mountain goats

414. West Country Dream

Alex Russell Full Force Galesburg , , , , , ,

The tension is real in “West Country Dream” and we get to see just the first moments of the explosion by the end.

Track: “West Country Dream”
Album: Full Force Galesburg (1997)

I tend to speak in grandiose terms here and I’m sure I’ve contradicted myself many times, but I don’t think there’s a song that benefits more from the live treatment than “West Country Dream.” When you find people talking about this one, they often say you’ve just gotta hear a specific live version. I’m fond of this one from 1998. The studio version is good, but the subtle shifts in language and the not-at-all subtle shift in emotion really change the song. The final line changing from “Why’d you tell me this” to “Why did you tell me this” doesn’t seem like much when it’s written out, but say both out loud right now and you’ll see what I mean. The line may be borrowed from a Carly Simon song in the first place, but it does very different work here.

Two people are in love but they shouldn’t be, that’s the story of dozens of Mountain Goats songs and it’s the story of “West Country Dream.” The narrator even says they know who their lover is, but they couch it by saying “or who you were just an hour ago.” That shift of an hour changes their entire life, which you can hear in their voice both on the studio version’s wavering fear and the live version’s rising anger. People are in this situation often in Mountain Goats songs, but this is a very slightly different moment on the timeline. This is a moment you never want to find yourself in, especially because we know the narrator already knows the answer to their question.

413. Snow Owl

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

An early reviewer hated “Snow Owl,” but there’s a lot to learn about John Darnielle’s approach to lyrics in it.

Track: “Snow Owl”
Album: Full Force Galesburg (1997)

John Darnielle played “Snow Owl” as part of the Jordan Lake sessions recently, which is potentially only the third version of the song that exists. There’s the released version on Full Force Galesburg and exactly, probably, only one live version. In 2017 a fan asked for it at this live show in Virginia and this is absolutely the definitive version. You should listen to it to hear the full story, but John Darnielle explains that he never played it live because right after the album came out he walked into a music store in Pittsburgh and read a review that singled out the song as bad. Two years earlier he told the same story on Twitter.

That reviewer thought it was overly sweet. “Snow Owl” is a risk in that regard, with lyrics like “In your eyes were all the colors that the rainbow forgot.” It works, though, for the same reason John Darnielle was able to put the refrain from the theme from Cheers in a song a decade later. John Darnielle is unafraid to sound corny, which means it’s very hard for anything he makes to sound corny. It’s real, and you can tell that it’s real because of who is selling it to you. He was once very hard on “Going to Bridlington” for similar reasons, but I love that one, too. There are several physical descriptions of a snow owl in “Snow Owl,” but it all works because it’s so damned earnest.

412. Going to Santiago

Alex Russell Bitter Melon Farm, Transmissions to Horace , , , , , , , ,

Haunting clues are all we get in the troubling “Going to Santiago.”

Track: “Going to Santiago”
Album: Transmissions to Horace (1993) and Bitter Melon Farm (1999)

In 2014, at Bottom of the Hill, the Mountain Goats played all of Transmissions to Horace, in a row. It’s worth listening to all of it, as it is every time he’s done that with one of the early tapes. Just before “Going to Santiago” John Darnielle says he needs a cheat sheet for it. After he plays it, he jokes that the crowd was probably excited when they first figured out what was happening but surely is sick of it by now. Given the audience, this is safely a joke.

The chorus is entirely “la la la” repeated over and over. “Alpha Desperation March” devolves into sick laughter to show the narrator’s mental state, and this is likely a similar situation though not really as effective. It’s an early song, but the verses are really something. The narrator tells us they have “a pocketful of medicine to abuse myself with” and I feel like that’s just a great line. There are little pieces of the early work here, with the character telling us they’re a specific distance away from California. We could assume that from the title, but the Santiago in “Going to Santiago” is a state of mind, not a place. These songs are often about what kind of person you could be if you could get out of your current situation. The truth, of course, is you’d still be the same person.

411. 1 Corinthians 13: 8-10

Alex Russell Nothing for Juice , , , , , , ,

“1 Corinthians 13: 8-10” predates the album full of biblical songs and calls to mind another place and another time.

Track: “1 Corinthians 13: 8-10”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

Most of the songs titled after Bible verses are on a much more recent album, but “1 Corinthians 13: 8-10” is an outlier. John Darnielle commented on it at a live show saying that people were generally uncomfortable with this faith and that it set him apart among people who were in his musical community. That obviously changed down the line, or at least John Darnielle changed how he responded to it. There’s a whole album of these, now.

