music

239. Two Thousand Seasons

Alex Russell Protein Source of the Future...Now!, Yam, the King of Crops , , , , , , , ,

With an alarming backdrop, “Two Thousand Seasons” quotes a text to ask us to consider what text can do.

Track: “Two Thousand Seasons”
Album: Yam, the King of Crops (1994) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

Two Thousand Seasons is a novel by Ayi Kwei Armah. “Two Thousand Seasons” is also a song by the Mountain Goats. The lyrics, with the minor exception of a repetition of the first line twice at the end, are the first half of the prologue to the novel.

I have not read Two Thousand Seasons, and I’ll admit that prior to writing this I had not given much thought to this song. For all of the creeping dread that exists behind so many Mountain Goats songs, few can be said to be “eerie,” but this one certainly is. The original text does much of that lifting, but you cannot discount John Darnielle’s additions. The rolling boombox evokes many things over the early songs, but this may be the best use to create a mood.

The title refers to two thousand years of African history and the impact of colonialism and enslavement on the continent. It is impossibly large to consider as a subject within a song, but it’s made even larger by the gravity of “two thousand seasons” as an idea. A season is already a long time to all of us, certainly, and the original text asks us to consider that as a tiny piece of a larger story.

Yam, the King of Crops is full of direct references to African literature, but none more direct than a song that is an extended quote. It’s beyond the scope of my abilities as a writer to break down what this prologue means, but it’s fascinating that John Darnielle uses this specific language about storytelling (and the challenges and limitations of it, to a degree) as an entire song. If it does nothing more than cause you to consider the text, it has succeeded as a song.

238. Alagemo

Alex Russell Protein Source of the Future...Now!, Yam, the King of Crops , , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle grounds the universal in the extremely specific in “Alagemo.”

Track: “Alagemo”
Album: Yam, the King of Crops (1994) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

You are not likely to experience the exact situation discussed in “Alagemo.” One character laments the loss of another. It’s a loss that’s very specific, as the narrator tells us the other has dedicated themselves to a “religious cult of flesh dissolution.” We’re well outside most people’s experience at this point, but John Darnielle loves to set simple emotions in complex situations. You don’t know this feeling or likely even what it would mean to have that feeling. You do know what it means to have someone leave.

The “reveal” of the situation happens in the first verse. This is somewhat uncommon for a Mountain Goats song. If something surprising is going to happen or be revealed, it tends to be more of a punchline. We often find only at the end that wild dogs are coming to get us or the lie the narrator was talking about was actually much more serious than we might have assumed otherwise. In “Alagemo” we find out quickly that this character isn’t heartbroken (or at least isn’t just heartbroken), they’re in a much more serious situation than that.

Even with the subject matter, John Darnielle rounds out the song with a universal emotion. The language is intentionally mundane as the narrator says that simple elements of nature made them think of the other person, then again, then “a third time.” This is how it goes, be it an unexpected death or a divorce or a religious cult, when someone leaves. You stare into the dirt and you wonder where they’ve gone.

237. Coco-Yam Song

Alex Russell Protein Source of the Future...Now!, Yam, the King of Crops , , , , , , , ,

The sample that leads into “Coco-Yam Song” sets you up to expect something fun, but it’s anything but.

Track: “Coco-Yam Song”
Album: Yam, the King of Crops (1994) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

Kyle Barbour runs The Annotated Mountain Goats, an essential resource for anyone trying to approach John Darnielle’s work and the hundreds of references within it. The annotations for “Coco-Yam Song” talk about what a cocoyam is (a food staple that can be roasted, boiled, or baked), what “figurines of thieves” means (a likely reference to vodou), and why someone would break apart a kola nut (it signifies a meaningful occasion). These footnotes help listeners read the meaning behind the lines themselves, which is especially helpful given John Darnielle’s prolific output and his interest in varied mythology and background material.

The note that’s most interesting, however, is a link to this interview published in Space City Rock. It’s worth reading in full, but the relevant reference for this song is John Darnielle’s quote about samples. The early albums have all sorts of these clips, which are “either to point a listener in a certain direction or to provide stark contrast,” John Darnielle explains. For “Coco-Yam Song” it is a clip of “Always True to You in My Fashion,” a tongue-in-cheek song about a woman accepting gifts from other men but remaining true, in her fashion, to one love. John Darnielle says this one is about contrast, which makes sense given one is a playful description of sexuality and materialism and the other is someone preparing violence after theft.

Our narrator says “I will make them regret // that they haven’t brought my yams back yet.” We could not be farther away from the slightly silly world of “Always True to You in My Fashion,” and it’s fun to picture John Darnielle selecting this clip for just that reason. Your expectations are completely subverted, and what’s more serious than the rituals before a life-or-death response to a “neighboring clan?”

236. Quetzalcoatl Comes Through

Alex Russell Protein Source of the Future...Now!, Yam, the King of Crops , , , , , , , ,

A powerful being looms over the conversation in “Quetzalcoatl Comes Through.”

