mountain goats

644. Great Pirates

Alex Russell Jenny From Thebes , , , , , ,

Jenny From Thebes ends with the hopeful, and peaceful, “Great Pirates.”

Track: “Great Pirates”
Album: Jenny From Thebes

At the time of this writing, “Great Pirates” is the latest Mountain Goats song. It may end up being the last one with Peter Hughes on it. It closes out Jenny From Thebes as a hopeful version of the Jenny myth. It makes it confront what all these last few Goats albums have asked us to confront. We’ve seen mythical characters, story characters from Goats songs, and action heroes all dying in song. Here, alone, Jenny lives. Jenny survives.

I have promised along the way to leave myself out of this project, but there’s every chance this is the last of these I will ever write. “Great Pirates” is a sweet sendoff to Jenny From Thebes, and I love that Jenny gets her own little jokes in here. As for me, I love the way a Goats album ends, with these sort of jam-out endings but also always in a song that ends as much in a question mark as an exclamation point.

Jenny will be fine. That was never in doubt. I hope you, too, will be fine. Take care of yourself, out there, and take only the parts you need and can handle.

643. Going to Dallas

Alex Russell Jenny From Thebes , , , , , ,

Jenny is gone, long gone, in “Going to Dallas,” and she’s sure you’ll keep her secret.

Track: “Going to Dallas”
Album: Jenny From Thebes

My wife spent a long time in Montana, so the fact that Jenny spent some time there (at least as a fake out, if she didn’t go) has always rung true to me. I love “Going to Dallas,” a song title that feels like a Mountain Goats song from decades ago, because it’s upbeat and jumpy, but it’s just an absolute screamer with the lyrics. Our narrator, Jenny, is on the road. She’s always on the road, but this is how she stays perpetually there, rather than being hunted.

“Just mute donkeys // still as statues // in each saloon I’ve been through,” is all-time John Darnielle. I can’t get over the, forgive the word, stank, he puts on “donkeys” every time I hear it. This is Jenny not just escaped, but confidently escaped, and proud of her legacy. That element of Jenny is the kind of cool money cannot buy. She’s not gone casually, she’s gone, putting her trust in you because she knows you won’t blow her cover. The fact that she trusts you makes it more likely you won’t blow it. It’s recursive and beautiful and part of the road.

642. Jenny III

Alex Russell Jenny From Thebes , , , , , , ,

“Jenny III” is a ballad for a person who represents hope, escape, and the future.

Track: “Jenny III”
Album: Jenny From Thebes

It is a stretch, but I view “Jenny III” as a piece of magical realism. This is John Darnielle, of the Mountain Goats, talking to Jenny. It’s her hero story as much as her pirate ballad. She’s to be feared, loved, respected, and doubted, all at once. Was there ever even a Jenny? Probably not, if you never saw her, that’s just some bullshit those dudes talk about around the way.

It could just as easily be her old compatriot from any of the half-dozen songs not on Jenny From Thebes about her, but it doesn’t really matter. Jenny left this place, once, and in so doing she created a model that you can follow. I think that’s the ultimate legacy of Jenny, as a sort of monster that you can fear if you’re trying to fight against the marginalized and a hope you can believe in if you’re within it. You can’t crash at Jenny’s place anymore by “Jenny III” but you know those places exist. You know there’s a way to get out of this. Jenny got out. Follow the tracks.

641. Water Tower

Alex Russell Jenny From Thebes , , , , , ,

Jenny hides a body, but also thinks briefly about what she’s doing, in “Water Tower.”

Track: “Water Tower”
Album: Jenny From Thebes

The Mountain Goats are no strangers to the fun song that isn’t fun. “A body floating in a water tower is bound to take on weight” is an insane line for any song, but it’s especially insane after a contemplative song about changing your life by buying a motorcycle. We’ve cut back to the future and the consequences of a murder in “Water Tower.” Jenny’s got to put that body somewhere.

I do like “Water Tower” as a gruesome play against the silly reality of it being a jaunty song about hiding a body, but it’s placed between two incredible cuts and it feels a little disserved by that. The peak of the song and the thing I remember from it always is the break at the end when Jenny says “I feel something bigger than me // when I see them trapped in the headlight.” Does Jenny view her crusade as necessary or is there something else to this? We don’t get enough time to really think about that before the escape, which is the best part of the album, but remember, there’s a ticking clock here as that body in the water tower gets heavier and heavier.

640. Same as Cash

Alex Russell Jenny From Thebes , , , , , ,

Jenny buys a motorcycle in “Same as Cash,” but she makes a much bigger change to her life than that.

Track: “Same as Cash”
Album: Jenny From Thebes

Jenny From Thebes is a love story. It’s not necessarily about Jenny, the character, having a love story, but it’s a damned love story from the band to this character and these ideas. “Striking a bargain with the imp in your brain,” the band says, “prepared to take another knock for the short gain.” We find Jenny at a crossroads where she is going to buy a motorcycle and become someone else. There are a hundred Mountain Goats songs like this, but very few of them find John Darnielle on the final, official, studio version, sounding like this.

You would think the gut-punch would be the clincher after “everybody needs to love and be loved” where John Darnielle says “that’s what all the people say, anyway.” It isn’t, though. It’s actually baked into a lot of seemingly inconsequential moments in “Same as Cash.” Jenny is buying a motorcycle, but Jenny is embracing her destiny and changing her life. Jenny is taking the step off the cliff you didn’t take today and I won’t take tomorrow. Jenny is a figure, she’s not real, but she represents a reality that you could occupy.

