mountain goats

152. Scotch Grove

Alex Russell The Coroner's Gambit , , , , , , ,

The furious “Scotch Grove” presents annoying pop country music as an instigator for a serious fight.

Track: “Scotch Grove”
Album: The Coroner’s Gambit (2000)

John Darnielle is all about extremes. The Mountain Goats consistently describe the highs and lows of the world and talk about death, love, and the things that get us through the days surrounding those things. Most albums weave their way through the things John Darnielle obsesses over and they spend so much time on the things we don’t like to think about that they become highly concentrated. This isn’t background music and it typically requires consideration. It’s very rarely light fare.

That said, The Coroner’s Gambit is heavy even for them. It’s an entire album about death. The approach varies from song to song, but the most crushing songs in the catalog live here. John Darnielle wants you to focus on your own end here as he presents the end of many characters, often in anger.

That anger is what makes the album so compelling. People die in Mountain Goats songs and John Darnielle is not afraid to confront mortality elsewhere, but he’s rarely this driven. The narrators in “Baboon” and “Jaipur” are downright mad and the person in “Family Happiness” might be the angriest Mountain Goats speaker. John Darnielle’s voice cracks and squeaks all over the album and it’s wonderfully affecting, though you need to approach the whole thing correctly.

“Scotch Grove” is right at home. It’s named for a city in Iowa, two hours east of where John Darnielle lived. One wonders where the fascination for this small town comes from, but it helps to have a setting. One character simmers towards another one, but this scene is closer to an explosion than most. With a reference to Bluebeard, we know that murder is on the table and John Darnielle’s delivery and strumming suggest that it might be imminent.

151. New Chevrolet in Flames

Alex Russell See America Right , , , , , , , , ,

The Alpha Couple has some fun in suspect ways in “New Chevrolet in Flames.”

Track: “New Chevrolet in Flames”
Album: See America Right (2002)

A fan asked John Darnielle why he never plays “New Chevrolet in Flames” at live shows. The response was simple. John Darnielle says that it is a b-side and isn’t as good as anything on Tallahassee and that the studio version says all he has to say about it.

I’m not a musician, but “New Chevrolet in Flames” sounds a lot like “Alphabetizing,” a song from 1993. If they’re different at all it’s not in a way that I can determine. It’s possible that’s deliberate and it’s possible that it’s just a function of John Darnielle writing ~1000 songs in nearly three decades and not caring about the similarities between one of his ancient tracks and a b-side.

Lyrically, “New Chevrolet in Flames” is more complex than “Alphabetizing” and strikes a different tone than its brothers and sisters on Tallahassee. It’s funny and shies away from the desperation that comes across directly on “funny” songs like “No Children.” It’s a weird song, as it looks at the Alpha Couple in one of their lighter moments. They drink Colorado Bulldogs (and tell you how to make your own in the first verse) and decide to buy a car while wearing their finest threads.

As they light the car on fire and either stay in it or leave, depending on how darkly you view the song, they probably experience some kind of relief. It has to be a gleeful moment for two people who fairly relentlessly don’t experience glee. It comes from a terrible place, but it’s a fun moment when you don’t consider the consequences. It’s hard to not love that moment if you’re able to abstract it.

150. Pure Gold

Alex Russell Ghana, Songs About Fire , , , , , , , ,

One lover tries to keep another one by warning them that the way out of their love is on fire in “Pure Gold.”

Track: “Pure Gold”
Album: Songs About Fire (1995) and Ghana (1999)

There are many “pure” songs and they are not strictly connected. They may not share exact characters or locations like the Alpha songs do, but they are similar in that they all feature exactly two people talking about exactly one thing.

John Darnielle is on the record about his characters being interchangeable by nature of having no stated gender. It’s easy to describe a Mountain Goats narrator as “he” because John Darnielle sings in first person and is male, but by design he almost never tells you that the speaker is a man or the recipient of the message is a woman or anything of the sort. Most characters could be anywhere across the spectrum of gender and could be speaking to anyone.

