john darnielle

225. Earth Air Water Trees

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A simple moment with sausage and cheese provides a view into two characters in “Earth Air Water Trees.”

Track: “Earth Air Water Trees”
Album: Tropical Depression EP (w/ Furniture Huschle) (1997)

One of the first songs John Darnielle ever wrote was “In the Cane Fields.” The folks who record when songs were played live can confirm it was played a few times in 1992, once in 2009 in Indiana, and once in 2019. At the 2019 show, John Darnielle talked about the origins of that song and his learning to play guitar after late shifts when he was tired.

I say all that as a way of introducing that 2009 show. For a certain type of fan, this show at Earlham College on the eastern border of Indiana is a kind of holy grail. You have the Indiana staple “Cutter,” the aforementioned “In the Cane Fields,” two songs from Moon Colony Bloodbath, and, as far as I can tell, the only confirmed performance of “Earth Air Water Trees.”

It’s a pretty song, which feels like an odd way to describe any Mountain Goats song. “I love you // I love you because // you gave me sausage and cheese // when I was hungry” is a simple comment, something an animal or a person could feel towards an animal or a person. The first verse tells us that this relationship isn’t perfect, as one character holds their love “like a bone on a string,” but our narrator feels a primal love and expresses it through this simple chorus.

I’m especially drawn to the phrasing of “I had a thousand guesses and some of them were good” in response to being asked to guess what’s in someone’s hands. This character really is invested in this small gesture and blows it into a larger love, though they know that it’s tenuous. We can only hope that it ends better than other songs suggest that it might.

224. Going to Hungary

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We are left to wonder what these characters have done and might do next in “Going to Hungary.”

Track: “Going to Hungary”
Album: Tropical Depression EP (w/ Furniture Huschle) (1997)

At the time of this writing, the Wikipedia page for “Lincoln Continental” is nearly 15,000 words long. It’s longer than the page about Jupiter. A tremendous amount of effort went into writing details about all 10 generations of the car and all of the specific details about how the body and chassis have changed over the years. Even with all of this information, I cannot unlock what John Darnielle wants the audience to know as he ends “Going to Hungary” with “we were heading straight to hell // in a Lincoln Continental.”

By my estimation, the purpose of this degree of specificity is the same as it is elsewhere in Mountain Goats songs. Very specific locations and details help a song feel real. These are two actual people and they actually are doing something, John Darnielle wants us to know. They sleep in a hotel room after not sleeping for several days. They put on extremely specific clothing. They leave. This could just be a snapshot of two lives that we see, and it definitely is that, but it’s so specific.

There are fewer than 100 words in “Going to Hungary.” It will likely take you a few listens to lock into, but once you do, there are a lot of questions to answer. What are these folks doing staying up for so long? We can find that answer in the type of people John Darnielle likes to talk about, but let’s not speculate. There’s never been anything said about this song and it’s never been played again, as far as I can tell, but even if there might be more to know, I think the joy is in the mystery for this one.

223. Anti-Music Song

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“Anti-Music Song” may not represent John Darnielle’s current musical views, but it’s still a fun curiosity.

Track: “Anti-Music Song”
Album: Tropical Depression EP (w/ Furniture Huschle) (1997)

“Anti-Music Song” is about a minute and a half long. It’s a “joke” song from the era where there were “joke” songs. You could call modern Mountain Goats songs like “Foreign Object” jokes, but the older albums and EPs have songs that are shorter and typically solely about the central joke of the thing.

It is hard to approach a song like this because there isn’t that much below the surface. John Darnielle won’t play “Anti-Music Song” live now and says he doesn’t agree with most of the goofs. You can do some digging and find commentary about who the “bad imitation” of Morrissey is or who the “imitation of an imitation of Jimi Hendrix” is, but what does it matter? John Darnielle has said most of these aren’t even his opinions anymore, thus the song is dead, thus it doesn’t matter beyond a footnote for what it meant at the time.

The most enduring element of “Anti-Music Song” is the final line. After slamming a half dozen people, directly or indirectly, the character says “and I don’t like you // I don’t like you.” It’s straightforward to the point of being notable. So many songs in the early days are about the world ending to signify how two people feel about each other or cooking as a representation for the final day of one’s life or a million other things that you really notice when someone just yells at another person. John Darnielle built on this all the way to the apotheosis of the idea on Tallahassee, and it’s fun to see the early, furious efforts in songs like this and “Cubs in Five.”

222. Nine Black Poppies

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“Nine Black Poppies” is the moment between the good times that are over and the explosion still to come.

Track: “Nine Black Poppies”
Album: Nine Black Poppies (1995)

It is easy to make broad statements about the Mountain Goats. This is a band that put out a shirt that just said “I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats” on it because they knew the way their audience processes their work. No one “likes” the Mountain Goats, they feel something more than that.

