john darnielle

258. Sinaloan Milk Snake Song

Alex Russell Zopilote Machine , , , , , ,

The Bright Mountain Choir delivers a strange, beautiful performance on “Sinaloan Milk Snake Song.”

Track: “Sinaloan Milk Snake Song”
Album: Zopilote Machine (1994)

“Sinaloan Milk Snake Song” has been played live and recorded a handful of times. There are even a few videos you can find, which isn’t common and is sometimes discouraged directly by John Darnielle. There’s a compulsion as a fan to want to see everything, but also it’s understandable that John Darnielle wants to keep some mystique. In most cases, I’d suggest live versions of songs as John Darnielle is an incredible performer and you owe it to yourself to witness how consistently he goes for broke. “Sinaloan Milk Snake Song” is a rare case where I have to side with the album.

The Bright Mountain Choir is four people, including former bassist Rachel Ware, who performed backing vocals on a lot of early Mountain Goats albums. They may never be better represented than “Sinaloan Milk Snake Song.” The chorus mixes John Darnielle’s drone with their harmony to create a much different vibe than most other songs from the period. Different members of the Choir jump in and out with fluttering sounds, sometimes hitting the words and sometimes not, and it feels panicked in a deliberate way. It’s reductive to say “you have to hear it” but you really do, in this case, have to hear it.

“I’ve got a message for you // but you’re gonna have to come and get it” is a threat, most likely, and “ever since I came here // all I could think about is water” is an extremely John Darnielle thing to say. The lyrics are something, but it’s really the Choir that sells this one. John Darnielle’s voice cracks in key places and it may not be everyone’s style to view “voice cracks” and “drone” as positives, but this narrator sells us on their situation and it all mixes quite nicely with the harmonies.

257. Orange Ball of Hate

Alex Russell Zopilote Machine , , , , , , , ,

We only get one side of the story in “Orange Ball of Hate,” but what we do see tells us enough.

Track: “Orange Ball of Hate”
Album: Zopilote Machine (1994)

There are four “Orange Ball” songs that aren’t connected beyond the title format. All four “fit” within the catalog, but “Orange Ball of Hate” is the closest one to other Mountain Goats songs from the early 90s. Our narrator is in love, in their way, but is also furious with their partner. “I sure do love you” has never felt so sarcastic.

It’s not the most interesting detail in the song, but “Orange Ball of Hate” is one of few Mountain Goats songs to gender either character explicitly. John Darnielle has said that people assume his narrators are male because he is male, but even aside from that detail, most songs don’t list enough detail within the text to assume gender of speaker or audience. Here the narrator reveals their audience through a joke, as they say “one of us, I’m not saying who, has got rocks in her head.” I mention it only because it happens so rarely, I don’t think there’s anything to it other than needing a gender for the joke to work.

The feeling here is less rare. So many narrators occupy this space of a mix of positive and negative feelings towards a partner. John Darnielle has said it’s about the moment that “you know it’s not going to get any better” and most discussions of the song mirror that sentiment. “I sure do love you,” the narrator snarls, again and again, and it cuts worse than being directly hateful. By the end of the third verse, our narrator feels the need to defiantly say that they do know the children’s song the other character is singing, they “just don’t feel like singing it.” This kind of sullen pettiness signals nothing good.

256. Hospital Reaction Shot

Alex Russell Hex of Infinite Binding EP , , , , , ,

The death of Judy Garland and what comes after is one snapshot in “Hospital Reaction Shot.”

Track: “Hospital Reaction Shot”
Album: Hex of Infinite Binding EP (2018)

There are several Mountain Goats songs about Judy Garland, often more directly so than songs about other figures. Without context you might not be able to pick this one out, but John Darnielle released album notes that describe “Hospital Reaction Shot” as “drawn from a picture of Mickey Deans holding a press conference to inform the world of the death of Judy Garland, to whom he had been married for three months.”

Hex of Infinite Binding is one of a handful of EPs released in the last few years, at the time of this writing. Most of the albums have accompanying singles, but now the band is also releasing a relative flood of one-off EPs. I don’t know if this is a common sentiment among fans, but I never seem to digest these EPs as fully as the albums. I haven’t spent as much time with Hex of Infinite Binding as I have with the other recent material, but “Hospital Reaction Shot” feels especially distant.

Despite the traditional subject matter, it’s really not a traditional Mountain Goats song. There’s a brief instrumental bridge, which is just about unheard of in a Mountain Goats song. John Darnielle’s vocal delivery is deliberately thin, with a distant effect as though he’s Mickey Deans himself, overcome in the moment and not sure how to tell the world. I can’t find the specific photo the song references, but I don’t think you need to see it in place of that delivery. In other songs we hear about the terrible influences and the struggle Judy Garland faced, but in the reaction shot, we just need to consider the moment it all goes away.

255. Nova Scotia

Alex Russell Letter From Belgium , , , , ,

With a haunting vocal effect, John Darnielle shows us someone very far out on their own in “Nova Scotia.”