It’s often ambiguous if the characters are lovers or friends. In “Pure Gold” we can assume because one character says they often hold the other one, but sometimes we don’t even get that much. Rachel Ware adds vocals to a few lines and reinforces that it is two people communicating, but really it’s just the narrator asking someone not to leave. “Hey, don’t touch the door, because the door will surely kill you” is a striking opening line, but it’s also a look into this narrator’s situation. It’s a love song, kinda, but it’s a close-to-the-end-of-love song.

Relationships across the Goats catalog are often in states of disarray. It’s no surprise that the “Pure Gold” couple struggles, but it’s interesting as a look into unreliable narrators. John Darnielle often uses song structure to point out that we only get one side of the story. We know from the lyrics that the other lover here doesn’t see the exit as such a dangerous thing, no matter how many times they’re told that the door is literally on fire.

149. Pure Honey

Alex Russell Philyra, Protein Source of the Future...Now! , , , , ,

“Pure Honey” asks the most unimportant question in the catalog but will keep you guessing just the same.

Track: “Pure Honey”
Album: Philyra (1994) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

In November of 2016, John Darnielle played a set for charity in Chicago. It is one of very few instances where you can hear “Pure Honey.” You should check it out.

“Pure Honey” is a stupid song. Songs like “Going to Maine” and “The Monkey Song” are similar songs that sound silly when compared to most of the 500+ song Mountain Goats catalog, but a song is allowed to be stupid or silly. These aren’t insulting terms. John Darnielle describes them the same way. You just have to be honest when you’re singing a song about the dangers of seals or a funny ode to ancient British people.

John Darnielle sometimes mentions his early career and talks about how he didn’t like being “the guy with the funny songs.” He was a poet first, so one can understand the fun of people laughing along with something silly competing with “serious” craft.

The best Mountain Goats experiences have both. “New Chevrolet in Flames” has a bunch of jokes in it, but it’s about two people who shouldn’t be together and delay the end of their experience by lighting a car on fire for fun. There are tons of these songs in the recent past, but the early songs tended to be shorter and had less room to explore their ideas.

Keep all of that in your head as you listen to someone pay $200 for John Darnielle to play “Pure Honey” in 2016. It is a song that entirely exists for a repeated joke and the absurd idea it conjures in your mind. Did this person just want to tie a $200 donation to something that silly or is “Pure Honey” something more to them? Could be either, but I personally don’t think either is any more fitting than the other.

148. Pure Milk

Alex Russell Hot Garden Stomp , , , , , ,

 

One character tries to convince another to take a midnight ride during the snappy “Pure Milk.”

Track: “Pure Milk”
Album: Hot Garden Stomp (1993)

With a finger-snap beat and the old Casio groove behind it, “Pure Milk” is absolutely a highlight of the early era. It’s the only song from Hot Garden Stomp that you might hear at a live show, but even then your odds are very low. There are a few great performances online you can dig up that show what a modern “Pure Milk” sounds like. It’s different now, with more intensity and fierce guitar, but the improved quality also changes some of the charm.

I’ve said before that no one should start their Mountain Goats journey with the truly old songs, but you might be able to start your journey through the early Goats with “Pure Milk.” The narrator slurs the first verse about getting drunk and stealing tractors to ride into town. John Darnielle embodies his eerie speaker here and you feel the simmering emotions within the character as you listen to it. The chorus of “put your hand on the goddamned radio” feels like a frustrated command.

Some of the early songs are interesting as experiments. Sometimes the charm isn’t in the finished product so much as the joy you feel from John Darnielle. “Pure Milk” is a fully realized idea and the song is that much the better because of it. Like the other “pure” songs, the narrator has a brief idea to get across to one other character. It starts with bravado and a concrete plan but breaks down over the second verse. The narrator’s confidence is shaken by a moment of hesitation. Sometimes that’s enough to derail a plan, but we leave this scene before we know how it ends. Catchy as it is, it’s the fear within it that makes it so hypnotic.