Track: “Quetzalcoatl Comes Through”
Album: Yam, the King of Crops (1994) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

During the only other available version of “Quetzalcoatl Comes Through” that I am able to find, John Darnielle refers to it as a song where he was learning he could yell. That live version, uploaded to YouTube almost ten years ago at the time of this writing, is obviously different than the version on the 1994 release Yam, the King of Crops. The original is quiet and curious and the live version is loud and biting. The message isn’t different, but how you experience it might be.

I usually try to listen to every live version of these songs when I approach them. John Darnielle has said, often, that he isn’t the last voice on his own work and that interpretations differ and don’t need to be conclusive. It’s the weakness of using live stage banter as a primary text. Taken at face value, you’d be confused, because this is as far away from a “yelling” song as anything, so what is he talking about?

That performance in Missouri is the only one I can find, but it’s certainly not the only one. That comment makes us imagine the other versions and the other variations within those versions. If your version of “Quetzalcoatl Comes Through” is a screamer, the bite on the line “he put our love in clear perspective” is a fierce rebuttal of a relationship. If it’s the quiet one, it’s a contemplation that might go either way. It’s both, really, and so many things beyond both that you could only have experienced on certain nights in London or San Francisco or Iowa City. It’s often been said that it’s the journey and not the destination, but for some songs it’s also about the parts of the journey that you don’t even get to see.

235. Duke Ellington

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

A lone character confronts what’s led them to this point as they picture a performance in “Duke Ellington.”

Track: “Duke Ellington”
Album: Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

There is not one theme to the Mountain Goats. It’s tempting to summarize John Darnielle as someone who writes about loss and sadness, but there are so many songs of hope and desperation. It’s more correct, in my mind, to say there is one mood through the Mountain Goats’ catalog. The characters differ and the desires those characters have differ, but they all exist in a world that is realized in one way. It’s a difficult world, to be sure, but it’s one that shows the residents of it great beauty in small things. This is true especially in the early days.

Before the re-release in 1999, “Duke Ellington” was originally part of a compilation, The Long Secret, released in 1995 by Harriet Records. Both the company and the compilation draw names from Harriet the Spy, which is interesting but neither here nor there. John Darnielle said he left it off Sweden deliberately and that it has a “mystical sadness” regarding the namesake musician Duke Ellington.

The narrator is in Sweden and pictures (or sees) Duke Ellington playing piano. “It utterly wasted me // in Sweden,” they say of the image. We know what they mean and we draw on our own memories of powerful music. John Darnielle speaks of the “aftermath,” a strong term for the moments after a song. It all builds to our character watching this performance and saying “I’d had just about enough of losing things” and telling us they are alone, away from the person to whom they hope to convey this message. This song is solitary, alone from the other albums, but the character is, as well, though they fit right in with so many other people we meet in John Darnielle’s world.

234. Alphabetizing

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

The Alpha Couple is caught in a memorable, beautiful moment in the days before in “Alphabetizing.”

Track: “Alphabetizing”
Album: Chile de Árbol (1993) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

John Darnielle has played “Alphabetizing” live more often than he has most songs from 1993. “I will defend this song, from the earlier ones, I think it’s alright,” he said at a show at Pitzer College, his alma mater, in 2006. During several performances, he has commented about how it ends abruptly on Chile de Árbol and he thus makes an effort to end it that way even now at live shows. It shines in these performances in ways the early songs don’t always work. They’re working seeking out.

The title hints at it, but the man himself has confirmed at live shows that this is a song about the Alpha Couple. We start with one admiring another, in lyrics that foreshadow “Going to Georgia” in a way. “I love you especially // because I saw you // coming through // the screen door // up on the second floor // out on the balcony” is a mundane string of details, but it tells us this character is overcome. When you love someone above all else and, when pressed, say it’s because they came through a screen door, you aren’t in a place to behave rationally. That’s either pure love or the blinding hope that comes before what comes after that.

We’re in familiar territory in the second verse. “The air was thick with alcohol,” our narrator now says, and pleads for time to make them forget the good moments. “Let the years come and take away my memory // I will not forget the shock that ran though me,” they say, and tell us again about this beautiful moment they witnessed. This is still the good times, but a mist of booze and an understanding that good times don’t last are all we need to know where we’re headed.

 

233. Billy the Kid’s Dream of the Magic Shoes

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

“Billy the Kid’s Dream of the Magic Shoes” is about Billy the Kid and some special shoes.

Track: “Billy the Kid’s Dream of the Magic Shoes”
Album: Chile de Árbol (1993) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

At a show in Baltimore in 1996, John Darnielle told the audience “the old ones hurt my hands more.” He also called “Billy the Kid’s Dream of the Magic Shoes” very old. It was three years old at the time and is much, much older now.

The song details Billy the Kid, famous American Old West murderer, as he tells the audience that he does not care that he is going to be killed because he has special shoes. He has special shoes, you see, and he has them on. This repeats. It’s important to Billy the Kid that you know he has special shoes and that he does not fear what comes next.

