Ghana

363. Song for John Davis

Alex Russell Ghana, Songs About Fire , , , , , , , ,

“Song for John Davis” is a quick story but it will leave you wondering what these people are leaving or headed towards.

Track: “Song for John Davis”
Album: Songs About Fire (1995) and Ghana (1999)

There are a lot of things to love about “Song for John Davis.” I love the vocal delivery of “England” and “when we landed” and the final lines with the absurd stretches. I love the unexplained, unexpected quotation of 1 Corinthians 13:11. I love the title which is both very clear but also doesn’t really tell you anything. This is a song for John Davis, you see, but how, and who is that?

John Davis is a musician and an activist who was part of the Shrimper scene when John Darnielle was there. He reviewed Transcendental Youth on his website with an insightful review that talks about what Jon Wurster brings to the Mountain Goats. Why is this short song about leaving a snowy New Hampshire to head to England by boat dedicated to him? That I don’t think anyone can say.

As far as I can tell, John Darnielle hasn’t ever played “Song for John Davis” live and there really isn’t anything that’s been said about it. It exists just as this two-minute story with a repeated line for a chorus. It’s always been a little difficult to unpack for me, but it’s for John Davis, so maybe that’s why. I do love the tone, with a longing and a sadness that you can’t quite explain but can definitely hear.

362. Papagallo

Alex Russell Ghana, Songs About Fire , , , , , , , ,

“Papagallo” showcases some specifics from John Darnielle’s writing style and ultimately drills in on a beautiful moment.

Track: “Papagallo”
Album: Songs About Fire (1995) and Ghana (1999)

I have grown fascinated over the course of this project by the songs that no one ever mentions. “Papagallo” has never been played live, as far as I can tell, though it’s pretty difficult to prove a negative. It’s not available anywhere, at least, and even the seven-inch it was originally released on, Songs About Fire, may run you close to a hundred dollars if you want to buy your own. The entire single is a little longer than eight minutes long even with four songs on it. It’s just a really small thing and all four songs on it are small parts. The one that sticks with you is “Pure Gold,” for the fun sing-along phrases about a door burning.

You can miss “Papagallo” in that way, but you shouldn’t. In this era John Darnielle was amazingly productive, so it doesn’t mean anything that a song just got released and not revisited. This is still a time where John Darnielle thought he might hang it up eventually. There’s a confidence to this one, though. “It’s hard to grab ahold of some things sometimes // like you need me to remind you” is excellent phrasing, especially with the delivery on the second line to sell it as a joke or a weary reminder of a million shared experiences. One can even forgive the second verse’s triple rhyme of “water,” extreme even for John Darnielle, as that’s clearly a similar joke. The repetition also really sells the image. These are just two people in a singular moment, but if you listen to this one a few times, you can see it, can’t you?

361. Raja Vocative

Alex Russell Ghana, Orange Raja, Blood Royal , , , , , , , ,

The true meaning of “Raja Vocative” is available for an audience of one, but the feeling is for everyone.

Track: “Raja Vocative”
Album: Orange Raja, Blood Royal (1995) and Ghana (1999)

John Darnielle said of “Raja Vocative” that it is “a heavily-coded response to some personal pain” and that “there is maybe one person alive who would be able to do the decoding necessary to get at the truth of the matter, and she isn’t talking.” It’s possible that you could figure this out further, but why would you want to?

Part of the exercise of looking at every single Mountain Goats song is answering questions and finding answers. There are mysterious songs I’ve always wondered about, but also pretty clear songs that I’ve always wanted to put some more thought into. There is something to consider for all of them, even the ones that are seemingly cut and dried. However, even within that exercise some mystery is important. John Darnielle wants you to get close enough to “Raja Vocative” to know there is an answer, but not one he wants you to access. We must respect this.

That said, the violin is beautiful and there’s a reason this one persists in live shows. The studio version adds the violin, but the live versions add through subtraction. This is one you might hear during the solo John Darnielle part of a show now, which lets him really hammer home the delivery. We must also spend a moment on one of the truly great turns of phrase in the catalog: “in the unstoppable camera of my mind’s eye.”

332. Going to Port Washington

Alex Russell Ghana , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle and Rachel Ware harmonize and tell a sweet story well worth hearing in “Going to Port Washington.”

Track: “Going to Port Washington”
Album: Ghana (1999)

Any time you speak in absolutes you end up being wrong, but I think “Going to Port Washington” is the best song from the John Darnielle and Rachel Ware era. There’s kinda nothing to it, but that’s kinda the point. It’s just the story of one person seeing another person and being really, really, really in love. There aren’t as many of those as there are songs about the opposite experience that comes later after some bad times, but even among the happier songs this stands out.

