mountain goats

424. Dilaudid

Alex Russell Come, Come to the Sunset Tree , , , , , , , ,

Over a haunting cello, the story of hard drugs and running away mentally plays out in “Dilaudid.”

Track: “Dilaudid”
Album: The Sunset Tree (2005) and Come, Come to the Sunset Tree (2005) and Dilaudid EP (2005)

Dilaudid is technically the marketing name for hydromorphone, an opiate that’s typically used to treat intense pain. I’ve only personally come across it once, when a friend in college scratched his eye so badly they gave it to him alongside several serious warnings. He turned out fine, but as I listened to a public radio report this morning about the ongoing opiate crisis I thought about that moment and how it could have gone both ways.

John Darnielle has played “Dilaudid” hundreds of times. It’s one of the most popular songs from The Sunset Tree and it does an incredible job of conveying the intensity of the moment but also the seriousness of what lies underneath. A fan went even deeper some years ago and asked John Darnielle on Tumblr if this character is the same one from “Attention All Pickpockets,” which Darnielle confirmed and commended their “sleuthing.”

If you are into “sleuthing” like that, which I assume you must be if you’re reading this, I encourage you to dig into live performances of “Dilaudid.” The screams at the end really pop with an audience, but the banter shines here, as well. Dilaudid is serious stuff, which Darnielle mentions trying recreationally at a very young age. Obviously you would not assume from The Sunset Tree anything else, but it helps sometimes to remember how old these characters really are. None of that is to say that there is an age where these things become better, but The Sunset Tree feels familiar to an adult, but really try to remember that these people are kids.

423. Your Belgian Things

Alex Russell We Shall All Be Healed , , , , , , ,

“Your Belgian Things” pictures loss as something that someone can actually take away rather than the ghost of something else.

Track: “Your Belgian Things”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

I think it’s somewhat fair to say “Your Belgian Things” is the love song from We Shall All Be Healed. As with many other “love songs” that John Darnielle has written, that needs some explaining. The entire album is about doing drugs and the experiences that brings you, but “Your Belgian Things” focuses on the experiences it takes from you.

At a show in 2012, Darnielle said that the things being referenced are “opaque, unreadable symbols to everybody else.” What he means, as I take it, isn’t so much that the specific things like the actual trunks and suitcases of items are mysterious, but that the things you hold onto are your things alone. When you think of dark moments in your life there are probably unreadable symbols of your own. I still remember a specific red lighter and a specific tiny MP3 player from decades ago on a particular night where I’d have identified with this song directly, but also the loss of odds and ends that only upset me when I realized I couldn’t find them later from times I wanted to stay within.

These things being physical or not doesn’t really matter. I’m sure they’re not even intended to be, though I do like the summation of these feelings as something a moving company could come grab and take away. It does feel that way, sometimes. The love here is in the distance, way too far to even say it’s in the background, but there’s enough to know there’s a loss being experienced.

422. Linda Blair Was Born Innocent

Alex Russell We Shall All Be Healed , , , , , , ,

The title references a movie about how bad things happen to good people, but “Linda Blair Was Born Innocent” isn’t focused on morality.

Track: “Linda Blair Was Born Innocent”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

The title of “Linda Blair Was Born Innocent” refers to a TV movie from the 70s called Born Innocent where Linda Blair played an abused teen whose life was destroyed by said abuse and a system that was indifferent to her suffering. It’s somewhat famous for how unexpectedly extreme it was for viewers and for the aftermath of a copycat crime. I’d heard this song hundreds of times before I was ever curious about what it meant beyond a reference to Linda Blair and what I assumed was The Exorcist. I guess it still could be, but the more direct, obvious one is really the point.

It’s not hard to see how John Darnielle could relate to Born Innocent. Whether he saw himself in it or not, it fits the mold of young characters being impacted by forces they couldn’t control. I don’t want to analyze this too much more because the obvious connection is just that, but if you make assumptions beyond it I don’t think that’s really appropriate or the point. It’s just an interesting starting point.

This was one of the first songs written for We Shall All Be Healed, but more than that it’s become emblematic because of how it starts. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like every press video and interview for the album started with that bit. It’s memorable, as is the surprise rhyme that ends the chorus. Even after you’ve heard it a few times you’ll expect the rhyme with “drown” to be “we’re going down,” but there’s a much different, and potentially darker, meaning behind “we’re going downtown.” I think it means the start of another shopping trip.

421. Slow West Vultures

Alex Russell Palmcorder Yajna, We Shall All Be Healed , , , , , , ,

We Shall All Be Healed opens with “Slow West Vultures” and gets right to the point.

