john darnielle

211. Ox Baker Triumphant

Alex Russell Babylon Springs EP , , , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle sings a song for the bad guy in all of us in “Ox Baker Triumphant.”

Track: “Ox Baker Triumphant”
Album: Babylon Springs EP (2006)

Wrestling’s story involves the same beats as every other kind, but it benefits from more black and white narratives than other types of performance. The “heels” of wrestling often have to be very obvious to get an idea across quickly to an audience.

Ox Baker was a heel who punched people in the heart. You only need to hear one Ox Baker promo to understand him. He hates you and the goodness you represent, and he’s here to punch everyone who stands in the way of his dominance. When John Darnielle introduces “Ox Baker Triumphant” he often talks about the power of that idea. Ox Baker isn’t here to set up a complicated battle between good and evil and he isn’t here to win you over. He wants to punch your good guy in the heart. You don’t really get more to the point.

“Ox Baker Triumphant” is exactly what it says on the label. Ox Baker has been betrayed by the world he loves and he is here to get revenge on everyone and everything. Given what we know about Ox, we can assume he saw this coming. He demands that the others click their heels in a mock attempt to go home before yelling “I bet you never expected me!”

Darnielle’s soaring delivery on the studio version and the blown-out fury on most live versions accomplish the same thing. We get a sense that Ox Baker is done with all this and that his retribution is well-deserved. For all the time the good guys will get in later Goats songs, “Ox Baker Triumphant” reminds us why we love to watch the moments when people get pushed to their limits. It doesn’t really matter what he came to do in the first place, now it’s his time to shine.

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.

207. Third Snow Song

Alex Russell Philyra, Protein Source of the Future...Now! , , , , , ,

A lone character bangs a key against an icy bridge in a statement about what it’s like to live in the cold in “Third Snow Song.”

Track: “Third Snow Song”
Album: Philyra (1994) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

At a show in Florida in 1998, John Darnielle played “Third Snow Song” on request. He dedicated it to anyone who has lived “in snow” and told the Tallahassee crowd to thank “whatever forces control your life” that they don’t have to experience multiple feet of snow. What’s more, after he finished the song, he asked the requester if they only asked for it because it’s an obscure song.

At the time, the only way to know “Third Snow Song” would be to have a copy of Philyra. Here in 2019 a copy will cost you about $30 USD, but there’s no telling how hard it would have been in 1998. John Darnielle mentioned that he didn’t even have one. It was re-released on the compilation Protein Source of the Future…Now! the next year and obviously, now, it’s everywhere online, but it makes one wonder what that person wanted from this song in 1998 in Florida.

It’s a short song with some catchy guitar. The into is toe-tapping and John Darnielle’s voice is upbeat. His character walks down Broadway in Portland and scrapes ice off the bridge with an old key. The goal seems to be to read the bridge’s dedication plaque. I’m unable to find what it says, but it doesn’t feel like it’s critical to the song. The character may or may not care, but given what we know about John Darnielle’s time in Portland, it’s more likely that they just needed a goal, however arbitrary.

If you’ve ever lived somewhere with lots of snow, you can sympathize with the feeling of trying to bang snow and ice off of something. You can feel yourself against a huge structure and the larger world as the cold makes you feel like the world itself is out to get you.

206. Going to Maryland

Alex Russell Beautiful Rat Sunset , , , , , , ,

One character explores craps betting as a stand-in for the difficulties of a relationship in “Going to Maryland.”

Track: “Going to Maryland”
Album: Beautiful Rat Sunset (1994)

There are hundreds of different locations across Mountain Goats songs. The geographic mentions often ground otherwise general songs in the specific, allowing the listener to imagine themselves in the open English countryside or the mysterious political workings of an ancient civilization. How you read the location changes based on who, and where, you are. If you’re from Maryland, what does it mean to be “Going to Maryland?”

Locals apparently generally add the article “the” to Chesapeake Bay. John Darnielle isn’t from Maryland, which explains the absence of “the” in the line “and your eyes shine tonight on Chesapeake Bay.” I’m not local either and have never noticed it before, but it’s interesting what even small shifts in language tell us. Everyone’s home has those nuances, like how the contraction “ya’ll” rather than “y’all” serves as a sign that someone may not be used to using it or whether you use pop or soda to refer to a fizzy drink may identify where you were born.

This obviously isn’t central to the understanding of the song, but it serves as a springboard to talk about a live performance of “Going to Maryland” at the legendary CBGB in New York. John Darnielle changes the line that follows “five dollars says that it’s gone in a minute” from “five dollars says that your heart goes with it” to “five dollars more says my chances went with it.” The original version is slow and the gambling references through the lyrics feel sorrowful, but the live version drives much quicker and feels desperate. The shift is small, but it changes how you feel about the speaker. Are these people in love or this a different kind of relationship?

205. Song for Mark and Joel

Alex Russell Beautiful Rat Sunset , , , , , ,

“Song for Mark and Joel” is for Mark and Joel, but it’s also for that creeping dread you try to avoid.

Track: “Song for Mark and Joel”
Album: Beautiful Rat Sunset (1994)

The Mark and Joel of “Song for Mark and Joel” are Mark Givens and Joel Huschle of Wckr Spgt, a band that’s closely associated with the Mountain Goats. John Darnielle gets a specific mention on the “other artists” page of their website. It says that John Darnielle and Peter Hughes are “really doing wonders in the world of rock and roll,” which you may assume I agree with based on the whole point of this thing.

I haven’t listened to much Wckr Spgt, but it’s easy to see how John Darnielle fell in love. One of their recent albums includes a song called “Skin, the First Line of Defense.” That really says it all.