Track: “Nova Scotia”
Album: Letter From Belgium (2004)

There are three songs on Letter From Belgium, the second single from We Shall All Be Healed. The title track sees the cast of addicts from the main album collecting disparate items and holing up in their own version of quarantine. The final track, “Attention All Pickpockets,” serves as connective tissue between this period and The Sunset Tree. Both are significant songs, and of all the non-album tracks, I think “Attention All Pickpockets” is among the best.

As far as I can tell, even in the usual resources, no one has said anything about the song between the two on Letter From Belgium. “Nova Scotia” is an oddity in that respect, but it’s also just a strange song. The effect placed on John Darnielle’s voice leaves the narrator sounding distant, like we’re hearing them over radio transmission. The percussion comes in with a thudding, plodding effect that mimics walking through snow. There’s more than a full minute of outro after the second verse, which leaves us with a lot of time to ponder the final words this character says.

The second verse is worth quoting directly. “Listen,” they tell us, “everything I love I will devour // and bury the bones down in the snow.” Even if it weren’t on Letter From Belgium this would help us place this one. It calls to mind the narrator from “All Up the Seething Coast,” who similarly tells us to stop trying to rely on hope. There is no happy ending coming for the person who wants to just “let me go, let me go” in “Nova Scotia.” The choice to lead this into “Attention All Pickpockets,” where the characters have false hope, makes that realization especially bleak.

254. Done Bleeding

Alex Russell In League with Dragons , , , , , , ,

The Mountain Goats explore the feeling of moving through points in your life in “Done Bleeding.”

Track: “Done Bleeding”
Album: In League with Dragons (2019)

John Darnielle has called In League with Dragons a very personal album. It started as a concept album of sorts and those bones are still there, but the one-two punch of “Done Bleeding” and “Younger” that opens the album tell you it is something else entirely as a finished product. At many live shows during the album launch, the band started shows with the two songs that start the album, in order. That’s uncommon, but it makes sense here as these are connected.

“Younger” is a puzzle filled with references to other Mountain Goats songs and “Done Bleeding” is a story about what happens after that. On I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats, a podcast I have to assume you’ve already listened to if you’re reading this, John Darnielle said the title refers to self-mutilation and the period of life after that stops. It’s a really compelling conversation, even among the other episodes that go deeper into song construction. The episode for “Done Bleeding” is interesting because John Darnielle rarely speaks this frankly about his writing, even on the podcast. He talks about the idea of a new part of one’s life where it’s possible to look at someone else that’s in a point you were once in and have difficulty relating to their situation. You aren’t better or worse off, but you aren’t where they are right now.

There are a lot of songs that dance around this emotion, but “Done Bleeding” confronts it directly. You are never really done with grief, with anxiety, with fear, but you recognize moments where you realize you have escaped something and hope that others who haven’t escaped yet find their way out. This is a song not about pitying that person, but about your own next steps and the process of moving on.

253. Going to Mexico

Alex Russell The Hound Chronicles , , , , , , ,

In a one-sided story, we hear one person get increasingly excited in “Going to Mexico.”

Track: “Going to Mexico”
Album: The Hound Chronicles (1992)

The narrator in “Going to Mexico” cannot help themselves. So many Mountain Goats narrators find themselves in this position. At the start of the song, this one sees a person through a window and really, really wants us to know that they see them. A lot of the early songs repeat like this, but you really notice it in “Going to Mexico.”

Taken literally, this character touches the other character’s hair and is overwhelmed. They experience this feeling several ways, notice the world around them, and then imagine a deeper relationship than they seem to actually have with this person. It’s sung as a love song, but it seems like it’s not a story the other person would tell the same way.

I don’t know if that’s reading into “Going to Mexico” too deeply or not. The more you listen to it the more it becomes the story of someone who thinks they are in a relationship (or at least some sort of semi-intimate situation) with someone that we never get to hear from at all.

“Last Man on Earth” is my favorite song that expresses that same idea, but much less ambiguously. I’m more than willing to be reading this one wrong, but the birds coughing in the trees and the screaming chickens tell me that all is not well as this character gazes through an open window. It’s an interesting trick, if that’s what it is, and I love the cracks in John Darnielle’s voice as this character gets so close to their version of ecstasy.

252. In Corolla

Alex Russell Get Lonely , , , , , , ,

The saddest Mountain Goats album ends with “In Corolla,” a brief prayer, and then one final walk.

Track: “In Corolla”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

Get Lonely is an extremely difficult listen. There’s a great story that has never seemed true to me (but great stories never really need to be) that John Darnielle asked the author of the Get Lonely review for Pitchfork what they thought about the new album. The reviewer said they were still processing it and John Darnielle asked if they had a girlfriend. They responded affirmatively and John Darnielle said “I hope she leaves you. Then you’ll understand it.”

Even as a joke it seems a little blunt for John Darnielle, but that’s what makes it a great story. Get Lonely is the “sad” Mountain Goats album, and while that’s certainly calling this the wettest water to a certain degree it’s also a critical designation. Characters are further out away from humanity here than on most of the other albums. By the final track, we should be prepared for anyone to tell us anything, so long as it isn’t good.