Track: “Slow West Vultures”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

There’s a lot happening in “Slow West Vultures.” Someone breaks a bottle in the background. There are at least two seemingly unrelated vocal samples, a device you hear on the early albums often but not so much anymore. The backing vocals are elevated, which isn’t totally unheard of but is rarely this notable. It signals that this album isn’t quite what you’ve heard before, which is fitting. This is post Tallahassee, so the band’s sound has already changed, but it’s pre The Sunset Tree, so the honesty is new.

John Darnielle has often been accused of being the narrator of his songs, which he says he understands but disavows when he can. In the early days of writing this series I was surprised to confront how often the gender identity of the narrator is even ambiguous, suggesting that it isn’t even a male speaker. The person in We Shall All Be Healed is not explicitly John Darnielle like it is in The Sunset Tree, but if not, it’s much closer than it usually is.

The lyrics are a relatively straightforward affair for We Shall All Be Healed. Everyone does drugs, everyone understands they’re going to do more drugs. There’s some nice wordplay here, but I’m always struck by “ready for the future” because it calls back to the album title and the joke within it. There’s likely not a future and likely nobody here is going to be healed.

420. From the Lake Trials

Alex Russell From the Lake Trials , , , , , , ,

“From the Lake Trials” is unique in a lot of ways, but it serves as an example of what the earliest songs might have become.

Track: “From the Lake Trials”
Album: From the Lake Trials (2017)

The story goes that the company behind this series asked the Mountain Goats if they had a song they wanted to record live. John Darnielle found some old lyrics and asked Matt Douglas to join him. When they showed up and saw the piano, he pivoted from the song being on guitar to something entirely different. The result is something that doesn’t quite sound like anything else he’s ever done, but that does feel familiar, somehow.

The beat is more polished, obviously, but it does feel like what John Darnielle was trying to do with the very early, very weird ones. The sax is the bridge to the modern Mountain Goats, with Douglas adding even more depth and a melancholia that the lyrics suggest but don’t fully embrace. Darnielle bounces between optimism and something else in “From the Lake Trials,” which feels like an empty statement but is what I mean to say. The narrator isn’t clear here but doesn’t need to be, this song seems to be in conversation with so many other songs it would be impossible to pick one. “Make a list of things to beat the dreams back” is something so many of them would say, but “follow through, follow through” is not always the logical next step.

The beat makes this feel like something that has to come from the last few years, but think of the construction strategy. What could be more John Darnielle, and really, more Mountain Goats, than showing up and knocking it out, that day? It’s a good song, but it’s a great story.

419. Noche del Guajolote

Alex Russell Bitter Melon Farm , , , , , , ,

A one-time experience (that may have happened more than once), “Noche del Guajolote” is, of course, about a turkey.

Track: “Noche del Guajolote”
Album: Bitter Melon Farm (1999)

John Darnielle once told a crowd that he would rather not try to play “Noche del Guajolote” without the Bright Mountain Choir, the women who performed in various configurations on Mountain Goats songs in the 90s. They added the bird sounds and backing vocals that accompany the version on Bitter Melon Farm, which can also be assumed to be the only one there is. It also came out on a compilation called I Like Walt! in celebration of Walt Records, which seems to no longer exist.

The Mountain Goats Wiki posits that it was played in 2015 in Philadelphia and maybe it was. No recording of that exists, at least not one you can easily find, and I sorta like it better that way. There is a push/pull element to the desire to both want to hear everything but also leave something a mystery. John Darnielle is right, it really needs the Choir or it’s a little small as an experience. The thing is, with it, it’s something special.

There are a handful of these and you have to assume the experience of their creation was all fairly similar. This one specifically, which translates to “turkey of the night,” was supposedly created the morning it was played and does feel that way. Curiously, the aforementioned Wiki includes a note that the timeline here has inconsistencies. It’s up to you if that matters to you or not. I’ve always liked how this one ends, and I don’t need the exact history for this one for that to feel special.

418. Evening in Stalingrad

Alex Russell Full Force Galesburg , , , , , ,

The world constantly invades an otherwise simple love story in “Evening in Stalingrad.”

Track: “Evening in Stalingrad”
Album: Full Force Galesburg (1997)

“Evening in Stalingrad” is in many ways one of the most straightforward songs on Full Force Galesburg. You don’t really need to know that Stolypin cars are a kind of prisoner railway car designed to transport farm animals. You don’t need to have any real understanding of the Soviet Union or Russian history. You just need to picture someone who says they can feel something in their “boiling brain” who is willing to say that people need to tear them to pieces to keep them from someone they feel this way about.

