Full Force Galesburg

051. US Mill

Alex Russell Full Force Galesburg , , , , , , , , ,

“US Mill” features both the Mountain Goats’ obsession with location and an intriguing vagueness.

Track: “US Mill”
Album: Full Force Galesburg (1997)

Location is obviously important to the Mountain Goats, but Full Force Galesburg challenges what “location” really means. “Minnesota” may or may not happen in Minnesota. “Down Here” talks about Australia, but likely not for any particular reason. For both of those, it’s more about specificity as a concept than it is the actual, specific place. The standout “Weekend in Western Illinois” and the album-closing “It’s All Here in Brownsville” both talk about border towns, and John Darnielle has said that they’re linked for that reason. The concept of living somewhere between two things and not really feeling right in either of them is instantly relatable, be it two places or two feelings.

A song like “US Mill” takes that concept even further, since it’s nothing but locations. The first four lines, “Way up north // Down the road a little // Back in New England // Right here in the middle,” are just four descriptive phrases that help you imagine a location in general, but they don’t really tell you where you are. The rest could function as a starting point for a Mountain Goats phrasebook. “Listening for the old sound” and “bright as gold” show up often enough in other songs that they feel like familiar descriptions here. There’s no crime in reusing phrases, and in fact they make what sounds like a straightforward song feel like a bigger part of the catalog.

The strumming is impossible to resist, and you’ll find yourself snapping along with it after a few listens. It’s a fitting tune for a high point. They are hopeful and they are listening, but we know from the rest of Full Force Galesburg (if these are the same people as the couple in “Minnesota” or “Chinese House Flowers” especially) that they should enjoy it while it lasts.

039. Minnesota

Alex Russell Full Force Galesburg , , , , , , , , , ,

Two oddly romantic images in “Minnesota” briefly obscure a tale about how we can forget how to love each other.

Track: “Minnesota”
Album: Full Force Galesburg (1997)

“A little angrier and a little less easy to sympathize with.” – John Darnielle, comparing the couple in Full Force Galesburg to people on other Mountain Goats albums.

For an album that ends with a repetition of “it’s all coming apart again,” there’s a lot of sweet-sounding stuff on Full Force Galesburg. It’s a tough album to break down in a lot of respects. John Darnielle mostly describes it as an album about two desperate people who aren’t in a healthy relationship with each other anymore, but that can very loosely be layered onto many, many Goats albums. These two specifically are going through something else.

“Minnesota” stretches the definition of “love song.” One character surrounds their house with Dutch seeds while the other sings an old song. While those are nice images, they are surrounded by suggestions of something very grisly. Both verses talk about an unrelenting heat, and in the heat our guide through this romance is drinking and staring at his wife. He’s only drinking and staring at her.

If you are given to hope, it may be difficult to pull out the darkness in a song that’s this sweet on the surface. Full Force Galesburg has much angrier guitar on it elsewhere and the lyrics of “Chinese House Flowers” speak much more directly to the end of love (“I want you the way you were”), but “Minnesota” is just as grim about the chances of these two working out. These two are sharing some strangely intimate moments, but they aren’t really communicating. This is not The Alpha Couple, but it’s certainly people who could appreciate their method of “dealing” with problems.