love songs

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.

085. There Will Always Be an Ireland

Alex Russell Jack and Faye, Unreleased , , , , , , , ,

“There Will Always Be an Ireland” has multiple interpretations, but it’s always about a quiet moment between two people.

Track: “There Will Always Be an Ireland”
Album: Jack and Faye (Unreleased, recorded 1995 or 1996)

Jack and Faye was never released, but it was released online and can still be downloaded. The album consists of four songs with John Darnielle on guitar and Rachel Ware on bass. The album is also the last full release with Rachel on bass before Peter Hughes took over full time, so it acts as a turning point in the band’s history. John and Rachel have said that “time has given [the songs] a somewhat melancholy air,” and you can take from that what you will.

The bulk of the song is a repetition of the song’s title and given the different inflections it sounds alternatively sweet and insistent. You can take it to be a revolutionary ballad referencing the struggle against foreign rule or you can depoliticize it and view it as a love song; the fervor works either way. The first verse sets up two young lovers either way, the second verse contrasts a “silent hour” with “worthless words,” and the third verse blankly lays out “what we did” and “the things we said.” All three work for both interpretations, but both interpretations leave you wanting to know more.

“There Will Always Be an Ireland” is right at home on Jack and Faye because it is more about the feeling it instills than the meaning behind it. The band has become more polished — you can hear Rachel talking quietly during the second verse before the chorus comes in — but that doesn’t always mean that they’re “better” now. People will debate until the end of time if the lo-fi Goats were better and I don’t think that’s answerable, but I do think they were undeniably raw in an interesting way. Whatever you take from this song, you’ll definitely feel something unique.

080. Downtown Seoul

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , , ,

With a simple, but strange, description, “Downtown Seoul” offers a brief look at love that’s better than any pop song.

Track: “Downtown Seoul”
Album: Sweden (1995)

Is Sweden the best Mountain Goats record? A lot of fans contend that it is, and I think they’ve got a good case. The album opens with the extremely brutal “The Recognition Scene” and follows up with “Downtown Seoul.” Songs like “The Mess Inside” and “Half Dead” might be rougher, but there is no harder one-two punch in the catalog than the two songs that open up Sweden.

Every song on Sweden has a Swedish sentence written next to it in the liner notes. For “Downtown Seoul” it is very simple: “He is younger than me.” The meaning of some of the Swedish sentences is tough to decipher, but this one seems to suggest that the song may be about John Darnielle himself. It predates the autobiographical records like The Sunset Tree, but it’s easy to see how Darnielle sympathizes with his narrator here. In the first verse their beloved walks across a square in Seoul. They are consumed by the moment. “As the rest of my life went by,” they say.

What makes this song so wonderful is the specificity. Most love songs talk about generic love, but the Mountain Goats offer you a moment where a person takes another’s finger in their mouth and rests it lightly on their tongue. It sounds strange, but you know what it means. We are all different and we cannot totally explain the best moments of our lives to other people, because they were not there. “I remember your eyelids,” they say, and we also remember something extremely exact and indescribable about someone we loved in a place far away from our present.

077. Oceanographer’s Choice

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , , , ,

Even more than “No Children,” “Oceanographer’s Choice” shows the anger inside the dying relationship of The Alpha Couple.

Track: “Oceanographer’s Choice”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

“Oceanographer’s Choice” is the bridge between “Old College Try” and “Alpha Rats Nest” on Tallahassee. “Old College Try” represents your final attempts to find something worth loving and your inability to do so. “Alpha Rats Nest” is the euphoria you feel at the absolute end when you’ve decided that it’s over and you don’t even care to pretend to save it. There’s a big gap between those two emotions, so “Oceanographer’s Choice” has some heavy lifting to do.

It connects the other two tracks well because it shows how that one drunken night inspires you to say and feel everything you’ve never let yourself say or feel. The Alpha Couple fires a number of warning shots between each other over the album, but the explosion is in “Oceanographer’s Choice.” It’s arguably even angrier than “No Children” and that is saying a helluva lot. Lines like “I don’t mean it when I tell you // that I don’t love you anymore” are the things you say to a person that you can’t take back. This is the end of the sniping and the arguing. This is the end.

Four lines sum the whole thing up: “I don’t know why I’m so persuaded // that if I think things through  // long enough and hard enough // I’ll somehow get to you.” The narrator is finally honest with themselves and understands that they cannot save this patient. In the right mood the song can fuel a snarling disdain, but it can also inspire profound pity. John Darnielle calls it “another love song, sort of” and it’s all in that last line. The character isn’t blaming the other lover. The character understands this was their own doing: “what will I do when I don’t have you // when I finally get what I deserve?”

