mental illness

401. Moon Over Goldsboro

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8fPZ_gBQYs

The stakes are very high and the mood is very low on “Moon Over Goldsboro.”

Track: “Moon Over Goldsboro”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

There is something very personal about Get Lonely. It may be that it was the first new Mountain Goats record when I first heard the band. I listened to this one new with everyone else for the first time and I digested it at a time in my life when I felt very much like these narrators. I was living in Peoria, Illinois, and I was definitely the kind of person who was “talking to you under my breath // saying things I would never say directly.” I am trying to keep this whole project from being explicitly a personal blog, but if you are interested in personal narrative mixed with the story of the Mountain Goats by a better writer than I am, Richard O’Brien’s personal retrospective should be your first stop.

“Moon Over Goldsboro” is about emotions that you experience and then hopefully move away from. That’s what a lot of Get Lonely is about, but this character is wallowing more than most of the others on the album. There are enough details to piece together the larger story, but we again only get one person’s side. There’s not enough here to know who did what or how much we should believe. “I heard a siren on the highway up ahead // kinda wished they’d come and get me” suggests that the narrator believes things to be beyond saving, but it’s also the sort of thing you say when you know it’s your fault.

400. Get Lonely

Alex Russell Get Lonely , , , , , , ,

“Get Lonely” is about a much more intense emotion than we usually think of when someone says “lonely.”

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

Get Lonely is a brutal album. Each narrator, assuming they aren’t all the same person, is experiencing alienation and loneliness. These are people completely cut off from humanity. Many are lamenting a specific relationship, but the reduction of the theme to “a breakup” doesn’t quite cut it for a song like the title track. “Get Lonely” is about something much more extreme.

Sure, the narrator says they will “send your name off from my lips // like a signal flare” but it isn’t just about this person they are no longer with. This is about not connecting with the world at large. They talk about feeling alone in a crowd, which is an oft used comparison but used more literally here. This person actually is out in a crowd and recognizes that they are not like the people around them.

The ending to the second verse pivots towards hope, in a way. The narrator says “and I will come back home // maybe call some friends // maybe paint some pictures // it all depends” and we hear someone trying to dig out of themselves. We hear someone who knows the way out of the darkness, or at least one of the ways. What we don’t hear is a confidence that this will even happen. What makes Get Lonely such a powerful album is the sense that these are real problems a real person is experiencing. This isn’t just the blind rage of a lover scorned and this isn’t angst. This is when internal and external forces combine and cause you to lose your sense of self. This is a bad place and this is a moment where you have to summon up some additional strength to get out of it, spirit willing.

318. Wild Sage

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_V6D1Dd8Kc

In one of his absolute best songs, John Darnielle tells a story about losing grip with reality in “Wild Sage.”

Track: “Wild Sage”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

I’m sure I’ve contradicted this statement elsewhere, but I think “Wild Sage” is the best Mountain Goats song. You could say that about “This Year” or “No Children” or a dozen other ones and be right, but I really think it’s “Wild Sage.” It’s not my personal favorite or the one I listen to most often, but I think if I had to defend one as perfect, it would be this one. It so perfectly captures what it wants to convey and it so effectively delivers the mood it wants you to feel. It’s about mental illness and how you fall into a world that is strange to you when you stop being able to connect with people. It’s about other things, too, but it’s really about that lonely feeling.

“Some days I think I’d feel better if I tried harder // most days I know it’s not true,” is the kind of statement that a lesser songwriter would ruin. If you see the Mountain Goats live in a setting with a piano and with a crowd that can handle it, you will be crushed under the weight of “Wild Sage.” It’s one of the most common live songs from Get Lonely and John Darnielle has frequently said it’s one of his favorites. I saw it once in Chicago where the room was actually totally silent other than his performance. No “woo” yelling or singing, just a group of people picturing their own moments of quiet fear and what this song means to them. There are certainly more fun Mountain Goats songs, but that’s why I don’t think there are any “better” ones.