music

127. Half Dead

Alex Russell Get Lonely , , , , , , , , , ,

 

“Half Dead” is there for you when you need it, though you definitely don’t ever want to need it.

Track: “Half Dead”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

Get Lonely is about solitude and the emotions that accompany it. It’s a fragile album that is unlikely to connect with you if you listen to it in a good mood. “If You See Light” is the closest to an “upbeat” song on the album, even though you’ll see couples swaying peacefully to “Woke Up New” at live shows. John Darnielle says he’s surprised that people say the album is about a breakup, but that seems to be the general consensus. A breakup is the most obvious and repeatable way loneliness shows up for most people. The songs on Get Lonely aren’t all directly about a breakup, but they’re about how you feel when someone (or everyone) is gone.

A lot of the early catalog looks at antagonistic lovers or conflict between unknown parties, but Get Lonely looks at the aftermath. It’s not totally new ground for the band, but John Darnielle really lets his guard down all across Get Lonely. “Wild Sage” in particular is chilling and absolutely the best song at every live show because you can feel how much he loves it. Get Lonely is a nice bridge between the autobiographical The Sunset Tree and the explosive Heretic Pride, but you need to be open to approach it.

“Half Dead” is about someone being gone. It’s a straightforward song about the morning someone you love and need is no longer there for you. They may be dead or they may be just gone, but there’s a totality to “Half Dead” that makes the distinction not important. The narrator goes outside and wails “what are the years we gave each other ever gonna be worth?” In a different tone or a different song that might be an angry line, but here it feels like an admission of defeat.

126. Hardpan Song

Alex Russell All Hail West Texas , , , , , , , ,

In “Hardpan Song,” a narrator considers how terrible weather is relatable when you’re feeling down and out.

Track: “Hardpan Song”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2013 reissue)

Merge Records reissued All Hail West Texas in 2013 with seven additional tracks. The original 2002 release is a turning point for John Darnielle, and you’ll find lots of devotees who call it the best album he’s released. It has several iconic songs and straddles all the moods of a great Mountain Goats album from deep and personal depression to boundless and triumphant love. The seven additional tracks on the 2013 release include an alternate take of “Jenny” and some really interesting oddities, with the main connective tissue being that they all sound like they would have made sense on All Hail West Texas from the start.

“Hardpan Song” opens with a sample from the radio and sounds like so many songs from the first decade of the Mountain Goats. In the liner notes of the reissue John Darnielle says as much and says that it doesn’t really feel right for the album. It’s definitely classic Darnielle, with the incongruous jazz and then a low, quiet musing about plant growth and how it’s just like his own sad existence.

Hardpan is soil that won’t keep water and thus won’t grow anything. The narrator thinks about hardpan and how ruined soil seems like it’s ruined forever, but then it rains and rains sometimes. They snarl “it shows no signs of stopping” and it’s clear that the miserable conditions evoke something else. It’s too brief for us to know exactly what situation is at play here, but the tense guitar and “the rain comes // it floods the town // and kills everybody in it” tell us that it’s not a great day in Texas. “Hardpan Song” is essentially a musing on “when it rains it pours,” but with typical Mountain Goats flourish.

125. Early Spring

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

Spring is typically a time of renewal, but the Mountain Goats remind us that not every new sensation is a good one in “Early Spring.”

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

“Early Spring” is the second song on Transmissions to Horace, the very early Mountain Goats album. Like every other song on the album, it was played in San Francisco in 2014 when John Darnielle played every song in order on one weird, beautiful summer night. After “Early Spring” one guy shouted “cover to cover” as a request. He hoped that, somehow, John Darnielle might play all 10 of those ancient songs in a row. He got what he wanted.

The album version is slow and creepy. John Darnielle’s voice is almost emotionless as he lists the truths of a couple’s current state of affairs. The coffee’s worse than it used to be, the paint’s peeling, and even jokes and songs have lost their luster. He lists these problems and closes each verse with “and I know you” twice. The narrator survived the winter with someone but now, in the spring, it seems like they see their situation in a much worse way.

