love song

293. New Monster Avenue

Alex Russell Get Lonely , , , , , , , , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN18tLSdPdQ

An actual monster is different than a figurative one, and “New Monster Avenue” asks us to take the monster’s side.

Track: “New Monster Avenue”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

Get Lonely started as an album about monsters, at least more literally than it ended up being. The finished product is pretty clearly a breakup album, though you can get into some fights with folks depending on how insistently you believe that. “New Monster Avenue” was the first song written for Get Lonely and thus keeps the monster theme more directly than the rest. The character is a monster, sure, but they’re someone we’re meant to sympathize with and to feel for their plight. This isn’t an unfamiliar position for John Darnielle to take, and he frequently introduces the song by talking about how he’s pro-monster.

John Darnielle sings all of “New Monster Avenue” high, but by the final verse he’s as high as he can possibly go. The delivery of “fresh coffee at sunrise” plays with what’s a pleasant image to most of us. The narrator of “Half Dead,” the song that directly follows “New Monster Avenue,” has a cup of coffee when they wake up, too. Neither of these characters is comforted by this moment. John Darnielle wants us to feel like the monster on the outskirts of town that the townsfolk fear and want to destroy. Even the morning pleasantries we rely on aren’t a given if everyone has branded you a monster.

We leave “New Monster Avenue” at the climax. The townsfolk are there with torches, which is always the fear if you’re the monster. All of Get Lonely is about not being able to relate to people and about how that can deepen your already deep fears, but “New Monster Avenue” is from a unique perspective. This monster is just trying to live. Not every Get Lonely narrator is this unambiguously right.

201. Design Your Own Container Garden

Alex Russell See America Right , , , , , , , , ,

One half of the Alpha Couple reflects on different, if not happier times, in “Design Your Own Container Garden.”

Track: “Design Your Own Container Garden”
Album: See America Right (2002)

A container garden is any garden in a pot or a container. It’s a way to describe anywhere a plant could be grown other than the ground. It’s a stretch, but the phrase “Design Your Own Container Garden” might refer to the Alpha Couple, who have uprooted themselves from the west coast and relocated to their miserable future in Florida. It might also just be a phrase John Darnielle saw in a catalog, thus a similar play on “See America Right,” the title of the single the song exists on.

The narrator drives out to a specific intersection in Los Angeles. As of this writing, it features a fried chicken chain restaurant, a check cashing place, and a storage center. The details don’t matter, but the specificity helps us picture that this corner matters. We have those in our lives, too. This member of the Alpha Couple doesn’t care about LA, they care about what happened when they were in this spot.

They mention “old friends, old friends” and later call them “here ghosts, old ghosts.” You can’t go home again, John Darnielle tells us again and again, but you can wander around where home used to be and feel the feelings that are left behind. “Design Your Own Container Garden” is filled with death imagery, as the narrator talks about feeling like a buzzard and walking through wreckage. It’s the “space we left behind” to this character, and it’s clearly not something they view positively now. It makes sense to be a b-side because it doesn’t fit tonally with Tallahassee, but it’s also interesting to wonder when in the timeline we are. Is this after everything, or does this character already feel sad even though they don’t know the worst of what’s to come?

151. New Chevrolet in Flames

Alex Russell See America Right , , , , , , , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFHT4YQd3JU

The Alpha Couple has some fun in suspect ways in “New Chevrolet in Flames.”

Track: “New Chevrolet in Flames”
Album: See America Right (2002)

A fan asked John Darnielle why he never plays “New Chevrolet in Flames” at live shows. The response was simple. John Darnielle says that it is a b-side and isn’t as good as anything on Tallahassee and that the studio version says all he has to say about it.

I’m not a musician, but “New Chevrolet in Flames” sounds a lot like “Alphabetizing,” a song from 1993. If they’re different at all it’s not in a way that I can determine. It’s possible that’s deliberate and it’s possible that it’s just a function of John Darnielle writing ~1000 songs in nearly three decades and not caring about the similarities between one of his ancient tracks and a b-side.

Lyrically, “New Chevrolet in Flames” is more complex than “Alphabetizing” and strikes a different tone than its brothers and sisters on Tallahassee. It’s funny and shies away from the desperation that comes across directly on “funny” songs like “No Children.” It’s a weird song, as it looks at the Alpha Couple in one of their lighter moments. They drink Colorado Bulldogs (and tell you how to make your own in the first verse) and decide to buy a car while wearing their finest threads.

As they light the car on fire and either stay in it or leave, depending on how darkly you view the song, they probably experience some kind of relief. It has to be a gleeful moment for two people who fairly relentlessly don’t experience glee. It comes from a terrible place, but it’s a fun moment when you don’t consider the consequences. It’s hard to not love that moment if you’re able to abstract it.