This one is from 1996 and it’s about a series of verses where the meaning is up for debate. The way I read them, Paul is saying that love is the only thing that will persist at the end of all things. He means a different kind of love, but in the context of the song it’s appropriate that our characters are observing a loving gesture and picturing Warsaw in 1939. In moments of intense danger, in the moments where you are afraid of things, remember they are temporal.

I’ve been to Warsaw a lot and it is a beautiful city, but it’s also very much in touch with history. 1939 was a difficult year for Warsaw, but so were many years that followed it. In this song we hear soldiers coming down a hall, and historically, that never means anything good for Warsaw. I don’t have room to get into it, but there is a section of old Warsaw that they left destroyed as a reminder. One imagines these two making a heart with their hands and they realize what we’re meant to remember and what we stand to lose if we don’t.

410. No, I Can’t

Alex Russell Bitter Melon Farm, Transmissions to Horace , , , , , , , ,

The Mountain Goats list a series of things you might need in “No, I Can’t.”

Track: “No, I Can’t”
Album: Transmissions to Horace (1993) and Songs for Peter Hughes (1995) and Bitter Melon Farm (1999)

There are different versions of “No, I Can’t.” The original from Transmissions to Horace is a little slower and a little sadder. The version from Songs for Peter Hughes is fully danceable and has some beautiful backing vocals from Rachel Ware. Neither is better than the other, though I’ve come to love the faster one and it’s the one I think of when I think of “No, I Can’t.” The bass is nice and there’s a scream in there that’s worth hearing and the “I don’t know what I, I don’t know what I, I don’t know what I ever did without it” that leads into the final verse is just something else.

Kyle Barbour, whose excellent Annotated Mountain Goats page is currently down but will hopefully be back eventually, listed 43 specific things John Darnielle has inserted into this song live. The song is essentially a list of things one person brings another person, which lends itself to edits. I encourage you to seek out live versions to hear examples, but I have to call out Barbour’s diligence here. Is it significant that one of the items is a similar Panasonic to what John Darnielle would have been using to record his early work? Do you need it to be significant? Sometimes you just need someone to bring you exactly the right thing and you don’t even know until they do. You can feel the passion here and you know Darnielle means it when he says “I don’t know what I ever did without it.”

409. Going to Cleveland

Alex Russell Bitter Melon Farm, Transmissions to Horace , , , , , , , ,

After a hiss and a screech, two people fight about not fighting in “Going to Cleveland.”

Track: “Going to Cleveland”
Album: Transmissions to Horace (1993) and Bitter Melon Farm (1999)

“Going to Cleveland” opens with a screeching sound for 25 seconds. It’s always reminded me of “Going to Kansas” in that way, though the explosion that opens “Going to Kansas” is more reflective of what follows. For “Going to Cleveland” this feels more like a punishment. You could analyze this and picture it as the sound of a hangover or a furious rage just before an argument, but I think it’s more likely it was an accident that John Darnielle fell in love with during production. The end result isn’t necessarily distracting if you listen to the album, but it really stands out on a solo listen. The song itself is great, especially the vocals. You’ve just gotta pay for that with some dissonance.

The song is notable as the first ever to include “John” as the narrator’s name, which John Darnielle has said he did specifically for the audience reaction. He also said in the liner notes of Bitter Melon Farm that the song “has attracted a small group of listeners who adhere to the very hard line that it’s the absolute high water mark of the Mountain Goats.” It is certainly indicative of the early style and it’s one of the absolute best early ones, but the mid-90s was such a rich period for the Mountain Goats, so I wouldn’t have been in that camp in 1999. It’s funny to imagine that two decades ago people were already longing for the “old days.” Those people had no idea what was to come.

408. Standard Bitter Love Song #4

Alex Russell The Hound Chronicles , , , , , , ,

“Standard Bitter Love Song #4” is indeed a bitter love song, but it’s also got an image you just won’t forget.

Track: “Standard Bitter Love Song #4”
Album: The Hound Chronicles (1992)

There are six Mountain Goats songs, as far as I’m aware, that have “standard bitter love song” in the title. They are numbered #1 and then numbers #4 through #8. One wonders if #2 and #3 exist. They should, right? Or is it funnier to imagine that they don’t, despite the numbering suggesting that they should? Regardless, there’s no real tie that binds them all other than the fact that they are what they say they are in their titles. These are songs for people who are snarling at a former or current partner. They also feature violence, or at least references to violence, at a higher clip than your average Mountain Goats song.