The live version is what that guy wanted to hear. He wanted to hear John Darnielle speed up the delivery and howl “it’s a lie!” The second verse that night in San Francisco is why this song exists. You can hear John Darnielle’s fury and the emotion the narrator wants their mundane complaints to carry. “I know you” is a simple sentence that carries real darkness here, and it’s telling that even when John Darnielle yells the rest of the song he lowers his voice to deliver “I know you” the only way it can come across. It might be a period on the end of this relationship or it might just be the sign of another bad night, but it’s undeniably loaded no matter what.

124. The Hot Garden Stomp

Alex Russell Hot Garden Stomp , , , , , , ,

 

John Darnielle doesn’t write songs like “The Hot Garden Stomp” these days, but you can visit his most troubled characters in 1993.

Track: “The Hot Garden Stomp”
Album: Hot Garden Stomp (1993)

Some of the early Mountain Goats songs feature the same type of narrator. It may not be the same character, but it’s at the very least the same type of character: a sad person who is convinced that the right person could save their life with no effort put in on their part. It’s a reductive way to view another person, but it’s also a fairly common line of thinking among young people who haven’t realized the world doesn’t exist to serve their whims.

John Darnielle says that those type of narrators aren’t interesting to him anymore, but “those songs are not without their occasional charms.” There are scattered songs in the early part of the catalog that fit into this category and most of them don’t see the light of day now. “The Hot Garden Stomp” is a foot-stomper and works even now as long as you can separate the artist from the character.

Darnielle says these days of his main character that he’s “not impressed by his suffering” and there is no better summation of that angst than “I hear you talking // shut up.” These days Mountain Goats characters are more complex, but in 1993 it was enough to be furious and sweat in a hot room.

Live versions work better than the studio version in this case. The trip back to 1993 with the tape crackles is interesting, but the howl over “then you came along with your questions, always questions” on live versions sells this old gem. It’s also worth tracking down this recording from Bloomington, IN in 2011 where Darnielle discusses the gender neutrality of all of his characters and why he doesn’t like writing about people with worldviews like this anymore.

123. Leaving Home

Alex Russell Ghana , , , , , , ,

For John Darnielle, “Leaving Home” is a way to process the sad feeling of moving away from somewhere you love.

Track: “Leaving Home”
Album: Ghana (1999)

“Leaving Home” was originally released in 1996 as part of a compilation called Cyanide Guilt Trip. It was re-released on Ghana three years later with several other oddities and early tracks. Ghana is an essential album because it covers so much ground, but it’s odd to listen to in one sitting. It has some funny, light songs like “Anti Music Song” and “The Anglo-Saxons” and some emotional, quiet songs like “The Last Day of Jimi Hendrix’s Life” and “Raja Vocative.” It’s not that one type of song is better than the other, it’s just that they don’t necessarily flow into one another. You thus need to listen to Ghana the way you’d read a history textbook. It has all the details, though the story may not always feel linear.

“Leaving Home” belongs in the second group. In the liner notes on Ghana, John Darnielle says that he wrote it while he lived in Chicago for six months in 1995 and that he missed his home in California. It’s rare for John Darnielle to be this forthcoming: “It seems maudlin to say things out loud, so I made up a whole different set of circumstances with which to surround the feeling.” Everyone can remember a time they moved and felt like they were in the wrong place, even briefly.

John Darnielle replaces his situation with a couple with a young child. They’re in love. The speaker remarks on China, their home, as it shrinks into the distance. They share longing glances, but they also comment on how they’re deeply in love and might just need each other. It’s rare for a Mountain Goats song to discuss such uncomplicated love, and it feels like John Darnielle needed to imagine what would justify the choice to leave somewhere you don’t want to leave.

122. Treetop Song

Alex Russell New Asian Cinema , , , , , , ,

 

“Treetop Song” is a rare bit of positive thinking in the world of the Mountain Goats.

