indonesia

142. Answering the Phone

Alex Russell All Hail West Texas , , , , , , , ,

 

 

The outtake “Answering the Phone” deserves a spot among the best concert singalong songs of the Mountain Goats.

Track: “Answering the Phone”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2013 reissue)

Arguably the best of the new tracks on the 2013 reissue of All Hail West Texas, “Answering the Phone” demands your attention. All the new tracks work, but you can understand why the others missed the original cut. They’re mostly complex and require multiple listens to sink into your brain.

This is decidedly untrue for “Answering the Phone.” The entire thing is surface level, right down to the title that John Darnielle says comes from being interrupted by phone calls during previous takes. Being surface level isn’t a bad thing. You immediately, from the first listen, will latch on to phrases like “you came here for comfort, you came to the wrong place” and the chorus of “I think something’s wrong with me.”

John Darnielle’s best narrators are missing small-to-large pieces of themselves. Depending on the album, they show varied levels of understanding towards their predicaments. This one knows where they stand in the world and uses three verses to guess as to the reasoning behind their state of mind. Maybe it’s their childhood of undernourishment or bad upbringing or maybe it’s their teenage years of angry music or maybe it’s their current state of drunkenness and repeated mistakes. It’s about the journey, as they say, and this narrator retraces their steps to no avail.

You can almost hear people in some dark bar that’s church-like in its reverence for bands like this as they scream “I think something’s wrong with me!” while John Darnielle shakes his fist from the stage. It never happened, or at least we don’t know about it, because this song didn’t make the original All Hail West Texas and never lived in the live rotation. The sneer over the third verse here is all-time good and it’s a real shame this remained an outtake.

141. Indonesia

Alex Russell All Hail West Texas , , , , , ,

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6_TTFcZTt4

Two people barrel through seasons and hope for the best that they know isn’t going to happen in “Indonesia.”

Track: “Indonesia”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2013 reissue)

According to the liner notes of the 2013 reissue of All Hail West Texas, John Darnielle wrote “Indonesia” in one night. He says it didn’t make the album because it isn’t doesn’t fit with the rest of the story. All Hail is about “seven people, two houses, a motorcycle, and a locked treatment facility for adolescent boys” per its cover, so this is about anyone else in the world that doesn’t occupy that space.

John sings much of “Indonesia” in a low, steady tone, which gives the sense that he’s relaying facts rather than editorializing. Lines like “the summer came in carrying spring in its mouth” seem plucked out of poetry even with that delivery, but they exist here just to carry time forward. The first verse sets up that summer is typically a time of great turmoil for these two characters. John Darnielle says that this song fits more with his writing style for Tallahassee. The Alpha Couple would recognize “this is the time when all our plans and schemes melt down into listless anarchy” all too well.

The second-and-final verse explores some familiar territory for the Mountain Goats. John Darnielle talks about plants as a metaphor for loneliness, weather as an omen, and hunger as a representation for something evil. These are common lyrical elements across the catalog, and it makes one wonder why this song doesn’t hold higher regard.

The chorus is simply “Indonesia // Indonesia.” In such a powerfully wrought song full of lyrics, it’s interesting that John Darnielle left the chorus at one word. It allows you to fill the space of those two words with whatever emotions you’d like. So many Mountain Goats songs are about the belief that changing your location could change your life, but these two are just holding onto dreams.