When John Darnielle plays “Song for Mark and Joel” he often says some variant of “this is a song I wrote for Mark and Joel and it is called ‘Song for Mark and Joel.'” It’s a dry comment, but it says a lot about the man that wrote a song for two friends in 1994 and may not have imagined he’d be playing it for hundreds of people night after night twenty-five years later.

The opening lyrics describe a natural setting. It’s pure early Mountain Goats: a bird (not a robin, but close) sits on a branch and a narrator feels a vaguely troubling sensation. By the second verse our narrator is in a room full of maps. Quickly, they tell us about a sense of cold and begin “pondering connections.” John Darnielle doesn’t give us enough to decipher what’s happening, but it ends up being a powerful sensation all the same. We’ve all felt that menace in the air and by leaving it general, it works for whatever causes that feeling in your bones.

204. New Star Song

Alex Russell Beautiful Rat Sunset , , , , , ,

During a train delay in Redding, Washington, the narrator in “New Star Song” takes in local culture.

Track: “New Star Song”
Album: Beautiful Rat Sunset (1994)

If you have thirty-five hours, you can get from Los Angeles to Seattle on the Coast Starlight passenger train. If you do this, you’ll make 28 stops and spend some time in Redding, California. You’ll wait in the same place that John Darnielle waited decades ago on a similar trip for a likely much different purpose.

It’s uncharacteristic that John Darnielle offered up as much as he did about “New Star Song,” but in 1998 he mentioned that it’s slightly autobiographical. “Slightly” is doing a lot of work there, but he did wait in Redding and watch four movies, seemingly waiting for his evening train. The similarities between the narrator and songwriter end there, but it’s telling that Beautiful Rat Sunset imagines a character waiting there through lightning storms, thinking about “things that I thought that I’d soon be forgetting.”

The strumming on “New Star Song” is angry, even for an early 90s Mountain Goats song. It opens with a clang and doubles down with a handful of furious beats over John Darnielle’s wailing “I thought about how cold you must be!” It lends itself to live performance, as many of the angry-without-being-violent ones do from this era, and as such has been played dozens of times over the years. Most versions stay true to the original and focus on the chorus and the delivery of those lines about someone else, far away, and how they must feel. Our narrator is in a hot, hostile place and they’re hanging pictures of someone everywhere. Typically that’s a sign that someone is lost, but it seems just as likely that this is a grand gesture that’s part of an ill-fated trip.

203. Itzcuintli-Totzli Days

Alex Russell Beautiful Rat Sunset , , , , , ,

“Itzuintli-Totzli Days” spends a sing-song (possibly) happy moment with a rabbit and a dear friend.

Track: “Itzcuintli-Totzli Days”
Album: Beautiful Rat Sunset (1994)

The Mountain Goats played “Itzcuintli-Totzli Days” at least twice in 1997. At one show, John Darnielle asked the audience to sing along with him in the spirit of the song’s intention. At the other show, John Darnielle opened the show with it and called it an “old song.”

People tape Mountain Goats shows and put them up online just like they do for so many other bands. This allows us to follow a partial history which we know is incomplete. There may be dozens of other recordings or unrecorded instances of “Itzcuintli-Totzli Days” out there, but those two sum it up perfectly. It’s a happy, bouncing song that even unfamiliar fans can sing along with by the end. “Let the big, big rabbit come out,” John Darnielle demands, and the crowd sings along.

The title comes from terms the Aztecs used for “dog” and “rabbit,” which represented specific elements of their calendar. The dog stood for death and the memory of the dead, while the rabbit stood for brighter moments of fertility and spirituality. The Mountain Goats dance between those two emotions frequently, but it’s rare that they do so gleefully. The day gets dark towards the end of “Itzcuintli-Totzli Days,” but the narrator is still thrilled to spend this time with someone. It’s more uplifting than we’ve come to expect, especially on an album that ends with the chilling “Resonant Bell World.” Your best bet is to sing along and beat back the darkness with a smile as you stave off the coming bad times, especially while you’ve got someone to hold your hand.

202. Song for Cleomenes

Alex Russell Beautiful Rat Sunset , , , , , ,

John Darnielle goes deep into history to tell the story of a very specific, very evil trick in “Song for Cleomenes.”

Track: “Song for Cleomenes”
Album: Beautiful Rat Sunset (1994)

In San Francisco in 2001, John Darnielle played his cover of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” He ended the song and the crowd shouted requests from all across the catalog. Darnielle told the crowd to keep the requests coming, as he wasn’t confident about any of the remaining songs on his set list.

He played nine more songs, most of them safe picks that you might still hear at a show today. He started that list, however, with the ultra rare “Song for Cleomenes.” I can’t find any other recordings of it, though it seems he’s played it other times. This rendition is only vaguely like the studio version on Beautiful Rat Sunset, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the same driving, terrifying guitar, punctuated by screams as the crowd learns the story of Gaius Verres.

The song tells you all you need to know: Gaius Verres was a horrible criminal who abused his civic power for his own gain. Cicero destroyed him in court and he had to leave town, largely on the testimony of the boat-burning trickery in the song.

People seem to delight in finding inaccuracies in the historical songs, but that seems to miss the point. The live version is slightly clearer than the studio version about what happens in the end and editorializes more about Cicero’s prose, but the differences don’t matter. It’s about the joy John Darnielle clearly finds in telling a story that most people won’t know, but ultimately relating it. Two characters, you and the narrator, end up on a beach watching boats on fire. It’s surprising to find yourself in the song, and it makes you wonder what you were doing in 73 BC.