Track: “Treetop Song”
Album: New Asian Cinema (1998)

At this show on April 9th, 2009 in Bloomington, Indiana, John Darnielle played some of Moon Colony Bloodbath with John Vanderslice. He played the never-released “For TG&Y” and the old classic “Cobscook Bay.” At the end, he came out and played a three-song encore that many Mountain Goats fans would swoon over: “Treetop Song,” “Cutter,” and of course, “No Children.”

This performance is the only live recording of “Treetop Song” that I can find. John Darnielle stumbles over a line towards the end and the crowd has to help him. This happens sometimes when he tries to play a very old, very rare song. It’s endearing, because it shows that even the man himself can’t keep a 500+ song catalog in his head at once. It’s always a fun moment when one voice calls out the missing lyric to a weird song in the middle of a concert, even if that might sound like a weird thing to like.

You won’t hear this live very often because the harmonica is important and that’s John Darnielle playing it. Aside from the harmonica, it’s almost a slight song. Both Darnielle’s delivery and strumming seem calm. It’s a great album-ending track in that way. The characters in New Asian Cinema are all struggling, but we see most of them right before the bubble bursts. The narrator of “Treetop Song” makes a decision to jump from one tree to another, but they also assure us that this choice means good things. Darnielle emphasizes the “be” in “And I knew that I would be all right.” In other songs this kind of statement might make you wonder if they were trying to convince themselves, but here it sounds like a fact.

121. Going to Malibu

Alex Russell Chile de Árbol, Protein Source of the Future...Now! , , , , , , ,

The robotic drum beat and delivery on “Going to Malibu” turn an argument into a march to war.

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

Chile de Árbol is not an easy listen two decades after release. The recording is scratchy and caries all of the “poor-quality-on-purpose” charm that the early releases do. Lyrically, it’s challenging and confusing. There are tons of Biblical references, a song about Billy the Kid’s magic shoes, and an extended discussion of the Easter Bunny that might be about the end of the world. We’re deep in the weeds in 1993, but there are treasures there.

“Going to Malibu” is the most “Mountain Goats” song on the album. All five songs have charm, but “Going to Malibu” is a direct address from one character to another about the state of their relationship. The relentless, mechanical rat-a-tat-tat marching drum sells a sense of unavoidable dread. These characters have to have this argument and it has to happen this way. John Darnielle’s delivery has a robotic quality to it that works alongside the drum. You can almost feel the fist pounding the table to punctuate each word in the chorus of “that’s not true // that’s a rotten thing to say // that’s a damnable lie.”

Your enjoyment of “Going to Malibu” may vary. It’s definitely a weird song, even for the early ones, and the delivery and backing drum do lack the raw emotion that makes much of the early catalog so passionate. For me, this song wouldn’t work any other way. It’s intended to be a battlefield by the use of “neutral ground” and the battle march aesthetic is a logical choice. Lines like “the thoughts that race around my mind // could fill a long unreadable book” are worth the sound quality, and if you can put yourself in the non-magic shoes of the narrator, you might appreciate why they feels like they’re going to war.

120. World Cylinder

Alex Russell On Juhu Beach , , , , , ,

“World Cylinder” closes the delightfully strange On Juhu Beach with a message about ignoring your problems.

Track: “World Cylinder”
Album: On Juhu Beach  (2001)

Juhu is a neighborhood of Mumbai on the western coast of India. The beach is well-known and that’s definitely the Juhu referenced in On Juhu Beach, but the liner notes for the album are in Japanese. John Darnielle lived in Iowa in 2001 and released an album with Japanese liner notes and a title named after a beach in India. The packaging is hand sewn and the album itself is rare, which means you’ll pay several hundred dollars if you want a real one.