“In Corolla” is crushing. The story is very simple, but it seems to take people some time to admit what’s happening. Most online discussion features a few people who push back against the narrative and insist the character is speaking in metaphor or something, but, no, this is a song about someone drowning themselves and knowing “no one was gonna come and get me.”

There really isn’t much more to say than that. I’ve always been partial to it, as I am most of the album closing tracks, but it’s best not to look too closely at “In Corolla.” The band used to close live shows with it, briefly, which has given way to songs like “Spent Gladiator 2” in recent years. Be careful to come back to the shore, even when you feel like you want to keep walking.

251. Toolshed

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle digs into the supposedly hidden message in “Stairway to Heaven” in “Toolshed.”

Track: “Toolshed”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

In 1982, a televangelist claimed to have “deciphered” backwards messages in “Stairway to Heaven” that included the line “there was a little toolshed where the sad man made us suffer.” You’re probably familiar with this idea that rock songs have “secret” codes in them when played backwards. Led Zeppelin says it’s not true and you can listen for yourself to see how you feel about it.

The “toolshed” line gave birth to the Mountain Goats song “Toolshed” as a bonus track for Heretic Pride. It’s one of the darkest songs John Darnielle has even written. It seems to imagine what happened to the person who suffered in a little toolshed.

So many Mountain Goats songs speak of danger as something that’s potentially going to happen. There’s a great deal of darkness in the world of John Darnielle’s songs, but it rarely manifests the way it does in “Toolshed.” We don’t get the full answer, but it’s clear that these three characters endured some sort of abuse and were forever changed by it. “Secrets to keep // records to seal up” suggests something very grim, and “kittens weighed down with rocks” really drives the point home.

There’s just enough detail that we feel sick about what we’re imagining. The supposedly hidden message from “Stairway to Heaven” is the entire chorus and it’s odd and suggestive if you believe it exists in that song, but it’s so much more terrifying when you picture the people who experienced whatever happened in that toolshed going back to their lives.

249. Blues in Dallas

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

Leave it to a Mountain Goats character to think about themselves at Dealey Plaza in “Blues in Dallas.”

Track: “Blues in Dallas”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

There is an entire episode of the podcast I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats about each song on All Hail West Texas. The episode for “Blues in Dallas” opens with an extended discussion of the origin of spaghetti and spends a lot of time discussing translation and interpretation. In both his live show banter and his podcast appearances, John Darnielle happily wanders all over the place and you have to accept that as part of the experience. It’s a fascinating conversation, albeit one that doesn’t spend much time on “Blues in Dallas.”

Towards the end of the discussion, John Darnielle laughs at the convoluted path their conversation took and as acknowledgement to the supposed premise, he explains “Blues in Dallas” as a song about solitude and a narrator spending time in a dark place as they attempt to connect it to their own experience. “I am far from where we live,” they say, “and I have not learned how to forgive.” Dealey Plaza, the site of the lyrics, is where John F. Kennedy was killed, and I can relate to the narrator’s experience. If you’ve been there, but aren’t from there, the darkness feels both present and distant.

It’s also a Casio song. There’s been a lot said over the years about the keyboard songs, but this one benefits more than most as the sleepy melody behind the keys creates a wandering effect. John Darnielle says the difference between the guitar and the keyboard in this era is that he can punch the guitar and get more intense impact out of it, but the keyboard is the keyboard. You get a preset tone and you get some simple tones. That’s limiting, but it fits thematically with this narrator’s desire to focus and to be listened to as they contemplate.

248. Alpha in Tauris

Alex Russell Zopilote Machine , , , , , , , , ,

The Alpha Couple, or people much like them, find themselves in the moments after the fact in “Alpha in Tauris.”

Track: “Alpha in Tauris”
Album: Zopilote Machine (1994)

“The moment’s sweet, but it’s all wrong” is as close to a thesis statement for the Alpha Couple as you’ll find. Prior to Tallahassee, the album entirely about this couple, you can look at song titles to identify a song about these specific characters. You also have to look past some conflicting details, but the alpha songs are really about the emotions that go into difficult relationships rather than two specific people. John Darnielle says “Alpha in Tauris” is about one character having an affair with a much older character, which doesn’t seem to fit the rest of the Alpha Couple story, but why let that matter?

Whether this is part of that saga or not, “Alpha in Tauris” is thematically similar. John Darnielle has played it a lot over the years, especially for a song from 1994, and at a show in Austin in 2003 he simply said “it’s a true story.” We can assume he means it’s true for someone, but you can make of that what you wish. Whoever these characters are, they are in a tense moment when we find them. “I’m the model of composure out there,” our narrator says, and John Darnielle’s voice cracks over “but you oughta see me shaking later on.”

Many of the portrayals of infidelity in Mountain Goats songs focus on the cheaters and how they feel about their illicit love. “Alpha in Tauris” holds the camera on the moment after the “good” part. “My brain gets flooded six hours later,” they say, twice, and we live briefly in the moment when someone considers their actions. It isn’t clear if this is regret or just general anguish, but it seems like they want this all to be simpler, but might not appreciate it as much if that were the case.