Bleed Out

558. Need More Bandages

Alex Russell Bleed Out , , , , , , ,

In a song that sounds unique for the album, “Need More Bandages” tells a familiar story.

Track: “Need More Bandages”
Album: Bleed Out (2022)

Thematically, “Need More Bandages” absolutely belongs on Bleed Out. The narrator is involved in some sort of elaborate mission that isn’t really made clear and they speak in extreme terms. There are jugs of Molotov cocktails or other improvised explosives and there are crates of what seem to be smuggled goods hidden among cheap tobacco, but we don’t really get enough to know the whole scene. We know enough, obviously, and we’re right at home among the rest of the cast on the album.

But that’s all just the theme. This one doesn’t sound like anything else on the album or much of what the band has made over the years. John Darnielle said as much in his liner notes for Apple Music and went deeper into detail but you’ll hear the basic difference right away. It’s not one I’ve found myself listening to often when I go back through the album, but I have to appreciate the extremely on-brand nature of a Mountain Goats narrator demanding that after their shovels break they will dig with their literal fingernails.

557. Make You Suffer

Alex Russell Bleed Out , , , , , , ,

The message of “Make You Suffer” is simple, but when your message is that powerful it doesn’t need to be complex.

Track: “Make You Suffer”
Album: Bleed Out (2022)

There are a lot of Mountain Goats songs that are remarkable because of, not despite, their lyrical simplicity. “No, I Can’t” is a list of mundane objects as a means of reassuring someone. One of the more quotable Goats lines is a simple near repetition: “the most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it’s you // and that you’re standing in the doorway. These are not memorable because they do something no one else could do. They are memorable because, like modern art, they cause us to look at something simple in a new way.

“Make You Suffer” is a song where someone is going to make someone else suffer. The chorus, with some minor deviations, is largely about the title. The simplicity really forces you to contend with what that means. “I’m going to make you suffer,” the narrator tells us, and by the end of the song we have to assume they mean it. The thing works here not just because of how powerful that statement is but because the song itself is beautiful. These same lyrics over mightily strung chords back in the day probably wouldn’t work.

556. First Blood

Alex Russell Bleed Out , , , , , , ,

In a song the band calls “extremely meta”, we hear about the reality of action movies in “First Blood.”

Track: “First Blood”
Album: Bleed Out (2022)

The Mountain Goats are on the record a lot. There are a few albums, Bleed Out among them, where the band has given a few quotes about every single song. For “First Blood” their liner notes are about how action movies set you up to believe in these simplistic hero stories but that ain’t how things happen. That’s right there in the text, too, as directly as “John Rambo never went to Vietnam.” John Darnielle extends his description to say this kind of thinking leads to bad actors in the judicial system. We don’t have the space to get into that, but I figure it deserves to be repeated as often as absolutely possible.

This makes “First Blood” a fascinating song to include on Bleed Out. Most of the song is about “real” figures (either people who actually existed or characters who actually exist outside of this song) but about how their exploits can’t be trusted to be the way justice actually works. The bulk of the album uses action movie tropes to stand in for other emotions or situations. The Goats want to make sure you don’t get too caught up in that, thus here you get a reminder that absolutely could not be more direct.

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.

528. Bones Don’t Rust

Alex Russell Bleed Out , , , , , , ,

The day-in, day-out life of crime isn’t as glamorous as the big job, as we see in “Bones Don’t Rust.”

Track: “Bones Don’t Rust”
Album: Bleed Out (2022)

The first two verses of “Bones Don’t Rust” are all you need to understand the themes of Bleed Out. We’re dealing with an old-school, past-their-prime-but-who-cares kind of hood. The go-to stand-in for a lot of people will be guys from the blood-and-guts 70s and 80s, but I’ve lately been watching a lot of older noir crime movies and you see these guys in there just as often. “Bones Don’t Rust” imagines the life of someone who probably isn’t even named in one of those movies. This isn’t the main guy who is going to take home the big pay, this is a cog in the machine. Crimes in these movies require ensemble casts and some of those folks are just taking what they can get and doing a job.