127. Half Dead

Alex Russell Get Lonely , , , , , , , , , ,

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13XKCyzj4Eg

“Half Dead” is there for you when you need it, though you definitely don’t ever want to need it.

Track: “Half Dead”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

Get Lonely is about solitude and the emotions that accompany it. It’s a fragile album that is unlikely to connect with you if you listen to it in a good mood. “If You See Light” is the closest to an “upbeat” song on the album, even though you’ll see couples swaying peacefully to “Woke Up New” at live shows. John Darnielle says he’s surprised that people say the album is about a breakup, but that seems to be the general consensus. A breakup is the most obvious and repeatable way loneliness shows up for most people. The songs on Get Lonely aren’t all directly about a breakup, but they’re about how you feel when someone (or everyone) is gone.

A lot of the early catalog looks at antagonistic lovers or conflict between unknown parties, but Get Lonely looks at the aftermath. It’s not totally new ground for the band, but John Darnielle really lets his guard down all across Get Lonely. “Wild Sage” in particular is chilling and absolutely the best song at every live show because you can feel how much he loves it. Get Lonely is a nice bridge between the autobiographical The Sunset Tree and the explosive Heretic Pride, but you need to be open to approach it.

“Half Dead” is about someone being gone. It’s a straightforward song about the morning someone you love and need is no longer there for you. They may be dead or they may be just gone, but there’s a totality to “Half Dead” that makes the distinction not important. The narrator goes outside and wails “what are the years we gave each other ever gonna be worth?” In a different tone or a different song that might be an angry line, but here it feels like an admission of defeat.

112. So Desperate

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

“So Desperate” freezes the frame on two people doing something taboo without calling it right or wrong.

Track: “So Desperate”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

“So Desperate” is about an affair. There are lots of songs in the catalog that are open for debate, but this one is so direct that you can’t miss the subject matter. When introducing songs about infidelity, John Darnielle often makes an appeal to the people in the crowd to think about the situations featured in the song and their personal experience. He doubles down on this in the press kit for Heretic Pride: “Odds are that somebody reading this knows exactly what I mean and feels a little uncomfortable reading about it: 2:1.”

Infidelity is a favorite topic of the Goats, but it’s interesting to see how it’s used. Storytelling across film and literature and everything else uses infidelity as a signal that characters are bad (only bad people cheat) or that love between two people is forbidden and true (they love each other so much they have to cheat) and it’s usually up to the storyteller which of the two motivations is at play. Darnielle doesn’t want to weigh in. These people might feel what they’re doing is wrong, but our only clues in the lyrics are feelings of sadness and the title/chorus: “I felt so desperate in your arms.”

Desperation, like infidelity, seems to be a solely negative thing until you break it down. Darnielle isn’t arguing that this is actually a good situation and that this is love, he’s just asking you to look at a time when you were in this space and see what you think of it. Mountain Goats characters often act selfishly or impulsively, but they aren’t cruel. These lovers are just out here in a car, for now, and whatever else that means back home is for another day.

067. Going to Scotland

Alex Russell Nothing for Juice , , , , , , , , ,

For now the two lovers in “Going to Scotland” tear their clothes off and ignore the signs of worse things to come.

Track: “Going to Scotland”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

What is a “love song” in the parlance of the Mountain Goats? Does Tallahassee have any love songs, given that the couple is disintegrating through alcohol and hate? Is “Fault Lines” a love song if the couple doesn’t want to be in love anymore? Does “love song” need to be restricted to songs like “02-75” and “There Will Be No Divorce” where John Darnielle has strictly described them as such?

I believe in a loose construction of “love song” and I believe that “Going to Scotland” is about as good as they come. In a lesser band’s hands, “and I loved you so much it was making me sick” would be a disgusting line, but coming from the foot-stomping, hard-strumming John Darnielle it is wonderful. The song is dense for a love song, but you will be rewarded if you listen closely. Lines like “new-found rich brown deep wet ground” take a few listens to parse.

Rachel Ware, the original bassist and backup vocalist of the Goats, adds a layer of complexity and a second character. This really is an “us” both in characters and in delivery. They both view their situation and their feelings the same way. The couple left Oklahoma for Scotland just as they left whatever their previous life was for a life together. Their eventual reward will be the darkness that the “pack of wild dogs” in the chorus is sure to bring, but for now they are rending garments and making furious love in the mud. They’re tossing luggage into the water and living in the moment as few do, and the song cherishes that moment where passionate lovers are able to ignore their fated end.