music

107. Fall of the Star High School Running Back

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

John Darnielle laments the reality of drug laws in “Fall of the Star High School Running Back.”

Track: “Fall of the Star High School Running Back”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

All Hail West Texas is about specific people. They aren’t all real, but they are specific in the sense that they have names and personalities. John Darnielle’s early work features characters that speak in first person and often talk about the same themes (love, desperation, longing, and the like) so the first album with a full cast is a big departure.

Jenny from “Jenny” shows up in other songs and Jeff and Cyrus from “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” live again every time the band closes a live show. William Staniforth Donahue is a different sort of character, but still specific. His name changes in live shows, but he’s always the same person. He always plays football well and he always goes to jail. He lives a short life in the two-minute song.

John Darnielle says the song is about mandatory sentencing. The character is based on a person who did time in a Dutch prison for drug possession, ostensibly with the intent to distribute. The real guy was another young person who probably didn’t fit the intent of a mandatory 10+ year sentence for peddling hard drugs.

He refers to the song as “a protest song” which makes sense. It’s also the story of a troubled person who chooses temporary happiness at the risk of all else. That’s a very familiar idea. More of Donahue’s character comes out in the line “people you used to look down on” about the drug dealers he hangs with after he loses his football career. He changes his perspective about the lower social strata, which would be the start of something if it weren’t connected with the end of everything else.

106. Original Air-Blue Gown

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

 

John Darnielle writes his own version of a Thomas Hardy poem in the ode “Original Air-Blue Gown.”

Track: “Original Air-Blue Gown”
Album: Full Force Galesburg (1997)

Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Voice” includes the lines “Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then // Even to the original air-blue gown!” The rest of the poem talks about Hardy waiting for a woman’s return, though he slowly begins to realize that she cannot return. He thinks he hears her voice but also worries that she is a ghost. We get the sensation that his fears are founded.

The narrator in “Original Air-Blue Gown” waits for a similar return with similar fears. They describe colorful surroundings: green horseflies, plums, and red air. All of that color leads to “dark blue shapes” that they can just make out through their eyelids and the statement “I am not afraid of death.”

When a character says that we generally think they’re talking about their own mortality, but we need to look deeper here. Hardy was describing his wife in “The Voice” and Darnielle’s narrator is definitely describing someone else’s passing. They obsess over a black-and-white boxing match and the youth and power of Cassius Clay, which shows that they’re tied up in the past. The repetition of “my God, my God, my God // he was something” helps lock the image in the listener’s mind. You can’t breeze past it any more than the narrator can.

At the end of “The Voice” Hardy’s character attempts to come to terms with reality. Darnielle’s believes that the target of his affection has returned. The backing strings intensify and lend bonus eeriness to the scene. As a callback to the earlier repetition, the narrator looks out into the clearing where either a ghost or a loved one is and says “it’s you, it’s you, it’s you.”

105. Chinese House Flowers

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

 

The fierce “Chinese House Flowers” is suspiciously absent from live shows, but the one instance is magical. 

Track: “Chinese House Flowers”
Album: Full Force Galesburg (1997)

On September 11, 1996, John Darnielle played “Chinese House Flowers” at a concert venue called The Argo in Denton, Texas. It’s probably not the only time, but it’s the only time the good people at the Mountain Goats wiki list.

In various cars, apartments, backyards, and stranger venues I’ve played just about every song in the catalog for different people over the last decade. Just about everything — even the strangest of the strange — works for someone. “Chinese House Flowers” seems to work differently on me. People like it, but it doesn’t seem to get the same love as other fierce songs about love.

Chinese houses are purple and native to California. You can imagine mid-90s John Darnielle thinking of those flowers and home as he wrote Full Force Galesburg in Iowa. The album version features some trademark frantic strumming, but the selling point is the wavering, almost-terrified vocal track. His voice cracks over and over again and it drives home that this narrator is terrified. “I used to love you so much that I was sure it would kill me” could be a corny line in less deft hands, but it fits perfectly after “And just then the gleam in your eye // made my blood freeze” and other such expressions of fear.

Darnielle’s thoughts on the song aren’t obvious, though we can infer some things from the possible 20-year absence at live shows. If you’re like me and it works for you, I urge you to go check out that Denton recording. That venue’s long gone and Denton became immortalized far more famously by the Goats a few years later, but you should still go hear John Darnielle lose his mind over the chorus of “I want you more than I want anything // I want you the way you were.”

104. Love Cuts the Strings

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

 

Numerous deep-cut references make the exciting “Love Cuts the Strings” a lyrical puzzle worth solving.

Track: “Love Cuts the Strings”
Album: Philyra (1994) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

As of this writing, the most recent Mountain Goats album is about wrestling. Like everything else in the catalog it’s not solely about what it’s “about,” but the songs that explore the consistent themes of the band (loneliness, deserved rewards, external and internal struggles, etc.) are about wrestling, this time. Similar experiments include the meth album, the stepdad album, and the divorcing-couple-in-Tallahassee-Florida album.

