music

069. Lab Rat Blues

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

While it opens up with a truly sweet set of two lines, “Lab Rat Blues” largely tells the sad tale of the title rat.

Track: “Lab Rat Blues”
Album: The Hound Chronicles (1992)

“I apologize for the “early” i.e. first 5 years’ worth of hair/there rhymes but as I remember it there was a lot of hair there” – John Darnielle

John Darnielle’s Twitter is routinely outstanding reading, but there is a special joy in little pieces of ephemera like that. Darnielle said the above in response to a tweet from the Canadian punk band Propagandhi when they said they were “studying Mountain Goats lyrics.” The man The New Yorker called “America’s best non-hip-hop lyricist” has always been sheepish about his early work, but he’s rarely been as specific as he was in that tweet.

“Lab Rat Blues” opens with “I saw you // I saw your hair // I could spend the rest of my life in there” and it’s the best part of the song. The song seems to be an extended comparison of the titular lab rat and a lover who feels jilted. Both are beyond in love with their creator/lover and both express it through descriptions of power and beauty. The comparison is sad, but one we can appreciate in the memory of times we felt we were at the mercy of someone else, likely in an emotional balance of power.

The difference is that lovers perceive a disparate amount of power where lab rats are literally right about their powerlessness. “I saw you, but you saw me first” from the lab rat’s view reveals the terrifying reality of speaking to an actual creator that knows even the moments of your life that you’ll never know. There are a lot of emotions tied up in this comparison, but it’s also worth viewing at face value. “Trapped like a rat” is thrown around a lot as a phrase, but Darnielle asks us to consider the actual rat.

068. Going to Chino

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

John Darnielle speaks of his home and his mentality as he wails about the selling points of both in “Going to Chino.”

Track: “Going to Chino”
Album: The Hound Chronicles (1992)

“Going to Spain” is one of the saddest songs in the two decades of Mountain Goats history, but the entire album The Hound Chronicles really has a sad feel to it. On “Going to Chino” you can hear John Darnielle’s voice crack over and over. Some listeners will find it too rough to enjoy, but that’s really the point. Early songs like “Going to Alaska” use the roughness of the recording to amplify their snarls and screams, but “Going to Chino” stands alone. John is wailing by the time he belts out “a unified school system // the likes of which you won’t find elsewhere” and the delivery is the entire point of the song.

It’s lyrically unimpressive by design. He’s singing about droll subjects because the actual setting of Chino isn’t the point. When John says he wants to “say hello to all our friends from Chino” he’s speaking to the entire cast of characters he’s created. Those characters didn’t exist to the public in 1992, but the meth addicts and alcoholic brides and scorned lovers of the Mountain Goats were real to him already and they were all from Chino.

There are good things about the area like “convenient access to the 60 freeway” and “accredited medical care down at Chino Valley Hospital,” but the Chino of the mind is a tougher place to live. You were born there and you will die there, so in this brief moment a very forlorn John Darnielle would like to extend a greeting to people who need one. After all, in his own way, he’s from Chino, too.

067. Going to Scotland

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

For now the two lovers in “Going to Scotland” tear their clothes off and ignore the signs of worse things to come.

Track: “Going to Scotland”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

What is a “love song” in the parlance of the Mountain Goats? Does Tallahassee have any love songs, given that the couple is disintegrating through alcohol and hate? Is “Fault Lines” a love song if the couple doesn’t want to be in love anymore? Does “love song” need to be restricted to songs like “02-75” and “There Will Be No Divorce” where John Darnielle has strictly described them as such?

I believe in a loose construction of “love song” and I believe that “Going to Scotland” is about as good as they come. In a lesser band’s hands, “and I loved you so much it was making me sick” would be a disgusting line, but coming from the foot-stomping, hard-strumming John Darnielle it is wonderful. The song is dense for a love song, but you will be rewarded if you listen closely. Lines like “new-found rich brown deep wet ground” take a few listens to parse.