147. Pure Sound

Alex Russell Ghana , , , , , , , , ,

 

A chance meeting on Taylor Street tells us everything about one person and nothing about the other in “Pure Sound.”

Track: “Pure Sound”
Album: Ghana (1999)

“Pure Sound” was released in 1995 on Goar Magazine #11. Just about any search for more details becomes recursive. You will only find Goar Magazine #11 mentioned in relation to the two Mountain Goats songs on it (“Pure Sound” and “Creature Song”) and vice versa. 1995 was 22 years ago at the time of this writing, but it may as well be totally lost to time for all the good research will do you.

Both songs live forever on Ghana, the compilation of many loose tracks up to 1999. Ghana spans a lot of time and even more distance thematically, which makes it difficult to approach as one work. Rather than thinking of “Pure Sound” as an oddity, you can consider it as one of the “pure” songs, which are grouped as intense, brief looks at conversations.

“Pure Sound” never made the rotation. You won’t find it on fan lists of their favorite songs and you won’t hear it at live shows. It doesn’t have room for the full band to blow it up into an experience but it also doesn’t seem like it would benefit from the intense, three-song guitar solo sets that John Darnielle does now. It seems right at home in the mid-to-late 90s version of the Mountain Goats, where sad narrators realize their fate too late.

The narrator meets with someone, but the meeting is accidental. John Darnielle delivers “I was in between times” with his trademark whine and the desperation of the moment becomes apparent. So often we don’t get any window into the other character and “Pure Sound” is no different. The narrator is smitten, so much so that they hope they can halt time to extend the experience of an accidental meeting on Taylor Street, but of course, they can’t.

146. Pure Love

Alex Russell Bitter Melon Farm, Songs for Petronius , , , , , , , ,

 

A repetitive Casio keyboard and a desperate narrator entreat a lover to not go through with a mysterious plan on “Pure Love.”

Track: “Pure Love”
Album: Songs for Petronius (1992) and Bitter Melon Farm (1999)

“Pure Love” is 25 years old at the time of this writing. John Darnielle played it in October in Colorado, which you can check out here, and mentioned that it was the second time it had ever been played live. It would be impossible to describe it without using the word “obscure.”

It’s played on the old Casio keyboard that makes many appearances in the early Mountain Goats work. When John Darnielle played it in Colorado he played it on piano, which is fitting considering the upcoming album is the first to be entirely without guitar. He’s been slowly heading that way more and more and it will be really fascinating to see the result of an all-piano album.

The keyboard songs aren’t a good place to start if you’re a new fan. “Pure Love” especially is a little grating, if we’re being honest, though the playful, repetitive tune matches the lyrics well. “It won’t be necessary,” John Darnielle repeats, as he pleads with another character. The other lover, we can assume, is up to no good. The narrator presumes as much in the first verse and is more direct in the second as they ask their lover to remove a ski mask. Crimes and potential crimes abound on Mountain Goats albums, and even if this is a metaphorical one, it’s one our narrator fears.

Across the five songs on Songs for Petronius you will notice lots of repetition. None of them use the device like “Pure Love,” where the narrator’s resolve cracks as they keep saying “it won’t be necessary.” You must always question the reliability of your narrator, and you know, I think it just might end up being necessary in this case.

145. Pure Heat

Alex Russell Protein Source of the Future...Now!, Why You All So Thief? , , , , , , , , ,

 

“Pure Heat” reminds us that even in the most beautiful moments, it’s possible to fear the end of so many things at once.

Track: “Pure Heat”
Album: Why You All So Thief? (1994) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

The “pure” songs are all intense. They’re not designed to be connected, but you can trace some patterns through them. Beyond intensity, they often share a vagueness. “Pure Heat” is one scene with one person seeing another one. There are so many Mountain Goats songs that fit that description that it is important to remember how rare that is. Generally songs are active or describe long spans of time. John Darnielle wants to tell you a story about one moment between two people and he wants you to see it vividly. Everything else you bring is your own deal.