No matter how out there the structure gets, though, you’re still listening to a Mountain Goats album. The themes repeat like they do for all artists who write about the things they really care about. Two decades ago while writing Philyra, John Darnielle clearly wanted to couch his themes in much more obtuse subject matter. There isn’t one connecting element to the four songs, but they definitely still feel at home in the catalog.

“Love Cuts the Strings” is the most raucous of the four. Darnielle strums at light speed and barks out lines like “punch-drunk, snowblind, as though the whole thing were a bad dream.” It’s easy to get into the beat and to nod along with the intensity, but just what the lyrics are talking about is a little murky.

Kypris is another name for Aphrodite, who also shows up in the last verse as “the green-eyed goddess” who prepares for war. As near as I can tell, the narrator is imagining the concept of love as something that’s following them as they flee. They mention recognizing the figure but not understanding how, which seems about right for a Darnielle narrator’s relationship with affection. Finally, they picture the air around love turning red as they feel “a dull chill” come over themselves.

102. The Lady from Shanghai

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

Named for an equally creepy Orson Welles movie, “The Lady from Shanghai” is unsettling in the best way possible.

Track: “The Lady from Shanghai”
Album: Songs for Petronius (1992) and Bitter Melon Farm (1999)

“‘The Lady from Shanghai,’ though — when I hear that comparatively young man get all breathy there, I see what he means, and I feel like he was onto something.” – John Darnielle, liner notes for Bitter Melon Farm

In 1947, Orson Welles wrote and directed a movie called The Lady from Shanghai. It occupies two places in cultural history. It’s either a masterpiece of noir or a tangled mess of indulgent Orson Welles stuff. Your perspective is your own, but it’s a classic and it’s one of the strangest experiences available on screen.

It’s strange to the point that some people seem to argue that it doesn’t make sense or flow as a narrative, but the basic points are pretty easy to follow. Orson Welles plays an Irish sailor who rescues Rita Hayworth during an attack in a park. Welles then discovers she’s married, but her husband hires him to man his yacht during a long, bizarre cruise that involves his lawyer and other strange figures who might not be what they seem. Everyone gets tangled in a plot and everyone has a secret motive, but can Welles untangle them all and save his life?

The song is breathy, as Darnielle notes, and it’s sung directly to someone. The film features frequent turns to camera where characters cackle or speak ominously. These are ostensibly to other characters, but they are directed straight at the audience. Both the song and the film create an eerie mood that will unsettle anyone who consumes either. The film really needs to be seen, but without viewing it you can still appreciate the state of mind of Darnielle’s characters. They’re wrapped up in something and all they can do now is walk towards their destiny.

99. The Alphonse Mambo

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

Tap your toe to “The Alphonse Mambo” and ponder the energy it takes to have the conversation you need (but don’t want) to have.

Track: “The Alphonse Mambo”
Album: The Coroner’s Gambit (2000)

The Mountain Goats Wiki is an amazing resource of live shows. This list makes a fair case that “The Alphonse Mambo” might be the most played song from the early Goats era. There are a lot of good reasons for that, but chief among them has to be that it bridges the beginning and the current day of the Mountain Goats. John Darnielle often describes himself in the early years as one guy stomping his foot with a guitar. These days his live shows combine huge, loud performances with a full band and quiet, uneasy piano songs that highlight the beauty in the strange and lonely people of our world.

“The Alphonse Mambo” is a stomper, for sure, but it’s also about a couple in distress. The song endures because it’s thematically appropriate around whatever other song he’s playing. There are often people in distress at the center of a Goats song, but Darnielle’s confirmed that this one only features the narrator. He’s working up the courage to have a tough conversation with someone else in this 16th floor room in Tampa Bay, but he’s going to need some more painkillers and some more courage to do it.

The live versions (especially the two at Farm Sanctuary, which you should seek out) highlight the song an all-timer, but the studio version has nearly as much of the fervor. You can hear John Darnielle shake as he sings the “waiting for the other shoe to drop in Tampa Bay” ending, and that teeth-clenched delivery sells the tension our narrator is feeling. They want to believe that they can get this whole thing done, but that period of “waiting for the other shoe to drop in Tampa Bay” might be a long one.

098. Going to Tennessee

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

 

Two lovers share a quiet moment and feel a different kind of warmth as the sun sets in Memphis in “Going to Tennessee.”

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

John Darnielle loves geography. There are at least 50 “Going to…” songs in the catalog, but I never expected to find one about my hometown. I’m from Memphis, Tennessee, which is a far less exotic location than Bolivia or Denmark or Malibu, but it’s a specific kind of place that conjures an image in your mind even if you haven’t been there.

Darnielle’s song “Going to Tennessee” is heavy on specifics even though it avoids the ones you’d think. There’s no Elvis or Beale Street or anything even like them. We only get scattered facts, like the lack of a baseball team and the presence of Arkansas nearby.

“Going to Tennessee” uses specificity to set the stage on the Mississippi River in Memphis, but it’s after more general emotions. The couple lives close to the interstate and they share tender moments in their likely dingy apartment. One washes their face and the other says “I am glad I am alive,” which is an extremely rare sentence in a Mountain Goats song. We’re left to discern that they share at least a kind of love. That’s not uncommon by itself, but these two exit their song in an interesting place.