 

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.

061. Adair

Alex Russell Jack and Faye, Unreleased , , , , , , , ,

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJqY9lC-XpM

“Adair” is a wavering, quiet love song about the kind of moment you remember for the rest of your life.

Track: “Adair”
Album: Jack and Faye (Unreleased, recorded 1995 or 1996)

The title of Jack and Faye comes from the stars of Chinatown. John Darnielle never released it, but you can download it freely from the Goats’ website and the standout “Raid on Entebbe” gets played live from time to time. If you’re a fan, all of those details combine to form a mythos that’s undeniable. Chinatown has a strangeness about it despite being one of the greatest films of all time and the Goats are very particular about what they release and don’t release. That should pique your interest for a love song on such an album.

In the interest of disclosure, “Adair” has always been one of my favorite love songs. The specificity of a scar that “runs clear from your temple to your jawline” and “the blazing dead center of July” create a clear picture of two lovers who have spent a lot of time together. They know the contours of their lover perfectly, and we all have that memory of one small imperfection of another person that made them feel special.

There is so much longing in “Adair.” The line “all my hopes hung on one gorgeous promise” is dripping with sentiment and it’s impossible to remain unmoved when you hear it. John Darnielle delivers the song with a wavering, quiet tone and it may not strike you if you’re not in the right mood. But if you listen to “Adair” when you’re feeling wistful, it will signal boost that emotion perfectly. “I want to tell you what the sky has done to me // I want you to tell me who we are” is the kind of sentiment that might seem sappy in the wrong place, but in “Adair” it will remind you of a forgotten moment with someone you absolutely never forget.

 

039. Minnesota

Alex Russell Full Force Galesburg , , , , , , , , , ,

Two oddly romantic images in “Minnesota” briefly obscure a tale about how we can forget how to love each other.

Track: “Minnesota”
Album: Full Force Galesburg (1997)

“A little angrier and a little less easy to sympathize with.” – John Darnielle, comparing the couple in Full Force Galesburg to people on other Mountain Goats albums.

For an album that ends with a repetition of “it’s all coming apart again,” there’s a lot of sweet-sounding stuff on Full Force Galesburg. It’s a tough album to break down in a lot of respects. John Darnielle mostly describes it as an album about two desperate people who aren’t in a healthy relationship with each other anymore, but that can very loosely be layered onto many, many Goats albums. These two specifically are going through something else.

“Minnesota” stretches the definition of “love song.” One character surrounds their house with Dutch seeds while the other sings an old song. While those are nice images, they are surrounded by suggestions of something very grisly. Both verses talk about an unrelenting heat, and in the heat our guide through this romance is drinking and staring at his wife. He’s only drinking and staring at her.

If you are given to hope, it may be difficult to pull out the darkness in a song that’s this sweet on the surface. Full Force Galesburg has much angrier guitar on it elsewhere and the lyrics of “Chinese House Flowers” speak much more directly to the end of love (“I want you the way you were”), but “Minnesota” is just as grim about the chances of these two working out. These two are sharing some strangely intimate moments, but they aren’t really communicating. This is not The Alpha Couple, but it’s certainly people who could appreciate their method of “dealing” with problems.

007. No Children

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , , , ,

 

Both a love song and an anti-love song, “No Children” is iconic because it is “sweet in the way of rotting things.”

Track: “No Children”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

You do not have to speculate about “No Children.” It is the most famous song in the entire Mountain Goats catalog, with the possible exception of “This Year.” It’s mostly that “No Children” mixes dark lyrics with bright melody and delivery, but it’s at least partially that you can take the song whichever way you like. The darkest among us can find some beautiful statements about intensity and dedication beyond reason in there. The average person can recognize — no matter how sweet that person is — the time in their life they could look out over everything and say “I hope it stays dark forever.”

John Darnielle wrote the song because he felt that many songs about love weren’t genuine. He’s often quoted as saying that he wanted people to have a song for that moment in their love that they would need a song like “No Children.” It’s brutal, no doubt, but it’s honest. It’s universal. It’s powerful for the refrain of “I hope you die // I hope we both die” but even though that’s what you’ll scream and pump your fist to, it’s the rest of it that sells the message. It’s the rest that complicates that cry from the center of the darkness.

The most important lyric in the song is “hand in unlovable hand.” The couple in “No Children” is The Alpha Couple, two people found in dozens of Goats songs that drive across the country to try to save their marriage in a tiny house in Florida. They drink and fight the inevitable in a crumbling house all over Tallahassee and other songs on previous albums, but “No Children” is a romantic view of their end. It gets darker — much, much darker — but in “No Children” they still feel some kind of love.