639. From the Nebraska Plant

Alex Russell Jenny From Thebes , , , , , ,

We hear about Jenny from someone who, maybe, knew her best, in “From the Nebraska Plant.”

Track: “From the Nebraska Plant”
Album: Jenny From Thebes

We’re back to someone else, now. In “From the Nebraska Plant” another narrator talks about Jenny and her fabled bike which is “somewhere in a wreckyard now.” This is our character from “Jenny,” her song, one of the holy songs, and we learn that they remember her still. Her bike is trashed, she is long gone, but she saved this one. She saved lots of them.

“It wasn’t in your nature // taking in the strays,” our narrator says, which may be true of Jenny but seems more likely to be their read on being special in a series of others, and they say “but you handed me your helmet // I clung to you for days.” The possibilities are myriad here, from a lover who didn’t know her general savior nature to a misguided one of many to someone who is exactly right and she just surprised herself by doing it over and over. The reality of Jenny isn’t important, despite the album about her, but the outsider view and the person who is “strong now,” well, that matters a lot.

638. Murder at the 18th St. Garage

Alex Russell Jenny From Thebes , , , , , ,

A big, messy job that has to happen happens in “Murder at the 18th St. Garage.”

Track: “Murder at the 18th St. Garage”
Album: Jenny From Thebes

I don’t know that there’s another way to say this: Jenny kills someone in “Murder at the 18th St. Garage.” You know this, from the title, but it’s still a shock. Jenny’s a thief and an outsider, but we don’t necessarily view her as a murderer. But tough times require tough reactions.

The narrative of Jenny From Thebes is somewhat of a straight line, but I don’t think there’s one true, simple narrative to grab out of it. You just have to mostly infer what happens and why it happens, though the theme of who Jenny is and what she needs is clear. The liner note of “behold, you may not rezone my house” calls to mind a weird Stephen King book I won’t even fully reference here, but tells us this is definitely Jenny’s reaction and that, if we’re on her side, it was an appropriate one.

This is an explosion and a jam and I love it. As we near the end here, I feel like I don’t always need to find a new way to ask you to put your car windows down and to speed into a turn as you listen to this one.

637. Cleaning Crew

Alex Russell Jenny From Thebes , , , , , ,

Jenny isn’t yet escaping in “Cleaning Crew,” but she’s telling you about how to get out.

Track: “Cleaning Crew”
Album: Jenny From Thebes

Most of Jenny From Thebes is about the explosion or how we get there. A little of it, though, is about Jenny and the other character from “Source Decay,” a song I have heard literally hundreds of times and not really considered from this angle. We find those two in “Cleaning Crew” and we imagine the life that led to someone watching for Jenny’s postcards.

Jenny had to leave to send postcards. This is what happened before she left. She told someone to “shake free,” maybe, and to “ask about [me]” in Portland. But both of them had to know she wasn’t really going to Portland, they weren’t really going to shake free, and all of that was really metaphorical, anyway. You getting out of Jenny’s house requires more than a bus ticket.

Jenny is trying to get one step ahead. Jenny has people she cares about, even if she isn’t willing to say that. Jenny will write to you, but not in a way that you’ll really understand.

636. Fresh Tattoo

Alex Russell Jenny From Thebes , , , , , ,

In one of the best songs they have ever written, the Mountain Goats demand that the moment matters with “Fresh Tattoo.”

Track: “Fresh Tattoo”
Album: Jenny From Thebes

I’ll never forget the day I first heard “Fresh Tattoo.” It blew me away. It still does. I think it’s one of the ten best Mountain Goats songs and a powerful, and, yes, important, message for people who need it. The best Goats songs are part of that category of songs that might be what you need when you need something. This is one of those.

Jenny, the hero of our story and the centerpiece of Mountain Goats lore, decides she can’t keep saving people and decides she has to take action. She has saved people, and that matters, but sometimes you need to stop saving people. But you can save one more.

I love the character towards the end of “Fresh Tattoo” that asks, probably not all that interested, what her tattoo means. She fobs him off. It’s this point where the whole damn thing explodes and we get the mission statement, the declaration, the exclamation, the everything of the whole damn album. This moment will not pass you by, because you have made a choice and that choice will be validated. Remember it by this tattoo.

635. Only One Way

Alex Russell Jenny From Thebes , , , , , ,

“Only One Way” finds Jenny confronting the challenge of what is in front of her and the odds against her.

Track: “Only One Way”
Album: Jenny From Thebes

It would be ridiculous to call it a “new thing” that the Mountain Goats are celebrating the downtrodden and forgotten, but there’s a specific type of character that is celebrated these days in a Goats song that wasn’t always the center of the story. “Only One Way” asks us to look at the people who take battle damage and scars from their experiences and wonder if the path to get to that moment might not be worth it. It has a lot to do with songs from the last few albums in that regard.

“Nobody’s going to hand you a flashlight // you’re going to have to steal what you need” is certainly not new territory. What makes this new, to me, is that it resolves. Instead of just someone going down in flames here, we find someone, likely Jenny, confronted with the question of if there truly is only one way through or not. Do you have to do it that one way? Can you maybe break the loop and find some way to do something everyone says is impossible? It’s important for the narrative to have that spark, even if you may not have as specific a moment as this when you find yours.