“But they can find a use for a scarecrow // depending on your stomach for crows” is possibly my favorite example across Bleed Out. There are a lot to choose from, but you really understand the situation when you consider those two lines. This is work. It’s tough, probably illegal work, but it’s work. You drive the guy to the place and some stuff happens inside and then you drive him somewhere else. You get the next job because people around know you weren’t late to the last one. The characters we spend all our time with have grander goals, but you’re just at work. We don’t find out why this is the job you do, but that’s for another day. Today, you’re just punchin’ in and there are some jobs nobody else is going to do.

527. Incandescent Ruins

Alex Russell Bleed Out , , , , , , ,

The world of “Incandescent Ruins” is one you will create yourself, but the fear and the drive are right in the text.

Track: “Incandescent Ruins”
Album: Bleed Out (2022)

John Darnielle described “Incandescent Ruins” as “cheating” on the theme for Bleed Out because it’s more of a science fiction world than an action one. The main character here is escaping somewhere that has androids rather than remembering their youth as a two-bit hood, but the emotions are the same. Darnielle says it highlights his strength as a songwriter because you get these bits and pieces but you don’t get a full explanation. There’s no “the year is 20XX and the robots have taken over” but you don’t need it, because you’ve got enough to fill it in.

This one reminds me of the world of Moon Colony Bloodbath, an underrated piece of the larger Mountain Goats world about something sinister that happens in a future world where people harvest bodies on the Moon for sinister purposes. We don’t get enough time in “Incandescent Ruins” to know what happened, but that just isn’t important here. It’s more fascinating to not know and have to imagine it.

People have listened to the “singles” from Bleed Out five-to-ten times as many times as they have this one on most streaming services and it has virtually no commentary from fans that I can find, but I think this is one of the best on the album and one of the best of the last five years. Darnielle’s signature snarl is part of it for me, but this is just such a masterful set of lyrics. You’ll “see” this story the first time you hear it, but ask yourself why you imagine moss on these tunnels? What are you bringing to it?

526. Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome

Alex Russell Bleed Out , , , , , , ,

The Mountain Goats demand your attention and reward it with “Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome.”

Track: “Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome”
Album: Bleed Out (2022)

The closest cousin to me for “Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome” is “Choked Out,” another song that demands you fight and asks you to push past the limits to get what’s yours. Both are what I think of as “explosion” songs, where they’re over so fast and push so hard that you can’t escape the emotional core of them and don’t have time to consider anything other than the feeling. Comment sections for this one are full of people saying they want to hear it live and to scream along with the chorus. The shared experience and the full band are both big parts of what make this work.

I think songs like this are what make the Mountain Goats a tough band to describe. Yesterday in the grocery store someone stopped me based on my shirt and asked me if the Mountain Goats are a band. I stumbled over the question of what kind of music they make even though I have written 150,000+ words about just that. Because what do “Wild Sage” and “Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome” share, really? It’s that drive and that sense that you aren’t always in charge of the outcome of your life, but you can stack the deck if you push down the pedal at the right moment. Whether that’s in a quiet moment that demands you pay attention or a loud one that forces you to be unable to not notice, the Mountain Goats have a consistent message for you.

524. Hostages

Alex Russell Bleed Out , , , , , , ,

The end is inevitable in “Hostages,” indeed, it’s baked into the concept of hostages itself.

Track: “Hostages”
Album: Bleed Out (2022)

My favorite line on Bleed Out is in “Hostages.” In the third verse, the narrator tells us “there’s a team up on the rooftop” and follows up with “good luck to the team.” Out of context it’s uninteresting, but from someone taking hostages it has multiple potential reads. Is this a sneering, sarcastic nod to your enemy or a boastful brag about your own plan? It’s neither, you see, because the verse follows with “when you know you’ll never make it out alive // you kinda get to live out your dream.”

The snipers are going to get you if they don’t rush the doors. You are going to surrender or kill the hostages, but it doesn’t really matter in the end. “Hostages” isn’t about any one movie, but it calls to mind a million of them. You may picture Dog Day Afternoon, but I think of Wanda, if only because I just saw it a few weeks ago. Taking hostages buys you time, but that’s generally all it does.

The narrator in “Hostages” is clearly in charge and clearly not going to make it, but they seem to have faith that some of their crew will. That works better as a larger metaphor, but I love it literally, as well. So many Mountain Goats narrators seem prepared to meet a grim end, but I can’t think of many that offer even this grim hope for their conspirators. Whether or not that faith is misplaced is another question, but they’re going down with the ship either way. Good luck to the team.