For a song from 1993 about magic shoes, this has gotten a lot of play at live shows over the years. Most of the live performances follow one person asking for it, as one does, by yelling the absurd title from the crowd. In recent years, John Darnielle has commented and called it “sloppy.” He’s also commented on the fact that people yell for it, but it’s often only one person and it’s their fault if he plays it. It’s not productive to follow that thread too far, because he’s playing it because he wants to, but it’s interesting to think about the person that yells for the song about Billy the Kid’s magic shoes.

I don’t know why someone would love this song and call for it, specifically. Someone at a benefit show once paid a ton of money for “Pure Honey.” There is something about Mountain Goats fans that draws them to these strange tracks, so if you’re one of those people, here’s your song about special shoes.

232. Going to Alaska

Alex Russell Taboo VI: The Homecoming , , , , , , ,

The best song on the first album, “Going to Alaska” calls a harsh environment “perfect” and opens up some grim questions.

Track: “Going to Alaska”
Album: Taboo VI: The Homecoming (1992)

The most enduring song from the first album is “Going to Alaska.” It’s also the first in the collection of 40+ “Going to…” songs that discuss the experience of going to places that include a small city in England, the southernmost city in Texas, and Maine.

The studio recording is rough, but that’s par for the course on the first album. “Going to Alaska” has bookends of samples from an episode of Hawaii Five-O, but it also sounds the most like the things that came after it. John Darnielle’s delivery is intense. That’s an easy word to use for him at any stage of his career, but it’s really the only word for a song that ends with a narrator insisting they are going to Alaska because it is “perfect for my purposes.”

It was a poem first. Bits like “up, yes” to start the second verse and the extended metaphor of heat as paint still carry a poetic quality. What makes it a Mountain Goats song is the delivery, with a building sense of nervousness. “You can go blind just by looking at the ground,” our narrator tells us, and we wonder why this person would say such a thing. These details about Alaska are true, such as I know, but it’s all akin to someone talking about how easy it would be to push someone off a building when they are both on top of it. It may be true, but why are you looking at me like that?

231. One Winter at Point Alpha Privative

Alex Russell Taboo VI: The Homecoming , , , , , , ,

The first Alpha Couple song, “One Winter at Point Alpha Privative,” introduces us to two people experiencing new feelings for each other.

Track: “One Winter at Point Alpha Privative”
Album: Taboo VI: The Homecoming (1992)

John Darnielle has written dozens of songs about “The Alpha Couple,” a married-and-divorced couple that travel to Florida in Tallahassee, ultimately, and experience a particularly destructive relationship. There’s a lot of connective mythology through Mountain Goats songs, but nothing is more critical than these two. Many songs are explicitly Alpha songs given their title, but even songs with standard titles often appear to be about these two.

John Darnielle started writing poems before he wrote songs. “Going to Alaska” from Taboo VI: The Homecoming was one of the first, but the first Alpha song was “One Winter at Point Alpha Privative.” He has said that no one wanted to read his poems, so he put them to music and made them rhyme. Each verse of this one rhymes internally, which makes for a droning effect when sung aloud. The guitar builds on that and it will make you nervous to listen to, like an argument you aren’t involved in and shouldn’t be hearing.

Much of the band’s best work builds on these characters and it’s impossible to not add some mystique to the song as “the first Alpha song.” The lyrics are intense, with the narrator asking “is there something eating you // will it leave a single trace” of their partner. John Darnielle has said that he started the Alpha idea to explore his own feelings about divorce. While the characters have become more solidified and seemingly grown beyond his personal experience, this first look lets us see how John Darnielle began thinking about the end of love between two people and what they felt about each other after that gave way to something new.

230. Don’t Take the Dogs Away

Alex Russell Taboo VI: The Homecoming , , , , , , ,

One character pleads with another, but you’ll never guess about what, in “Don’t Take the Dogs Away.”

Track: “Don’t Take the Dogs Away”
Album: Taboo VI: The Homecoming (1992)

There is a temptation to say something like “Don’t Take the Dogs Away” is about a person not wanting someone to take the dogs away. There really isn’t much to say about a song like this, but I am fascinated by the live performance that I’ve referenced before where John Darnielle played the entire first album live in 2014. Peter Hughes provides backing vocals on what may be the only performance of “Don’t Take the Dogs Away” in the thirty years since it was written. I love the image of Peter Hughes listening to that first tape to learn the lyrics and preparing to play it in front of a crowd.

The lyrics are simple, though not as simple as “Move (Chicago 196X)” before it. A narrator yells “you do this every time” at someone else, presumably in reference to said dogs. “Just look around the house,” they say, “what should I say to you // where do you want me to begin?” It’s an early look into the situations future Goats characters will find themselves in. It’s not really about dogs, probably, but it’s a fight about something that seems to have happened before.

John Darnielle has said that it’s not worth digging up Taboo VI: The Homecoming and he’s mostly right. When you listen to the two minutes of “Don’t Take the Dogs Away” you don’t walk away with much, but you do see the early signs of Darnielle as a songwriter. A narrator screaming “you do this every time” over and over isn’t very interesting in this moment, but it really is part of the start of everything else.