That said, I will lean into that impulse and say I don’t think there is a better thesis statement for the “early’ period than these two lines from “Nine Black Poppies:”

And I tried to remember how nice it had been a long, long time ago
But I couldn’t remember, I honestly could not remember

The song opens with one character saying they intended a nice gesture but then was overcome by this emotion. They grow increasingly uncomfortable and get closer and closer to the moment of confrontation. John Darnielle has said that it’s about characters that don’t trust each other, which is really clear as the situation escalates. In typical fashion, we don’t get enough specifics to fill in the gaps. The characters reference “a half-remembered conversation” and “the traces of an old song,” and we’re left to wonder what really happened here.

It doesn’t matter. The power of “Nine Black Poppies” is in the way John Darnielle’s voice cracks over “someone was changing // someone was changing from the inside out” and the panic that we feel as we consider our own version of this situation. A package from a specific part of China is all we get as a clue, but we don’t need to know. We’ve been there before and we’re back there again as this character turns around, somewhere after this song ends.

221. Chanson du Bon Chose

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In an early morning fit of activity and stress, two characters cling to each other in “Chanson du Bon Chose.”

Track: “Chanson du Bon Chose”
Album: Nine Black Poppies (1995)

I don’t have exact figures on this, but hundreds of Mountain Goats songs are in first person even though they aren’t about John Darnielle. This seems to be a difficult point to grasp, and it is easy to assume that the “I” in a song is the person singing. The narrator in “Chanson du Bon Chose,” translated (confusingly, though we lack the space to get into it) as “Song of the Good Thing,” is not John Darnielle. At a show in 2014 in Arizona, John Darnielle mused about the person he was when he wrote this song and what darkness was within that songwriter. You could ask that about so many of the early songs, but it’s especially appropriate in this case.

The characters in “Chanson du Bon Chose” are in a complex situation. The narrator says they are “waiting for something” and identifies their lover as sleeping in the living room. It’s 5:16 a.m., though we don’t know if that means today is starting early or continuing late for this character, and they ominously say “something was changing // there was something here entirely new.” The lyrics contain quotidian details, with water boiling on a stove as a classic representation of forward momentum. There’s an anxiety behind all of this. It’s a weird time to be awake, there are normal things happening but all at once, and these people are both troubled and hanging on to something.

There are so many songs frozen in this moment between two people, but what makes this one special is the performance. John Darnielle is not this character, but he sells them as someone fully realized in just a few minutes. “I am digging graves,” they nearly scream, and we feel the hairs on our arms prick up.

220. Cheshire County

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Even though we know exactly where “Cheshire County” takes place, mystery abounds.

Track: “Cheshire County”
Album: Nine Black Poppies (1995)

“I feel like people would like this… if only anyone could see it.” – Peter Hughes, on the final moments of “Cheshire County”

Cheshire is a county in England. Daniel Craig and Tim Curry are from there. Lewis Carroll named the Cheshire Cat after it. It’s also the namesake for a cheese that John Darnielle bought in California that caused him to consider what kind of cows made this cheese he liked so much.

For the Mountain Goats, that’s a lot of backstory to have for a song. That’s an explanation for why there’s a brief song about a cow on the album that has the angry “Cubs in Five” and the even angrier “Nine Black Poppies.” Peter Hughes gave the above quote in reference to nearly empty shows on a tour where he played the ending notes and felt fond of how the song turned out, even if no one was there to appreciate it.

Plenty of people appreciate it now. “Cheshire County” has been consistently played at live shows for decades now, but my favorite rendition comes after a furious version of “Family Happiness” where an audience member asks for “Going to Alabama.” John Darnielle confirms this song does not exist and then seems to get in a brief disagreement with the person about this solid fact. They go back and forth about other songs that may or may not exist and John Darnielle says “well, here” and then plays “Cheshire County.”

It’s just a brief song about a cow and about two people who see it. It doesn’t need to be more than that, but it does end with a repetition of “disappear” that feels ominous. The narrator says it’s “the remnants of last night” that disappear, but we’re left to wonder what that means to them.

219. Going to Utrecht

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The simple message of “Going to Utrecht” feels heightened through consistent urging from an isolated narrator.

Track: “Going to Utrecht”
Album: Nine Black Poppies (1995)

I’ve been to the Netherlands but I’ve never been to Utrecht. The Netherlands includes 12 provinces, of which the smallest is Utrecht. I’m not going to pretend to know anything about it. Apparently the only Dutch Pope is from Utrecht. The point is that you conjure something in your mind when you think of the Netherlands and “Going to Utrecht” should do the same thing for you, unless you have intimate knowledge of the province or city named Utrecht.

Earlier this year, John Darnielle performed “Going to Utrecht” in Utrecht. Someone yelled for it and he told them that he’d played the song the last time he was there and thought it was too obvious, but then played it again anyway. It’s a strong live song, but the performance doesn’t differ strongly from the version on Nine Black Poppies. The live version is usually solo and thus you miss the backing vocals, but mostly it’s the same driving, building tune.