It’s a love song told in great detail. So many Mountain Goats songs are about giving you just enough detail that you can make out the big picture but not enough that it can be so specific as to not describe whatever you need it to describe. That’s the power of many songs, but John Darnielle went hyperspecific with “Evening in Stalingrad,” giving you a basic life story for this couple. At nineteen they meet, at twenty-four they drink and dance, and then they hide in a room and hope their love is enough.

Given the name of the song tells us the city was still called Stalingrad, this happens somewhere between 1925 and 1961. The last verse tells us the couple is hiding, though there are so many reasons they could be hiding that doesn’t narrow it down much. It doesn’t matter. “Evening in Stalingrad” shows us love and the larger context that makes love difficult, but still worth pursing.

417. Song for the Julian Calendar

Alex Russell Full Force Galesburg , , , , , ,

A peculiar title and a curious meaning lie behind some powerful vocals in “Song for Julian Calendar.”

Track: “Song for the Julian Calendar”
Album: Full Force Galesburg (1997)

John Darnielle once said “Song for the Julian Calendar” was “as overtly Christian” as he once was willing to be in a song. I find that such an interesting statement given that the album that preceded Full Force Galesburg had a song on it with a series of Bible verses for a title, but that doesn’t mean that’s an incorrect statement. Just as many of the wrestling songs aren’t really about wrestling, a song’s title isn’t always as direct as it seems. The Julian calendar was the calendar the Romans forced on people before the world switched to the one we have now. Does that title go further than just being an oddity?

If I had to pull meaning out of the title, I would tell you that it refers to the phenomenon of something going away that you would assume could never leave. Picture something that feels truly beyond change to you, like the concept of how we measure temperature or time. Once upon a time, those were not as they are and presumably will remain. I choose to see it as an ode to something gone that seemed like it might never leave.

The song itself has all of these great pockets of language. It’s one person talking to another, as so many of them are, but it’s someone grounding their surprise in words that John Darnielle hits hard unexpectedly. He slams on the last word in “and I felt the shock” but also stretches the end of “wondered what it was I’d bargained for” with some unique flair. There’s a lot to love here, though you may have to dig in to start finding a deeper meaning.

416. Song for an Old Friend

Alex Russell Bitter Melon Farm , , , , , , ,

In what was supposed to be the start of something new, “Song for an Old Friend” is all strong visuals and one emotion.

Track: “Song for an Old Friend”
Album: Bitter Melon Farm (1999)

The story goes that John Darnielle wrote “Song for an Old Friend” believing it would launch a new band. They were to be The Orange Trees and they would write more accessible pop music. They played one show in Evanston, Illinois, to five people and then died that night as John Darnielle realized he was, for better or worse, the Mountain Goats.

It appeared on a compilation called The Wheel Method which apparently had individually different covers for each copy. You can buy some of them online for $12 now. The song made it to Bitter Melon Farm four years later and some time after that John Darnielle played it solo in 2006 as part of some sort of online concert for AOL. That version is really worth watching. It’s not fundamentally different from the studio version, but it’s just so passionate.

John Darnielle wrote this song right after Rachel Ware left the Mountain Goats, so people hypothesize that it’s about her. I don’t really know if that’s true and it doesn’t make much sense to me given the romantic overtones, but that depends on what kind of love you think the song is talking about. It’s funny to imagine this as a song for a more accessible band given the violence of “the day your love came screaming through me.” That line is pure Mountain Goats and I think we all owe something to the people of Evanston who didn’t go out to that Orange Trees show. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered, but just for that one night, the universe told John Darnielle that he had something, it just was what he was already doing.

415. Ontario

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

A narrator feels uncomfortable but open in the very vulnerable “Ontario.”

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

The vocals for “Ontario” on Full Force Galesburg are what will get you. It’s a good song, played well, but it’s John Darnielle front and center in a way that really cannot be ignored. The album is a treasured one for a lot of fans, and I think a lot of that is owed to the fact that the median here is so high. There are a few songs that I don’t think hold up to the rest, but on average, I think the sixteen songs all average out higher than many of the other albums from this era of the Mountain Goats. That said, if there’s a standout, it’s probably “Weekend in Western Illinois” for the rock and the emotion, “Twin Human Highway Flares” as a genuine love song, or “Ontario” as a classic Mountain Goats song that’s a little bit of everything.

The Mountain Goats don’t do “one thing” but there’s certainly a similar feel to a lot of their work. The average Mountain Goats narrator is lonely if not outright alone, and they often are stressed about their situation rather than triumphant. “I know what can hurt me real bad // and what can’t hurt me anymore” is a powerful statement read one way, but it’s more realistically someone not really being honest with themselves. By the end of the song, they’ve devolved into rapidly shouting things like “day breaking // river rolling” with some hey-heys thrown in. This is a vulnerable song, clearly, and rather than digging into the meaning you need to engage with how this person feels.