genesis

170. Genesis 3:23

Alex Russell The Life of the World to Come , , , , , , , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eQH0_oo8rw

John Darnielle considers his old homes and what going back to Eden feels like in “Genesis 3:23.”

Track: “Genesis 3:23”
Album: The Life of the World to Come (2009)

Genesis 3:23, in the Bible, is about being cast out of Eden. Adam is banished and the Lord tells him to “cultivate the ground from which he was taken.” It’s short, but there’s a lot going on in that idea. Adam isn’t just forced to leave Eden, he’s given specific instructions about what to do elsewhere. The point is not purely punishment, it’s about gaining purpose from an unfamiliar set of tasks.

“Genesis 3:23,” the Mountain Goats song, is about John Darnielle returning to places in Oregon and California that brought him pain at the time. The character breaks into their old home to see how the current residents live. “Hope that they’re better at it than I was,” they say, in one of the best lines of the last few years of the Goats catalog.

Adam’s removal from Eden is fairly straightforward. In the Bible, it represents the fall of man from grace and the start of mankind’s time as simpler, less holy creatures. Genesis 3:23 specifically suggests something somewhat less total of a destruction by laying out a plan, but it’s still the loss of Eden. John Darnielle frames his own escapes from much worse places around this because there is complexity even in something you hated at the time.

Some people can leave their past entirely behind them and some people can’t. It’s not a secret which kind John Darnielle is, but the perspective he offers sets “Genesis 3:23” apart from nostalgia. It’s not purely bad (even when it was) and it’s not purely good (even when you want it to feel that way in your memory). For your Eden or your North Broadway apartment, John Darnielle offers you the chance to go home again and see how it makes you feel now.

129. Genesis 19:1-2

Alex Russell Devil in the Shortwave , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

A dramatic showdown with angels, a mob, and a desperate person becomes a loud 95 seconds in “Genesis 19:1-2.”

Track: “Genesis 19:1-2”
Album: Devil in the Shortwave (2002)

Not much sounds like “Genesis 19:1-2” in the catalog. Darnielle yells the entire song like he’s competing with the guitar and has no control over how loud either of them sounds. It’s intense and it’s frantic but above everything else it’s just plain damn loud. It calls to mind songs like “Store” that are amazing experiences by themselves but don’t fit into a night where John Darnielle has to protect his voice and sing 25 other songs.

Devil in the Shortwave is a weird collection of five songs. There’s a cover and the very quiet “Yoga,” but the other three are all short explosions. “Crows” and “Commandante” have furious vocals, but the guitar supports those songs. On “Genesis 19:1-2” it drowns the vocals and makes the song almost scary. It’s only a minute and a half, but you can’t escape the sense that something really serious and bad is happening here.

The title comes from the moment just before God destroys Sodom. Lot invites two angels into his home and tries to pacify an angry mob. He asks them to stand down and to respect the angels, but the mob will not be soothed. Then they are all killed and Lot leaves with his wife, who is punished for a separate sin. The song includes a line directly from the Bible (“The two angels came to Sodom in the evening”) but otherwise just offers possible clues. The cast of characters in the first verse may be the mob, set apart by specifics like “the girl who’d been haunting your dreams all your life.” By the second verse, Lot is leaving and his wife has her things with her. Like many good Mountain Goats songs, we know this isn’t going to end well, even if no one else does.