“Standard Bitter Love Song #4” opens with its strongest image: “I see you’ve left me a photograph // of a leopard tearing an antelope in half.” This is funny because it’s so shocking, but upon further reflection it’s a terrifying threat. The act is deliberate and the message is sinister, if not completely clear. The narrator in all of these songs is bitter, that’s right there in the title, but here they seem to have good reason. “What have you done // with our love,” they ask a partner we never get to meet. This can be pointed out for a lot of Mountain Goats songs, but we only have the word of our narrator. They are getting threats, sure, but what did they do before the song started? If your partner goes through the effort to source a specific, threatening image, you have to examine your contributions to the relationship. You should also leave, but wonder what you did, as well.

407. שקט (Be Quiet)

Alex Russell The Hound Chronicles , , , , , , ,

The only title of a Mountain Goats song in Hebrew, “שקט” finds a narrator who is fed up and has to say something.

Track: “שקט” (Be Quiet)
Album: The Hound Chronicles (1992)

There is only one song, as far as I know, with a Hebrew title in the Mountain Goats catalog. It’s “שקט” which technically has no subtitle, but is often called “Be Quiet” as the translation of “Sheket,” the title in English. A lot of fans mistook the Hebrew for the word “ape,” so you’ll still see this song called “Ape” in some places. I do not read or speak Hebrew, but Kyle Barbour’s The Annotated Mountain Goats, which is currently down as I write this, includes a note on translation that the word can mean “be quiet” or “quietness” or “it is quiet.” You have to make some assumptions here, but the text really suggests “be quiet” is the correct one.

This is weird, even for the early jams with the presets and the loops. The song also loops internally, with only minor word choices different between the two verses and a repeating chorus. It’s simple, but the beat behind it makes it feel very urgent. “I can’t be quiet,” our narrator says, “I can’t be quiet anymore.” We feel this urgency, and then there is about a full minute of sirens and escalating laser noises. I can’t say that I enjoy this part, but it does raise my heart rate. There aren’t any Mountain Goats songs where I can’t find at least something to love, but the breakdown in the middle of this one is hard to listen to decades later. That’s fine; much of the first album is, as well. It is at the very least interesting, and the choices John Darnielle was making then led to the ones he makes today.

406. Spilling Toward Alpha

Alex Russell The Hound Chronicles , , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle shows us a narrator who isn’t as concerned as they should be in “Spilling Toward Alpha.”

Track: “Spilling Toward Alpha”
Album: The Hound Chronicles (1992)

John Darnielle often jokingly chastises people who hoot and holler at live shows when he says some version of “this was on the second tape” by telling them he knows they didn’t know it then. This isn’t gatekeeping or even really all that serious, it seems to be just the honest truth. The number of people who bought The Hound Chronicles in 1992 has been dwarfed by the number of people who have gone back out of curiosity. I was in elementary school. I didn’t hear this when it came out. I’m just gonna level with you.

“Spilling Toward Alpha” is one of the first songs about the Alpha Couple. It’s not the very first, but it’s pretty close. It seems like it’s late in the official chronology of their relationship, but it’s so interesting that John Darnielle was already writing about these two a full decade before they got their own album. The song holds up in ways that some of the early stuff doesn’t, to modern ears, though one wonders what contemporary listeners thought. They couldn’t have known what was coming and they couldn’t have known that this brief song would be part of a sprawling story. In 1992, this was just the story of a narrator talking about how they have learned to life with ominous actions from a partner that’s sharpening claws and creeping around late at night. The text has enough to make you worried, but the larger story of the Alpha Couple really unlocks the terror of these moments. You really should mind.

405. The Garden Song

Alex Russell The Hound Chronicles , , , , , , ,

One of the earliest Mountain Goats songs, “The Garden Song,” presents a narrator it’s impossible to sympathize with.

Track: “The Garden Song”
Album: The Hound Chronicles (1992)

John Darnielle famously does not play “Going to Georgia” anymore primarily because having a narrator who threatens violence is not something he wants to triumph. His choice to stop playing it really made me think about why I liked it and what I was getting out of it. People still yell for it at shows, but that’s just how that goes. I think it’s a pretty powerful stance to take about a song that could always burn the house down and it’s part of what makes John Darnielle such an interesting songwriter. It’s said of a lot of creative people that they “evolve” but John Darnielle was always plenty progressive and a force for good. He just also was a young man writing about young men, so he told the story how it really was. It’s often not a good story.

“The Garden Song” is another song in this vein. It’s about a stalker, which is obvious from the text but reinforced from his performance in 2006 at Pitzer College. It’s the only live performance that is easily available to find, but it’s also the only one you’d need. John Darnielle introduces the song as a song he used to play when he did open mics there and says it’s about a young man stalking someone. He’s able to laugh about it and it’s obviously not as direct and intense as “Going to Georgia,” but it feels even then like a song from a much different John Darnielle. Now, over a decade after that performance, it’s even more so just an oddity from the early days.