Rachel Ware, the original bassist and backup vocalist of the Goats, adds a layer of complexity and a second character. This really is an “us” both in characters and in delivery. They both view their situation and their feelings the same way. The couple left Oklahoma for Scotland just as they left whatever their previous life was for a life together. Their eventual reward will be the darkness that the “pack of wild dogs” in the chorus is sure to bring, but for now they are rending garments and making furious love in the mud. They’re tossing luggage into the water and living in the moment as few do, and the song cherishes that moment where passionate lovers are able to ignore their fated end.

066. Malevolent Seascape Y

Alex Russell Martial Arts Weekend , , , , , , , ,

 

Two characters examine how they feel about a third leaving their lives in “Malevolent Seascape Y.”

Track: “Malevolent Seascape Y”
Album: Martial Arts Weekend (2002)

The Extra Glenns and The Extra Lens are the same band: John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats and Franklin Bruno of Nothing Painted Blue. The duo has released two 12-track albums and while songs like “Malevolent Seascape Y” are technically not Mountain Goats songs, the entire idea of “the Mountain Goats” is really just any band that either has John Darnielle in it or only John Darnielle in it. There are common themes and some Extra Glenns/Lens songs show up in Goats shows, so it really is a distinction without a difference. If you want to tell me “Adultery” isn’t a Mountain Goats song (and possibly the Mountain Goats song) then that’s your hill to die on.

“Malevolent Seascape Y” comes from Martial Arts Weekend, which feels like a lighter-but-still-abrasive Goats record. The closing track features a metaphor in which love is compared to a dying hospital patient, so we’re definitely in familiar territory. In this song, two people watch a ship disappear over the horizon. The ship contains a third character that is connected to the duo, but the meaning of “Seascape” is left vague. The characters are almost wistful about the situation, but we don’t really know what it all means for them.

The narrator thinks to themselves “I guess this makes it all easier // I guess it’s smooth sailing now” but they close with “I guess it never really mattered anyhow.” The only clue in the song comes up when one character gives the narrator a seashell and asks them to listen to it. The narrator hears nothing and says “I knew the three of us meant less than nothing.” Darnielle suggests that big moments don’t always come with explanations. Not all departures have lessons. Sometimes people just leave.

065. Liza Forever Minnelli

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

“Liza Forever Minnelli” sees the iconic Liza confronting her own survival in the wake of her mother’s legacy.

Track: “Liza Forever Minnelli”
Album: All Eternals Deck (2011)

A lot of the early Mountain Goats songs are about people who are flawed but expect the people in their life to be without flaws. It’s a common problem with human interaction wherein we expect the world to be better to us than we are to it. Most of the time it’s only evident later on, but Goats narrators often realize in the middle of the situation that they are doing damage to a relationship or a friendship. That said, they rarely correct their behavior and that is why they are worth discussing. There’s no story to “there was a problem with me and I fixed it and now I’m better.” We want to hear about the messes.

As he’s gotten older, John Darnielle has focused more on people who never had a chance to fix their issues. Amy Winehouse is the Amy in “Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1,” and the song is about how people survive in the face of great obstacles. Amy Winehouse of course didn’t do that, but Darnielle wants us to think about how much of that could actually be prevented. His heroin-addicted Frankie Lymon in “Harlem Roulette” isn’t just a drug addict, he’s a victim of his own chemicals rather than his choices.

Rehab saved Liza Minnelli, but “Liza Forever Minnelli” is more interested in the cause than the solution. We judge people based on what we know, but Darnielle wants us to think about everyone’s circumstances when we make those judgements.”The compasses I came into this world with // never really worked so good,” John/Liza sings, and despite the “memory of sweet things” we are forced to consider what really goes into being Liza Minnelli and the power of survival in spite of it.

064. Age of Kings

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

As the star-crossed lovers of the album, the couple in “Age of Kings” meets the only end such lovers can meet.