It was originally on The Wedding Record, which was released to announce a wedding. John Darnielle once mentioned that the couple from that wedding is now divorced. You can also piece together the geography from those stories and figure out this is Port Washington, New York, and the Throgs Neck Bridge extends over the East River. Interestingly, it extends to Throggs Neck, with an extra g, but the person who named the bridge spelled it with one g, thus the bridge is forever spelled wrong.

When I think about love songs, I don’t think about “Going to Port Washington.” It is a love song, for sure, but the polish of the thing is what comes to mind when revisiting it. It’s so crisply recorded and the harmony is so perfect. John Darnielle called it the best recording they ever made together and it’s tough to argue with that. The band has evolved and made much more complicated and ambitious things than this, but considered among other output of the style at the time this is the apex. It’ll always be what I think of as “the old stuff.”

331. Creature Song

Alex Russell Ghana , , , , , , ,

“Creature Song” relies on a classic for the chorus but a John Darnielle original for the memorable verses.

Track: “Creature Song”
Album: Ghana (1999)

Like “Pure Sound,” “Creature Song” was released both on Goar Magazine #11 in 1995 and on the compilation Ghana in 1999. Goar was a music magazine in Germany in the 1990s and it is difficult to track down much beyond that. People have sold a few of this release in the last few years, so it is not unreasonable to think you could get one. I’ve never been that kind of collector, but I can understand the appeal of wanting to hold in your hand the release from 1995 that brought some small corner of the world two more Mountain Goats songs.

The chorus of “Creature Song” comes from The Tempest: “oh, brave new world // that has such people in it.” This happens in the older songs, though the references are usually a little harder to spot than this. The chorus stiches two verses together and the song is very short, even for an early Mountain Goats song. The first chorus is the sweet spot, I think, with a relatable opener in “I remember the sound of your voice // but none of what you said.” There are dozens of Mountain Goats songs from this era from the perspective of a narrator that can’t really understand another person but really wants to do so, and “Creature Song” could simply be another one. The nearly whispered delivery sets it apart, though, and it sticks with you to wonder what “no harm intended, no harm” means and what the “only choice” the narrator feels they have just might be exactly.

330. Flight 717: Going to Denmark

Alex Russell Ghana , , , , , , ,

Two characters imagine a life in another country and what the feeling of that imagining does to them in “Flight 717: Going to Denmark.”

Track: “Flight 717: Going to Denmark”
Album: Ghana (1999)

When I was in graduate school, one of my assignments was to go through one hundred years of yearbooks to piece together a narrative of the athletics department for a larger history. Ultimately the things people care about are things they already know, so it’s not likely I was going to find anything that people found all that interesting. The search, still, was worth doing. There is something to be said for the hunt.

I feel similarly about this story. Theme Park Records released one 7-inch for the Mountain Goats and two compilations with Mountain Goats songs on them. In 1995, they released Corkscrewed, which includes both “The Admonishing Song” and “Flight 717: Going to Denmark.” It is difficult to find information beyond this because “Theme Park Records” generally shows up records of things happening at theme parks, but label owner Russell Hill confirmed the details about why this exists at all in this funny thread.

It is interesting that you can find this stuff today. This is a great song, but it’s also just one of those songs from the early days. Twenty years ago this kind of information would be unthinkable, and even if you heard from a guy that it was true you might not believe it. In this modern era, John Darnielle follows this account, replied to the Tweet, and thanked someone named “Russell Hill” on the 7-inch they released. There are still mysteries in this world, but I pick this song to demonstrate how complete a picture it’s possible to create, even if that won’t tell you everything.

329. Going to Maine

Alex Russell Ghana , , , , , , ,

The bouncy, fun song about failing marriage that is “Going to Maine” could only be written by John Darnielle.

Track: “Going to Maine”
Album: Ghana (1999)

“Going to Maine” was recorded live and released on Hardcore Acoustic, a tape put out by Shrimper Records in 1993. You can buy a copy for about $30 if you can find someone to sell you one. It has a few other songs, including a Franklin Bruno song and a song from Peter Hughes’ solo project.

This is a “funny” song, but that may be oversimplifying it. John Darnielle said it was “one of those songs that you think is funny, and people who like Mountain Goats songs think is funny, but everybody else wonders what on Earth you’re talking about.” This is as good a summation as any.

You can picture a time when this would have been a “hit.” That term doesn’t really work for the kind of music the Mountain Goats make, but there are a lot of songs from just a few years later that were big among “college rock” fans that sound a lot like this. It’s catchy, you pick it up quickly, and it’s funny, even if it’s about a divorce. The subject matter is probably too weird for some, but “your husband // my wife // my marriage // your life” as a four-line verse-ender is about as clear as you can get.