Alone, this might be a song about two happy people in one happy slice of a happy life. Knowledge of the Mountain Goats greater catalog means that is unlikely to be true. These two people may be in love, but they’re more likely in the final stages of something they once thought was love. They are in a beautiful place, to be sure, and “Pure Heat” is a clear reminder that the California native son John Darnielle also loves Iowa and North Carolina. Their time in the fields with kerosene lamps and cool breezes may be picturesque, but it is tenuous.

“Pure Heat” is also the only other Mountain Goats song on Why You All So Thief? with “Going to Tennessee.” John Darnielle says they are both about “cheating death.” We’re forced to connect the two further. They could both describe the same couple, using sex and beautiful moments to avoid the greater realities of their situation. Many Mountain Goats songs would mean a breakup or a toxic relationship as a “situation” but the fear these two are staving off may go even deeper than that.

144. Pure Money

Alex Russell Nine Black Poppies , , , , , , , ,

 

Much like the characters in “Pure Money,” you may require a few listens to get everything out of this song.

Track: “Pure Money”
Album: Nine Black Poppies (1995)

Almost all the songs on Nine Black Poppies feature two characters. Most of the tracks see one person talking to another about a turning point in their lives together. As one of the shortest songs on the album, you could miss “Pure Money” as more of an interstitial between the furious “Chanson du Bon Chose” and the lively “I Know You’ve Come to Take My Toys Away.”

The beat is extra-mechanical on purpose here, similar to “Going to Malibu” and a few other early songs. John Darnielle delivers the lyrics in a near whisper. It’s tough to tell from the surface what “Pure Money” wants us to feel. It could be described as haunting, given the fading out chorus of “I used to know you” over and over, but it isn’t quite as eerie as some other songs the Mountain Goats imbue with terror. It feels more like one narrator’s thought, delivered and then left to percolate with no more detail than necessary.

In 2007 the band played “Pure Money” live and John Darnielle said he thought it was the only live performance ever. I can only find mention of two others, both in 1997, and only at that 2007 show did he offer any context. Darnielle describes the song as a hateful message encoded so well that the person who hears it won’t understand it for some time. While on the topic of encoding, the opening sample is from a Dutch interview where the band said that they don’t consider themselves “lofi” but rather “bifi” which is apparently a joke because it’s a European brand of sausage snack. Both the sample and the song are brief looks into situations we don’t fully understand, but as is so often the case with the early Goats, that’s not the immediate point.

143. Please Come Home to Hamngatan

Alex Russell Ghana , , , , , , , ,

 

One lover relies on the power of specific geography and memory as they invite a lost love back to a broken relationship.

Track: “Please Come Home to Hamngatan”
Album: Ghana (1999)

Hamngatan is a road in Stockholm, Sweden. The name means “Port Street.” I’ve never been to Sweden, but based on the map it seems to be a department store neighborhood near the water in the center of town. Pictures make it look nice and inviting. There’s a TGI Fridays.

It’s a testament to the importance of specificity that the narrator in “Please Come Home to Hamngatan” wants their beloved to come back to this specific street in Sweden. It’s not a neighborhood that could be tied up in cultural consciousness, likely even if you live in Stockholm. It seems like another situation where John Darnielle wants us to realize this is one specific person talking to one other specific person, but doesn’t need us to know what Hamngatan means to them so much as that they are very real to each other and were real in that exact location.

“Please Come Home to Hamngatan” was released in 1996 on a compilation with 23 other songs. On Ghana three years later, John Darnielle describes his characters as “sick” and says “I wish I could do something to help them.” Maybe they’re the Alpha Couple and maybe they’re just two people forcing a broken relationship onwards, but either way they are familiar. They care about each other and about their specific place they lived one day, but given the subject matter of jewel thieves, snake oil salesmen, and adulterers, we can be sure their testimony is unreliable.

What’s most compelling is the street in Stockholm. Imagine a place that you know but couldn’t describe in a way that would explain it to someone else. That’s Hamngatan and that’s this relationship. The narrator wants a lover back despite knowing that going home again either literally or figuratively may not be fulfilling.