing, screaming fury. Both characters make bad decisions that they feel they have to make to stay true to themselves. We can judge their intentions because we’re separate people, but in their minds they’re doing what must be done. “Sail Babylon Springs” and “Sometimes I Still Feel the Bruise” look inward at sad relationships past their prime (well past, in the latter’s case).

After you’ve made those two parallel journeys over four songs you’re left with “Wait for You.” It would seem impossible that a song could step down in mood from the crushing blows of “Sometimes I Still Feel the Bruise,” but leave it to John Darnielle to find the sadness in a rainbow.

In the second verse the character waits for a loved one that may be coming and may not. They see a rainbow in the distance and imagine that it “wrapped its coils around the earth like a serpent” to choke them. There are a handful of examples of this in Goats songs, but this is one of the best ones. Often normally hopeful or sweet imagery is twisted in the minds of Goats narrators, but it takes a special kind of darkness to see a portent in a rainbow.

By the end of the song the narrator has decided that the person they’re waiting for isn’t coming. That much is to be expected, but they do say that the waiting still serves a purpose. “But I waited all the same,” Darnielle says softly, and you appreciate the perspective of waiting for waiting’s sake on someone that is totally gone.