John Darnielle says he wrote “Going to Maine” with an image of Maine as a magical, distant place. A lot of the “Going to…” songs have this vibe to them, where the location doesn’t matter except that it’s far away. Don’t look for the significance of Maine in this one, it’s just about getting far, far away from California and, in this case, far away from a love that’s over without being done.

328. The Anglo-Saxons

Alex Russell Ghana , , , , , , ,

“The Anglo-Saxons” may be one of the “funny” ones, but it’s gained a lot of character even beyond that.

Track: “The Anglo-Saxons”
Album: Ghana (1999)

In the past 25 years or so, John Darnielle has played “The Anglo-Saxons” just a few times. I’m fascinated by songs like this, not just in their rarity, but in the fact that they exist at all. In Portland in 2017 he played it and commented on the fact that it’s largely inaccurate as a history and ends with a big explosion the way all old Mountain Goats songs end. This is just one of those songs from some of those days and that may or may not be all you need to know.

It was originally released as part of a compilation called Basement Tapes, a set of live recordings that the radio station KSPC put out in 1995. You can buy one used for about twenty-five bucks. Mountain Goats fans will know it from Ghana a few years later and will appreciate the young John Darnielle vocals and the high pitch. It’s one of the “funny” ones like “Going to Maine” or “The Monkey Song” but it’s also a history, like “Song for Cleomenes.”

The rhymes are tight and the delivery suggests a sort of morning cartoon about this ancient group of people. You can imagine this coming on after The Flintstones. John Darnielle contains multitudes, and it’s great that the same guy who ended an album with “In Corolla” once wrote a funny story about some facts about the people who lived in England before the English did.

298. Stars Around Her

Alex Russell Ghana, Songs About Fire , , , , , , , ,

We see one moment and have time to appreciate it in “Stars Around Her.”

Track: “Stars Around Her”
Album: Songs About Fire (1995) and Ghana (1999)

There are hundreds of live Mountain Goats shows online, but I find myself getting hung up on specific ones like this show at Fletcher’s from 1996 that I’ve talked about before. Fletcher’s is gone, like a lot of places are gone, and the recording is frustrating because the audience won’t shut up. John Darnielle mentions it several times, including the introduction to “Stars Around Her” where he says it’s a quiet song that he probably shouldn’t play with a loud audience. As a much younger person I definitely talked at shows and I’ve tried to get better about that. Let people enjoy the show. You can catch up at the bar after the thing.

The Mountain Goats are never going to be a band for everyone, but they’re several magnitudes bigger now than they were in 1996. Fletcher’s seems like the kind of place where the audience might not be there because they wanted to see John Darnielle’s hyper-specific style of stomping and howling. It’s just the cost of doing business that sometimes you care about the show way more than the average person in the room. If most folks are there because the beer is cheap and the weather is nice then you might not get the best version of a song from a four-song release from forever ago.

Most of the live versions of “Stars Around Her” sound like the studio version. It appears to be a song about romantic longing that’s frozen in one image, though that may be a simplification. There are a lot of songs like this from this time period and that’s no slight to say, because this is a great one. John Darnielle’s voice is softer here than it usually is and it’s a truly nice moment. That’s enough, really.

288. Blood Royal

Alex Russell Ghana, Orange Raja, Blood Royal , , , , , , , ,

“Blood Royal” marks the beginning of a collaboration for John Darnielle, but also is the result of a display of honesty.

Track: “Blood Royal”
Album: Orange Raja, Blood Royal (1995) and Ghana (1999)

In 1996, just after Nothing for Juice came out, John Darnielle performed in Maryland at a place called Fletcher’s. It closed in 2009 when ownership changed hands. The Facebook page for the place has three posts, two just before they closed and one update six years later with a poorly, but lovingly shot photo of the outside. It’s always a little hard to tell from the recordings, but it sounds like it was maybe a weird show. The crowd talks too much and John Darnielle keeps making jokes about enthusiasm when he prompts the crowd with questions. It’s a very curious look at another time, with discussion of smoking on stage in a place that doesn’t exist anymore and barely exists as a thing to be researched.

This is one of the only live versions of “Blood Royal” you can find. It’s a good one, but not completely dissimilar from the official one. Alastair Galbraith was even there to play violin, as he does on the standard track. Galbraith says he once saw John Darnielle perform with the Bright Mountain Choir and appreciated his intensity and honesty. When John Darnielle asked him to collaborate, it was a no-brainer.

That show at Fletcher’s isn’t essential to your understanding of this song, but it is worth hearing because that’s why Orange Raja, Blood Royal exists. John Darnielle is the beating heart of the Mountain Goats and always has been, but the band has developed because people saw what he was doing and found it undeniable. “Blood Royal,” haunting and strange at first listen, isn’t just the product of that collaboration, it’s part of the reason it all exists in the first place.