Track: “Age of Kings”
Album: All Eternals Deck (2011)

“Age of Kings” is another of the tarot cards on All Eternals Deck. Every song on the album is supposedly a different card in a supposedly lost tarot deck, and this one must be the Star-Crossed Lovers card. The song opens with the couple hiding in a stone tower, but the line “why should we hide from anyone?” tells you all you need to know about where they stand. They love their love, and that’s honestly fairly rare in the world of the Goats.

The couple agonizes over hiding and protecting themselves in this sad tale. They decry their time as the “age of kings” and “the lost age.” They talk about the sword in “the waiting stone.” They live in fantastical times, but they have a very relatable problem and that problem is about to be solved in a very negative way. You generally don’t want wolves in your hallway, but you definitely don’t want them to be “gaining ground.”

While it’s a fairly straightforward song lyrically, the melancholy delivery and the strings really add some detail. Musically it fits on the album, but it doesn’t have the strong message that a lot of the rest of the tarot cards. What do these lovers want us to know about their plight, beyond its sadness? What, beyond love, has been lost here? For John Darnielle and All Eternals Deck the passing feeling of sadness for lovers from another time is enough, but it may leave some listeners curious for more detail. That said, “felt like God’s anointed // when you didn’t push me away” are some all-time lines, and things like that keep a song memorable long after the first listen.

063. Night Light

Alex Russell Transcendental Youth , , , , , , ,

 

Jenny from “All Hail West Texas” shows up in “Night Light” as a source of lost hope for a troubled narrator.

Track: “Night Light”
Album: Transcendental Youth (2012)

Transcendental Youth explodes with songs like “Harlem Roulette,” “Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1,” and “The Diaz Brothers.” Those three are all-timers and they’re united as “fun” songs, even if they’re anthems about outcasts. The entire album is about the afflicted and the alone, but those three stand out so clearly that it can be easy to gloss over some of the slower tracks. Let’s not do that.

If “Spent Gladiator 2” is the song you play as you approach the end, “Night Light” is the song you play at night in motels stays on the drive to the end. The narrator is panicked, clearly, but possibly with good reason. “Counterfeit Florida Plates” on the same album describes a paranoid person who is actually hiding from nothing, but this person might have actual heat on them. While the “ambitious young policemen” probably aren’t real, they’re plugging in literal and metaphorical night lights because those “small dark corners” have some real evil in them.

It’s interesting that the “evil” there has to do with Jenny, a figure any Goats fan will recognize from All Hail West Texas. Jenny and our narrator have a history — we can infer that it’s romantic, but it might just as easily be a deeper dependency than that — and they have no present. She calls them from Montana, but by the end they just know “possibly Jenny’s headed east.” There’s no blame here and there’s no explanation of what happened. All we know is what the narrator tells us: Jenny is out there headed out from Montana and they’re in here using night lights to run from a darkness that’s following them around.

062. Orange Ball of Love

Alex Russell Zopilote Machine , , , , , , , ,

In “Orange Ball of Love” one lover finally gives up and gets serious about the confrontation he’s been avoiding.

Track: “Orange Ball of Love”
Album: Zopilote Machine (1994)

There are four “Orange Ball” songs: Love, Hate, Peace, and Pain. “Peace” and “Hate” both have really solid jokes in them and they’re funny songs. “Pain” is, predictably, very sad. “Orange Ball of Love” is more difficult to diagnose. The four songs are tied together only by naming convention, and John Darnielle has said that they aren’t meant to be connected any other way. Rather than comparing it with the other three, it’s better to look at “Orange Ball of Love” as a part of the album Zopilote Machine. It’s a really angry album, which isn’t surprising given songs titles like “Standard Bitter Love Song #7” and “We Have Seen the Enemy,” but “Orange Ball of Love” is interesting beyond the anger.

