kaki king

395. Roger Patterson Van

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With a seeming difference between the music and lyrics, “Roger Patterson Van” memorializes a musician who passed on.

Track: “Roger Patterson Van”
Album: Black Pear Tree EP (2008)

Roger Patterson was the bassist for a band called Atheist. He died in car accident right as the band was picking up steam, it seems, though I’ll confess I’m not very familiar with Atheist. I’ve tried to piece together what happened from the fan pages and the memorials, but the most helpful pieces are not in the style of police reports but the videos of Patterson playing. I encourage you to dig around yourself. His death is a tragedy, but there’s joy in trying to learn about these figures that John Darnielle is interested in. So much of his art, especially lately, has been about elevating figures that his audience might not know about. I may be representing my own experience, but metal and goth music are not my usual fare.

The tune was one Kaki King was playing as an instrumental that John Darnielle added lyrics to as a memorial for Roger Patterson. There are a lot of memorials in the catalog, but this one is downright jaunty. The construction explains why this sounds like it does, but really, does a memorial need to sound sad? “Nothing left inside now // nothing left to do // empty out the empties // half this stuff belongs to you” is a really incredible description of the physical steps left over after the emotional ones, so even though it’s in the middle of a bouncy, elaborate song, does that change how you take it? I’ve always been fond of this one, even with no connection to the subject. It’s a valuable lesson in the ways we think of grief and the many forms it can take.

394. Bring Our Curses Home

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“Bring Our Curses Home” finds John Darnielle singing in deeply sad tones about what happens around, and after, a hurricane.

Track: “Bring Our Curses Home”
Album: Black Pear Tree EP (2008)

You want to avoid the obvious when you listen to the Mountain Goats. “Golden Jackal Song” is not about a jackal, and so on. When you hear a song about raining and hiding out in the Superdome, you want to push back on the Hurricane Katrina suggestion, but I don’t think you can do that with “Bring Our Curses Home.” This seems to, indeed, be about the crushing, impossible to truly fathom, hurricane that demolished so much of the coastal Southern United States. I searched it just to check the timeline here and Google’s predicted question is “why was Hurricane Katrina so bad?” I think that’s a pretty fair question and one that has a complicated answer.

In some ways, though, it’s really not that complicated. The government failed to respond to a disaster with true disaster relief, which disillusioned a lot of people who saw things differently after they saw a base expectation not met. If this is about Katrina (and I don’t see how it couldn’t be, though I’d love to have totally misunderstood something this badly) then we see people swimming through a pharmacy first and then getting arrested later. This is the ridiculousness of it all, to arrest someone at the end of the world. John Darnielle describes a “mad scramble” for shoes from two cities he lived in (Los Angeles and/or Portland) and, like everything else, they got wet. It’s not what you’d immediately call a political song, but explore the nooks and crannies. Picture not just what’s happening, but what the aftermath entails.

393. Mosquito Repellent

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John Darnielle and Kaki King give into the darkness with “Mosquito Repellent.”

Track: “Mosquito Repellent”
Album: Black Pear Tree EP (2008)

Kaki King wrote the music for “Mosquito Repellent,” which is unusual even for a collaboration song. It’s darker than most of the other fare and that grew out of King’s music that John Darnielle had to find lyrics for. He apparently heard the tune and got in this headspace and pictured a character that embraces their own darkness. He’s talked before about how this kind of character is less interesting to him as he’s grown and matured, but it’s the kind of person we hear from in “Standard Bitter Love Song #8.” That one is mad that someone is skating with someone else, this one’s troubles may be deeper and they may not be, that’s not really the point.

This isn’t healthy. No one who says they “hope the bad guys win” is meant to seem healthy, but it’s a relatable situation all the same. A lot of Mountain Goats narrators are a lot harder to empathize with than most narrators in songs, but it rarely gets this dark. “Mosquito Repellent” is certainly notable for that jam behind the lyrics, but the high notes that Darnielle hits and the crashing anger towards the end are what really sell it. All of the Kaki King songs are unique, but this is probably the high point of the Black Pear Tree EP for anyone who is in this very specific, hopefully temporary, mood.

295. Black Pear Tree

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“Black Pear Tree” is about a near-death experience and how you picture it when you’re in the moment.

Track: “Black Pear Tree”
Album: Black Pear Tree EP (2008)

John Darnielle wrote “Black Pear Tree” when he thought he was about to die of a heart attack in Sweden. The doctor told him that he needed to let go of the feeling that he had to pay for past crimes. Can you imagine hearing that from a doctor? We’d all like to hear that our problems are not physical, sure, but what do you do with those instructions?

I once thought I was having a heart attack in the middle of the day, watching a movie I didn’t enjoy. It turned out to be nothing, but I had the same experience John Darnielle writes about here, where you suspect you are about to hear final news and then you don’t. “I saw the future in a dream last night,” he says, but also “there’s nothing in it.”

I’ve seen “Black Pear Tree” live four times, both with Kaki King and without. She brings a tremendous amount to the entire Black Pear Tree EP, and her vocals really change the experience of the title track. Both are excellent, but John Darnielle’s voice coming in as background vocals lends to the impact. He lived, as he thought he might not, and he reemerges as a voice behind the story of how he might not have. There are a lot of Mountain Goats songs that get close to these ideas, but few that end with “someday I am going to walk out of here free” that really, sincerely, definitely mean it.

259. Supergenesis

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We hear from the serpent on what happened after the fall in “Supergenesis.”

Track: “Supergenesis”
Album: Black Pear Tree EP (2008)

A. K. M. Adam, a Biblical scholar at Oxford University, wrote a lengthy paper in 2011 about John Darnielle’s use of religious symbols. It’s the kind of thing that any Mountain Goats fan should be in awe of, not just for the scope but for the origin of it. This is a scholar, someone who has dedicated their life’s work to this subject, that feels it is important to spend a lot of time digging through Mountain Goats songs.

He spends some time on “Supergenesis,” from the 2008 collaboration between the Mountain Goats and Kaki King. The song is about the Biblical serpent from Genesis and what happens after the snake is forced from Eden. The paper is worth reading for far more than that, but Adam calls out specifically that the “battle plan” this snake is waiting to enact and the judgement it feels is so unfair are both about God. I suppose that’s obvious, but it really makes you contend with what is happening in “Supergenesis.”

The Mountain Goats toured with Kaki King around the release of Black Pear Tree and played much of the EP most nights. Live, “Supergenesis” often became a sprawling jam where Kaki King opened up for minutes at a time. It’s worth checking a few of those out, because the message of the song is striking once you reckon with the scale of the conflict, but the guitar is really what makes “Supergenesis” something to get lost in.