Infidelity

210. Malevolent Cityscape X

Alex Russell Infidelity , , , , ,

In “Malevolent Cityscape X” a narrator throws a barb at another character in a fiery, red moment.

Track: “Malevolent Cityscape X”
Album: Infidelity (as The Extra Glenns) (1993)

There are many small “collections” within songs by the Mountain Goats. There are dozens of songs that start with “Going to” and offer us a mental picture to accompany a story. There are four “Orange Ball” songs which are loosely connected. There are more “Alpha” songs about the Alpha Couple than can be counted. There exist only three songs in this particular collection: “Malevolent Seascape Y,” “Malevolent Cityscape X,” and “Ambivalent Landscape Z.”

All three are Extra Glenns songs, so they don’t get the kind of rotation that traditional Mountain Goats songs get at live shows. You’d need to dig very far back to find a recorded live performance of “Malevolent Cityscape X.” You’d find yourself at The Empty Bottle in Chicago, where you’d hear “Seascape” transition into “Cityscape.” The former is a quiet, sad song about the meaning of relationships. It wasn’t released for seven more years, on Martial Arts Weekend. The latter closed Infidelity, the three song EP that kicked off the Extra Glenns.

The connective tissue through these three songs is one character addressing another about the end. This isn’t an uncommon subject for John Darnielle, but “Cityscape” gets weirder than he usually does. Another character sings a song and changes the color of the sky, which causes our narrator to yell “you strike me as mean-spirited!”

So many other Goats narrators would love to find such a succinct message for the object of their ire. They’d also probably agree with the end of the second verse: “I love you beneath the red sky // but for the life of me I couldn’t say why.”

209. Going to Lubbock

Alex Russell Infidelity , , , , ,

“Going to Lubbock” follows a solitary drive through Texas on a Tuesday with surprising results.

Track: “Going to Lubbock”
Album: Infidelity (as The Extra Glenns) (1993)

In 1993, John Darnielle and Franklin Bruno, as part of their group The Extra Glenns, put out a song called “Going to Lubbock” on an album called Infidelity. As far as I can tell, their relationship with it ended there. I’m certain they played it live, but no set list I can find mentions it and there’s no record of anyone even talking about seeing it.

That’s not uncommon or surprising. There are only a few dozen Extra Glenns songs and “Going to Lubbock” is one of the more perplexing ones. A character drives until they run out of gas in the middle of nowhere and finds a skull. It’s very Darnielle, but it’s also the kind of tale that leaves you wondering what you’re supposed to do with it. Why did you tell me this, you’ll wonder, and what am I expected to feel?

It took me a few listens to find my own answer. A character digging in a very specific space in the desert and finding a human skull suggests many things, until you realize they’re only there because they ran out of gas. This isn’t someone finding a body they buried, it’s random. What’s more, they then lay the skull in their own backseat.

There’s room here to draw other conclusions. Maybe they ran out of gas and then walked the rest of the way, which would suggest that they are responsible for this skull in the first place. That changes the character, but neither explanation helps us understand the “pronounced depression” they notice at the base of the skull. It’s a short, quizzical song from nearly three decades ago and it leaves you with nothing but questions. I’m almost sure that, and not figuring it out, is the point.

208. Infidelity

Alex Russell Infidelity , , , ,

The first of a two part story about cheating, “Infidelity” focuses on short-term returns.

Track: “Infidelity”
Album: Infidelity (as The Extra Glenns) (1993)

“This is a song about when you’re just on the cusp of doing something terribly wrong… and it’s nice.” – John Darnielle

John Darnielle introduced “Infidelity” with the above quote in 2002 in San Francisco. He wrote a handful of songs that express this idea, but “Infidelity” the song on Infidelity the single is the prototype. The single was released in 1993 by Harriet Records, a now-defunct label that also released some albums for The Magnetic Fields. It’s an Extra Glenns record, but the distinction between the Glenns and the Mountain Goats doesn’t mean much thematically. It’s pure John Darnielle, especially the early years, as characters look out over nature and ponder their place in the world and the consequences of their actions.

“We watched the water // we looked right through it // and I let my hand rest a minute on your stomach // like there was nothing to it” is as physical as it gets in “Infidelity,” but the title of course suggests so much more. Franklin Bruno’s backing vocals add some serious melancholy to the song, which complicates the emotions further. These people are essentially in the same situation as the two in the much-later song “Alibi,” but we’re not supposed to be nearly as happy for these two.

The earliest live record of “Infidelity” I can find is from 1995 at The Empty Bottle in Chicago. John Darnielle says “this is, like, a true story” and follows the performance with “Adultery,” a much angrier song about the same couple. Cheating is wrong, we all agree, but John Darnielle presents a range of emotions without ever showing us the other impacted characters. We’re left to imagine what they know (and don’t know) and how this will resolve.

112. So Desperate

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

“So Desperate” freezes the frame on two people doing something taboo without calling it right or wrong.

Track: “So Desperate”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

“So Desperate” is about an affair. There are lots of songs in the catalog that are open for debate, but this one is so direct that you can’t miss the subject matter. When introducing songs about infidelity, John Darnielle often makes an appeal to the people in the crowd to think about the situations featured in the song and their personal experience. He doubles down on this in the press kit for Heretic Pride: “Odds are that somebody reading this knows exactly what I mean and feels a little uncomfortable reading about it: 2:1.”

Infidelity is a favorite topic of the Goats, but it’s interesting to see how it’s used. Storytelling across film and literature and everything else uses infidelity as a signal that characters are bad (only bad people cheat) or that love between two people is forbidden and true (they love each other so much they have to cheat) and it’s usually up to the storyteller which of the two motivations is at play. Darnielle doesn’t want to weigh in. These people might feel what they’re doing is wrong, but our only clues in the lyrics are feelings of sadness and the title/chorus: “I felt so desperate in your arms.”

Desperation, like infidelity, seems to be a solely negative thing until you break it down. Darnielle isn’t arguing that this is actually a good situation and that this is love, he’s just asking you to look at a time when you were in this space and see what you think of it. Mountain Goats characters often act selfishly or impulsively, but they aren’t cruel. These lovers are just out here in a car, for now, and whatever else that means back home is for another day.