love songs

347. Send Me an Angel

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , , ,

Despite the roses and chocolate, the two lovers in “Send Me an Angel” are not headed for a romantic day.

Track: “Send Me an Angel”
Album: Sweden (1995)

John Darnielle played “Send Me an Angel” in 2002 at The Empty Bottle in Chicago. It’s a very good version of the song and worth hearing. The ending repetition of “roses” over and over becomes extra haunting in this version and you really get a lot of time to wonder exactly what these characters are talking about and exactly what happened to lead to these competing ideas of roses and chocolate in a foreboding morning scene. Immediately after it, John Darnielle says “this is a love song” and plays “Jenny.”

Depending on the setting and the time period, John Darnielle may offer up explanation of a song or of a mood or something else. His stage banter is legendary and we could fill a book with great moments. This particular one goes uncommented on and is interesting to me only because of that fact. John Darnielle had to be in the right headspace to sell the very sad, wavering repetition at the end of “Send Me an Angel” and then shift gears into the pretty sweet, somewhat funny, “Jenny.” What was in his mind during that transition? What does he think about “Send Me an Angel?”

We don’t have much to go on, but it’s one of the sadder moments on Sweden. This is a song about the moment before the explosion. With just the lyrics, you could almost find it sweet. The vocals tell you otherwise, as a hushed John Darnielle sets us up to expect the worst even though the gifts make it seem like a happy occasion.

346. Sept 19th Triple X Love! Love!

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , , ,

Formalities abound in “Sept 19th Triple X Love! Love!” as a character tries to remember a long-past time of love.

Track: “Sept 19th Triple X Love! Love!”
Album: Sweden (1995)

“Sept 19th Triple X Love! Love!” seems to me to be an indecipherable title. I’m sure it means something and it’s possible that it means something obvious that people have figured out and it’s just me. John Darnielle once said, before playing it live, that he couldn’t even pronounce the title. My best guess is that John Darnielle saw it on a sign somewhere and couldn’t determine the meaning, making it perfect for a strange song in the middle of an album called Sweden.

This is supposedly a sort of sister song to “The Recognition Scene,” the best (or second-best) song on Sweden. The title of the sister song is direct and has been frequently explained as the moment in a story that everyone realizes what is going to happen. “The Recognition Scene” imagines a moment where the ending is clear but has not yet arrived, which is a very familiar scene for Mountain Goats characters. “Sept 19th Triple X Love! Love!” finds a similar moment, but less directly clear. One character cuts down a tree at the command of another, but they think back to another time and a memory. “When you touched me I felt fire come through,” they say, but this is about another day. Here, in the present, we are performing necessary tasks and following directions. We only realize this as a sadness when contrasted with another moment.

345. Flashing Lights

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , , ,

Leaving town is a metaphor and an actual plan in “Flashing Lights.”

Track: “Flashing Lights”
Album: Sweden (1995)

There are very few songs in the Mountain Goats catalog that describe uncomplicated, positive love. Usually, characters feel great, powerful, drawing force towards each other that sometimes resembles love, but it usually comes with months or years of creeping contempt and dread. That’s just how narrators are in John Darnielle’s world, though that is becoming less and less true in the “modern era” of the Mountain Goats.

Just as these folks are rarely purely in love, they are rarely directly antagonistic. It’s not uncommon for a song to show us a relationship on the downswing, but we generally don’t see it too far along that curve. “Flashing Lights” is a rare song in that way. “You swear you’re leaving town,” one says to the other, but “empty promises // empty promises,” they amend.

Every song on Sweden has a Swedish “subtitle” in the liner notes. The line for “Flashing Lights” is simply “the coldest winter.” There are other songs where people physically fight or songs where people hurl crueler barbs than this one, but it really is powerful to hear one person tell another that they swore they’d leave but they didn’t. It’s very much within John Darnielle’s wheelhouse to have that character stay as long as the other does, however. Our narrator asks the other one why they haven’t left, but we infer from that they also aren’t leaving. “Why haven’t you left” is a question that reflects back on the speaker, telling us this story isn’t over even if they say it is.

344. Deianara Crush

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , , , ,

One lover tells another about what happened to Hercules and what it means for them in “Deianara Crush.”