It opens with some twangy guitar and John’s familiar snarl in the line “when I catch sight of your face.” By the end of the stanza the narrator is trying to find “a good place to hide.” He accuses his target of “wearing a wire.” It goes beyond figurative language to the point where you have to consider that this may be a person confronting an actual enemy. Lots of Goats songs are about lovers in their darkest moments, but the confrontation is rarely this dramatic.

Whether you think it’s figurative or not isn’t really important. The language is severe enough that either works. When the sun sets it sets into a “burial ground.” When it rises it “rears up” and “swallows” the couple. These are people in a standoff and the narrator has decided he’s going to come clean about how he feels about all this. You feel the corner he’s in, even if you’ve never had to accuse someone of giving you a fake name like this guy does.

061. Adair

Alex Russell Jack and Faye, Unreleased , , , , , , , ,

 

“Adair” is a wavering, quiet love song about the kind of moment you remember for the rest of your life.

Track: “Adair”
Album: Jack and Faye (Unreleased, recorded 1995 or 1996)

The title of Jack and Faye comes from the stars of Chinatown. John Darnielle never released it, but you can download it freely from the Goats’ website and the standout “Raid on Entebbe” gets played live from time to time. If you’re a fan, all of those details combine to form a mythos that’s undeniable. Chinatown has a strangeness about it despite being one of the greatest films of all time and the Goats are very particular about what they release and don’t release. That should pique your interest for a love song on such an album.

In the interest of disclosure, “Adair” has always been one of my favorite love songs. The specificity of a scar that “runs clear from your temple to your jawline” and “the blazing dead center of July” create a clear picture of two lovers who have spent a lot of time together. They know the contours of their lover perfectly, and we all have that memory of one small imperfection of another person that made them feel special.

There is so much longing in “Adair.” The line “all my hopes hung on one gorgeous promise” is dripping with sentiment and it’s impossible to remain unmoved when you hear it. John Darnielle delivers the song with a wavering, quiet tone and it may not strike you if you’re not in the right mood. But if you listen to “Adair” when you’re feeling wistful, it will signal boost that emotion perfectly. “I want to tell you what the sky has done to me // I want you to tell me who we are” is the kind of sentiment that might seem sappy in the wrong place, but in “Adair” it will remind you of a forgotten moment with someone you absolutely never forget.

 

060. Horseradish Road

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

“Horseradish Road” features two lovers who can’t quite end their story without a last moment of reflection.

Track: “Horseradish Road”
Album: The Coroner’s Gambit (2000)

The Coroner’s Gambit is aptly named. It’s one of the heaviest Mountain Goats albums, even though that feels like a big claim to lay on it. Songs like “Baboon” and “Family Happiness” are contenders for the angriest moments in Goats history and “Shadow Song” and “Elijah” speak directly with death. Even the love song references darkness in its title: “There Will Be No Divorce.” On such an album, what would you expect John Darnielle to say in his song about two lovers?

“Horseradish Road” is complex. I’ll confess that I had to look up both pop culture references in the song: the beleaguered, depressed opera singer Maria Callas and the musical cryptogram Enigma Variations. You can go down a big information hole and read about them online, but their use in this song is very simple. Callas had an impossible life and was driven to be the greatest of her time and Variations contains an unsolvable puzzle. They are both beautiful and impossible. The couple in “Horseradish Road” is surrounding themselves with lovely things that they deliberately can’t fix.

“You’ve done something awful // I’ve done something worse” is a solid Goats lyric, and it largely sums up the ethos of John Darnielle’s lovers who are past the point of no return. It’s rare that lovers assign blame in both directions, but the Goats are always careful to mention that neither person can be fully blamed for any demise. It’s always a joint decision, and despite the beautiful violin and the high-minded cultural references, “Horseradish Road” boils down to one seething person looking at another reprehensible one. They aren’t quite finished, but every Goats song is about that very long moment where it’s too late, but it’s not quite over.