All of this is to say that the five songs that make up On Juhu Beach are strange. It’s the perfect combination of things that contributes to the mythos of the Mountain Goats. The Japanese liner notes include “explanations” of each song, and they’re fascinating translated. “World Cylinder” boils down to “dance music for uncool people,” which seems like a good summation of what Mountain Goats fans are looking for some nights.

The song is fun and bouncy. The repeated “do I have to hit you over the head with it” sounds exasperated, but you can almost hear a smile and a laugh in John Darnielle’s voice. This is just after the bleak The Coroner’s Gambit and just before the complex All Hail West Texas. John Darnielle describes On Juhu Beach as “really different and out there” and it’s easy to see why. It doesn’t serve as connective tissue between anything and it’s tough to assign an overall feeling to the five songs. The album title does create a setting: a person not interested in the specifics of the world, but someone who really just wants to hang out by the beach and ignore the things that can’t be changed. Just what they’re ignoring is a canvas you can fill in yourself.

119. Alpha Rats Nest

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , , ,

The Alpha Couple is on their last legs in “Alpha Rats Nest” but they aren’t quite finished.

Track: “Alpha Rats Nest”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

Tallahassee may take some time to process. When you first hear it, you’re probably going to latch on to “No Children.” That’s perfectly normal. The hook in “No Children” is outstanding and it gets across the message of Tallahassee easier than most other tracks. Subsequent listens will probably highlight the rockers. You might like the dance music of “Southwood Plantation Road” or the chugging anger of “See America Right.” It will depend on your mood and relationship status, but all of Tallahassee will eventually seep into you.

Different people like different Mountain Goats albums, but Tallahassee is likely their best and most complete. It’s the journey of one couple (the Alpha Couple) as they drive from California to Florida to spend their married life together. They love each other and hate each other and something in between that’s closer to how people feel at their worst. They try to save their marriage (sort of) but they mostly pour cheap vodka all over it and glare at each other in the heat. They know it’s all over but they’re so in love with the end of it.

John Darnielle says that “Alpha Rats Nest” was always going to be the last song on the album. The strumming makes it feel like a “fun” song, which is fitting for a song about the end and Tallahassee. It’s not just a divorce album, it’s about how this couple thinks even their end must be dramatic. They’ve just been through “Oceanographer’s Choice” and yelled at each other, and there’s still an end to come after “Alpha Rats Nest.” “Sing for the damage we’ve done,” one says, “and the worse things we’ll both do.” Their actual end is too dark to be a song, so it’s fitting that we leave on a questionably “happy” note.

118. Some Other Way

Alex Russell Undercard , , , , , ,

“Some Other Way” looks at grand gestures and doing dangerous things to “win back” someone who is long gone.

Track: “Some Other Way”
Album: Undercard (2010)

Undercard is the first album from The Extra Lens, which is John Darnielle and Franklin Bruno. They’re same two guys that make up The Extra Glenns. Franklin Bruno plays piano and several other instruments on a number of Mountain Goats releases. At some point, the difference between The Extra Lens/Glenns and the Goats themselves becomes academic.

Franklin Bruno wrote “Some Other Way” and it shows. The opening four lines see the narrator string a rope to hang themselves and fill a pot of tea with poison. Just as quickly, they decide those aren’t going to work and that they need “some other way” to earn the love of another person. Bruno also wrote the song “Houseguest” as a part of Nothing Painted Blue, which has been covered dozens of times by the Goats and features a similarly unhinged narrator trying to express themselves in dark ways.

By the next verse we’re back to the same scene. The windows are sealed and the gas is filling the room and then, just as suddenly, the window is smashed and the narrator is back to the drawing board. There are a lot of ways to read the motivations behind these actions, but the threat of suicide as an unhealthy means of earning love is desperate behavior. The song fades out with a repetition of “to make you love me” that’s haunting given what we know about the character, but the music is almost jaunty. It lends a pulse to the song and seems to suggest that while this person is definitely going about it wrong, they know that. “There are things a letter won’t explain,” after all, but you can’t make your case if you aren’t here to make it.