Track: “Deianara Crush”
Album: Sweden (1995)

Deianira, or Deianara, or any number of other spellings of the same name, was Hercules’ wife. As you can somewhat gather from “Deianara Crush,” Hercules died burning in a flaming shirt. The full story tells us that Deianira wanted to ensure that Hercules would be eternally faithful to her and a trickster centaur assured her that mixing his blood with olive oil would do just that. It did, in a sense, as a shirt with this concoction on it burned Hercules forever, which killed him. It wasn’t what she had in mind, but it did, in fact, end his ability to run around on her.

“Deianara Crush” finds two people thinking about this myth and what it means. One tells the other how Hercules died and the other says “that’s something I’d rather not be reminded of.” As with other songs from Sweden, John Darnielle’s vocals are especially on point with some signature whine on the vowels in “Hercules,” but it’s the finality of the last line that really sells the song. We don’t spend a lot of time with these two and we don’t get any concrete details that tell us how we got here, but what a scene we do get. Imagine your partner, silent for a time, then saying your name in a unique way, only to give way to a story about how, in chasing a perfect love, a mythical figure destroyed the greatest hero of all time. You can draw many things from this moment and the meaning behind it, none of them good.

343. Some Swedish Trees

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle and Rachel Ware really sell the feeling of “Some Swedish Trees.”

Track: “Some Swedish Trees”
Album: Sweden (1995)

It’s sometimes strange to listen to the Sweden era of the Mountain Goats these days. The energy is the same, but it was a totally different band when it was just John Darnielle and Rachel Ware. “Some Swedish Trees” opens with a false start and John asking Rachel if she didn’t want to start that way and Rachel saying they never start that way. There are a few songs with these asides left on the recording and they add some character. The Mountain Goats aren’t “better” or “worse” these days, but they are undeniably more polished. You don’t get these little jokes now.

Rachel’s distinctive bass makes this song go, though you still might hear it today as part of the solo set, as John Darnielle played it at this Chicago show in 2018. The vocals are strong, with the extended vowels on lines like “if you were gazing westward” that only John Darnielle can sell. The studio version really shows off Rachel and John’s harmony, though, and I think it’s the quintessential version even with the intentional goof up top.

You could dismiss it as just another song where two people from California see each other and comment on some other things briefly. It definitely is that, but it’s sung with more passion than the others in this category. It’s brief, but I keep revisiting it just to hear the swells, similar to what makes “There Will Always Be an Ireland” special. There doesn’t need to be a lot going on beneath the surface because what does happen is so intense.

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.

143. Please Come Home to Hamngatan

Alex Russell Ghana , , , , , , , ,

 

One lover relies on the power of specific geography and memory as they invite a lost love back to a broken relationship.

Track: “Please Come Home to Hamngatan”
Album: Ghana (1999)

Hamngatan is a road in Stockholm, Sweden. The name means “Port Street.” I’ve never been to Sweden, but based on the map it seems to be a department store neighborhood near the water in the center of town. Pictures make it look nice and inviting. There’s a TGI Fridays.

It’s a testament to the importance of specificity that the narrator in “Please Come Home to Hamngatan” wants their beloved to come back to this specific street in Sweden. It’s not a neighborhood that could be tied up in cultural consciousness, likely even if you live in Stockholm. It seems like another situation where John Darnielle wants us to realize this is one specific person talking to one other specific person, but doesn’t need us to know what Hamngatan means to them so much as that they are very real to each other and were real in that exact location.

“Please Come Home to Hamngatan” was released in 1996 on a compilation with 23 other songs. On Ghana three years later, John Darnielle describes his characters as “sick” and says “I wish I could do something to help them.” Maybe they’re the Alpha Couple and maybe they’re just two people forcing a broken relationship onwards, but either way they are familiar. They care about each other and about their specific place they lived one day, but given the subject matter of jewel thieves, snake oil salesmen, and adulterers, we can be sure their testimony is unreliable.

What’s most compelling is the street in Stockholm. Imagine a place that you know but couldn’t describe in a way that would explain it to someone else. That’s Hamngatan and that’s this relationship. The narrator wants a lover back despite knowing that going home again either literally or figuratively may not be fulfilling.

 

 

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.