John Darnielle has said the song is about “cheating death” and there is no better way to feel like you’ve gotten one over on the end times than to feel boundless love. The sun is setting in one of the hottest towns in America, but the couple describes their skin as “warming up.” It’s not solely a love song, but that ending suggests at least one more day of joy for two people in the Bluff City.

097. Sourdoire Valley Song

Alex Russell All Eternals Deck , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle asks us to consider the lives of ancient mankind in their own context in “Sourdoire Valley Song.”

Track: “Sourdoire Valley Song”
Album: All Eternals Deck (2011)

In the vein of “Tollund Man”, “Sourdoire Valley Song” makes us consider our elders. The titular valley is in France, where a 60,000-year-old neanderthal skeleton was discovered in 1908. Many people picture the discovery, but John Darnielle considers the life that man must have lived.

The opening verse talks about what we all know. “The Old Man” as he’s generally known sharpens new tools from old rocks and hunts game for the first time in history. He’s pleased with his tools and his process. He’s got the world on a string.

But the chorus complicates his simple life. The grass grows after he’s gone and covers his things and his existence. He’ll be hidden for thousands of years, though his ability to consider that is likely limited. He’s certainly unaware of the Olduvai Gorge in Africa, a more significant and much older site with remains of ancient humanity.

Both sets of ancient man led life as best they could. Darnielle doesn’t focus on the sad realities of life in “Sourdoire Valley Song.” Of course they will be forgotten for thousands (or millions, in Olduvai Gorge) of years, but for now they have remedies for sickness and they lead happy lives. They even have roots you chew for “atmosphere” which conjures some great images.

Towards the end of the song, Darnielle mentions that his ancient characters want to “live a long life.” They seem to believe this is possible with luck, which brings up something I’ve never considered. “Longevity” is relative. “The Old Man” died at 40, but who is to say that was a short life 60,000 years ago? Context is everything.

096. Tianchi Lake

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

“Tianchi Lake” references a being that’s mythical in our world but seems to be a normal part of the world of the Mountain Goats.

Track: “Tianchi Lake”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

The songs on Heretic Pride aren’t really connected. John Darnielle has said that they’re each about an obsession of his and that’s really as much as there is to go off. That isn’t much, but it’s enough for most of these. It’s certainly enough for “Tianchi Lake,” which is directly about a lake monster in China.

In the illustrated press kit that was released alongside Heretic Pride John Darnielle said “depending on whether you believe it or not, this is a true story, sort of.” That sums up the Mountain Goats’ relationship with the world of strange, mythical (maybe!) beasts. In Heaven Lake (or Tianchi) in China there supposedly exists a creature called the Lake Tianchi Monster. Some people report that it resembles a buffalo. Some say it has a human head. Some say that there are six of them and they all have wings.

In Darnielle’s song, it has the “body of a sea lion // head just like a horse.” The song is mostly a description of the lake and the monster, but there’s also an interesting commentary on how people react to it. Lots of our fear of the unknown comes from its nature as the unknown. Maybe you don’t really believe in ghosts or aliens, but maybe when you have thought about them you’ve been uncomfortable. Darnielle’s world allows for more direct interactions. The children, the preacher, and the crowd that see the monster in “Tianchi Lake” have solely positive or neutral reactions with the monster. That’s because they aren’t interacting with what might be, they’re just by a lake that has a known monster in it. The world of the Mountain Goats has monsters, yeah, but they’re less scary if you accept that as fact.

095. Wait for You

Alex Russell Babylon Springs EP , , , , , , ,

“Wait for You” closes an EP on a quiet, hopeless note as a character waits for someone who likely isn’t coming back.

Track: “Wait for You”
Album: Babylon Springs EP (2006)

The Babylon Springs EP covers all the emotions the Mountain Goats love to cover. “Ox Baker Triumphant” and “Alibi” open the album with rousing, screaming fury. Both characters make bad decisions that they feel they have to make to stay true to themselves. We can judge their intentions because we’re separate people, but in their minds they’re doing what must be done. “Sail Babylon Springs” and “Sometimes I Still Feel the Bruise” look inward at sad relationships past their prime (well past, in the latter’s case).

After you’ve made those two parallel journeys over four songs you’re left with “Wait for You.” It would seem impossible that a song could step down in mood from the crushing blows of “Sometimes I Still Feel the Bruise,” but leave it to John Darnielle to find the sadness in a rainbow.

In the second verse the character waits for a loved one that may be coming and may not. They see a rainbow in the distance and imagine that it “wrapped its coils around the earth like a serpent” to choke them. There are a handful of examples of this in Goats songs, but this is one of the best ones. Often normally hopeful or sweet imagery is twisted in the minds of Goats narrators, but it takes a special kind of darkness to see a portent in a rainbow.

By the end of the song the narrator has decided that the person they’re waiting for isn’t coming. That much is to be expected, but they do say that the waiting still serves a purpose. “But I waited all the same,” Darnielle says softly, and you appreciate the perspective of waiting for waiting’s sake on someone that is totally gone.