John Darnielle also says this is a true story. In April of 1995 the Mountain Goats toured Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and it’s entirely possible that this song comes from an experience he had during that stop in Utrecht. The lyrics are straightforward, but there’s a lot of emotion tied into the repetition of “I couldn’t believe it” and “with my own eyes.” It’s him and it’s not him, but really it’s anyone who has felt physically isolated from someone that they were, in some way, right there with, anyway.

218. Cubs in Five

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The impossible becoming possible does not dull the message of “Cubs in Five.”

Track: “Cubs in Five”
Album: Nine Black Poppies (1995)

“Well, I’m free of all that now; there’s a lot of unlikely stuff that’d have to happen before I’d ever dive back into that radiant, glowing, magnificent ocean of high highs and hurt feelings.” – John Darnielle, about the creation of “Cubs in Five”

This quote that John Darnielle said in an interview with Slate is a lie. It’s true that he said it, but he said that he knew that he was kidding himself. This love story is the central joke in “Cubs in Five,” after a list of things that are unlikely or impossible. “I will love you again,” John Darnielle and Peter Hughes say, “I will love you, like I used to.”

The Cubs won the World Series. I live in Chicago and I lived here when that happened. I’m not much for baseball but even I understood the significance when it happened. Prior to it happening it seemed impossible, which is something many people feel about snakebit sports teams, but this one really might be the top of the list. Then it happened.

The song doesn’t lose anything by that happening. Tampa Bay also won a Super Bowl, which the song also suggests would be impossible, and that doesn’t matter either. What matters is that in the moment the song details, the narrator tried to come up with a list of things that seemed actually impossible and they centered their list with two things: the Cubbies winning everything and this love coming back. They both ain’t happening, and the certainty of the former helps you understand the certainty of the latter.

The power behind the sentiment (and the droning guitar) is what matters. There is so much powerful language in Mountain Goats songs, but never is someone trying to make a point more emphatically than this.

214. Commandante

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The bouncy, exciting “Commandante” hides dark ends with one last singalong for the road.

Track: “Commandante”
Album: Devil in the Shortwave (2002)

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of Mountain Goats songs about two anxious, furious people who feel that their situation is important, dire, and ending. Depending on what point in the timeline we meet those people, John Darnielle tells their story differently. By the early 2000s, the couple gained a name as The Alpha Couple. It is a point of debate, though clearly ridiculous debate, whether any two people who fight and hate as much as they love are The Alpha Couple or just two other people feeling the same way. There’s enough commentary from John Darnielle that we can infer that not every couple in every song is the same one, of course, and that the feelings are just universal enough that we think it’s the same folks going through the same pain.

These aren’t the famous ones, I don’t think. These are just two people who sound deceptively happy if you don’t listen to the lyrics. John Darnielle clearly has fun on “Commandante,” with the howling chorus and the scream-along-ready line of “I am never going back to Cincinnati,” which, incidentally, went over like gangbusters in Cincinnati in 2013. The studio version is fast and peaks in the right places, but live shows like that really sell it. You can hear the foot stomps from the crowd and the individual folks in the audience that put their own meaning into sailing through the night sky like a pair of bottle rockets.

These two are already at the end. Threats to drink more whiskey than a famous Irish alcoholics and vague mentions of grievances and great big secrets are really obvious signs that not all is well. But John Darnielle reminds us with the melody that the end sometimes feels fun, right before you get there.

 

213. Handball

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“I did not come to play handball,” a narrator insists in “Handball,” and the menace is the point.

Track: “Handball”
Album: Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

“You’ll get nothing from me, do you hear? Nothing! Anything I know about this odd little song will go with me to the grave.” – Liner notes for “Handball” on Protein Source of the Future…Now!

John Darnielle has written hundreds of songs, but none of them like “Handball.” The first verse is four loose lines from Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. The rest is the line “I did not come to play handball.” That is 100% of “Handball.”

There have been countless attempts to understand and debate the meaning of these songs. “Handball” is baffling in that the two verses aren’t connected in any obvious way, but it’s also very clear if one assumes that disconnect is the point. “I kill a man on the day his life seems sweetest to him” would be a Mountain Goats line if it weren’t something else already, so the choice to use the lines in the first verse is clear. How does that connect to any one of the multiple sports called handball?

John Darnielle wrote the lyrics down and asked a studio full of people to sing it with him on a radio performance in Chicago in 2002. At a show years later, he called that performance “creepy for the sake of being creepy.” All of this suggests that trying to dig into “Handball” may be an attempt to look for things that aren’t there.

I once made a fellow Mountain Goats fan a shirt with a clip art handball player and the phrase “I did not come to play handball” on it. The point of the shirt was that a fellow Goats fan would understand, but understand what? I can’t explain it, but I feel like once you get that, you get all of this.