Iowa

373. Ultraviolet

Alex Russell Martial Arts Weekend , , , , , , , , ,

A narrator defiantly stands against a hostile world in the Extra Glenns song “Ultraviolet.”

Track: “Ultraviolet”
Album: Martial Arts Weekend (2002)

John Darnielle has said two things of note about the Extra Glenns song “Ultraviolet.” He said it was a song about salvation, which makes sense given the lyrics. This is a song about someone going through something, which every song is in a way, but it’s expressly about protecting yourself and taking care of how you make it to tomorrow. He’s also said the title comes from a movie he was watching, which might make you think of the 2006 Milla Jovovich joint that people seem to really, truly hate, but the timeline doesn’t work. My best guess is that movie was a 1992 horror film about “psycho-sexual games,” but honestly, I think this is a mystery we can leave unsolved.

I love John Darnielle’s delivery of “I leaned a little while up against a barber pole” and the passionate ending. The whole song is about that ending for me, with the narrator who has “lost a quart of blood since Tuesday” demanding that they will not let someone take everything from them. “I didn’t let ’em take the very best part // the last lone bit of light left flickering in my heart” is a sentiment that dozens of Mountain Goats narrators could get behind, but it’s uniquely a Glenns song because of the instrumentation and the style. The extended outro lets you sit with that thought and invites you to wonder if you are protecting yourself as much as you should.

372. All Rooms Cable A/C Free Coffee

Alex Russell Martial Arts Weekend , , , , , , , , ,

“All Rooms Cable A/C Free Coffee” fakes you out with the motel-sign title and sneaks away after just a taste of a story.

Track: “All Rooms Cable A/C Free Coffee”
Album: Martial Arts Weekend (2002)

“All Rooms Cable A/C Free Coffee” is pretty clearly something John Darnielle and/or Franklin Bruno saw on a motel sign. You can run with that and picture this all happening in that motel or you can accept the song’s title as part of the pattern of odd, sometimes unrelated descriptors. I don’t think you’ll find an answer. Judging by my looking, you won’t find anything at all. This one’s never been played live, at least as far as the usual sources are concerned, and the closest thing to commentary about it I can find is a Tumblr post where someone used the lyrics in a drawing they made.

The Extra Glenns/Lens are odd to talk about because they are a side project, but one where John Darnielle sings most of it and the songs rarely stray far from themes of his band proper. This one fits in with that description, as a character observes image after image and feels a sense of impending pressure as they express love and/or longing. It’s extremely familiar territory for a Mountain Goats song, but jazzed up into a fuller sound than the band was experimenting with in 2002.

I’ve always loved this one for that first verse. “Wine and honey // lipstick and spit” is arresting, but “I’m not supposed to think your death wish is cool // but then I see you knocking back tequilas by the pool” is the killer. Tequila should generally only be pluralized in certain situations, and one where someone’s death wish is romanticized is one of them. This one is over so fast, but it definitely leaves you wanting to know more.

371. The River Song

Alex Russell Martial Arts Weekend , , , , , , , , ,

Whether you seek out the live versions or enjoy the original, “The River Song” is a highlight, especially vocally.

Track: “The River Song”
Album: Martial Arts Weekend (2002)

Eighteen years ago in Paris, John Darnielle and Peter Hughes “winged it” and played “The River Song” by request. Someone recorded, closer than you’d expect to be possible, and you can see it here. Given that it’s a song by The Extra Glenns, a band Peter Hughes isn’t in, John Darnielle initially says they can’t play it. John Darnielle, on stage, shares the chords with Peter Hughes and they go for it. This is extra notable because Peter Hughes even picks up the backing vocals. These guys have been in a band together for decades by now, but in 2003, watching them go for (and nail) a song that Peter has never played is really something.

It’s a sweet one, in tone if not entirely in message. John Darnielle hits a few high notes, as he does, but mostly speaks this one in low, gentle tones. It’s very wordy, even for an Extra Glenns song, and you get a real sense of who this character is as a result. The intro is over a minute and spreads out to set the stage. Martial Arts Weekend bounces around a few themes, but most of the songs can be read as love songs if that’s your thing. “The River Song” is the one that “feels” most like a love song, even with the mention of the water distribution plant failing. One must accept some things when one listens to The Extra Glenns.

369. Terminal Grain

Alex Russell Martial Arts Weekend , , , , , , , , ,

“Terminal Grain” gives you something to nod your head to and something to wonder about for a very brief two minutes.

Track: “Terminal Grain”
Album: Martial Arts Weekend (2002)

I am forced to use the video of a live performance for this post about “Terminal Grain,” which Spotify tells me is the least-played song from the 2002 The Extra Glenns release Martial Arts Weekend. There are no studio versions on YouTube, and the only other video at all is someone who appears to have recorded a garbled version of this live version by accident and uploaded it as a joke. Weird, huh?

I don’t know that play counts on Spotify matter much, but this is the first time in nearly 400 of these that I wasn’t able to find any version of a video of the studio version of this song. Just what to make of that is up to you, but it’s definitely a weird song. John Darnielle says at the end of the video above that he picked Sioux City, Iowa as a reference for the song because it sounded like a faraway place. At the time of that performance he lived in Iowa and it was no longer all that far away. Location seems to be about specificity and about hoping to imagine yourself somewhere else in a lot of Mountain Goats songs, so it’s not a stretch to apply that here.

I’ve always loved the studio version of this one but I am of the mind that there’s not much to unpack. It’s one of the explosion ones, over in under two minutes, and it’s as much about the feeling as the meaning. I’m overly fascinated by a lot of Mountain Goats (and Extra Glenns/Lens) details, but this one’s just a good time.

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.