music

049. Alpha Negative

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

 

The Alpha Couple considers the sweetness of evil things as they contemplate their relationship in “Alpha Negative.”

Track: “Alpha Negative”
Album: The Hound Chronicles (1992)

“Ah, c’mon, nobody knows that one.” – John Darnielle at a live show, about “Alpha Negative”

After a few jokes about playing a song from 1992, John Darnielle adds that it’s not like the music he plays now, and that it was written by someone with “more death in his heart” than the current frontman of The Mountain Goats. It calls to mind the intro for “Going to Georgia” where he said that it was a song written by a very different person who had the same Social Security number.

In the original recording, there’s little better than the way Darnielle nervously delivers “cool and smooth and sweet” over and over again. Every mention of “smooth” in the song has an eeriness to it, and it forces you to consider that this person was at least partially complicit in their fate. The narrator drank poison, but they liked it, to some degree. They’re less angry than they are fascinated with their own end. That’s a recurring trait in early Goats narrators, but this one is even more dramatic than the standard fare.

The Bright Mountain Choir adds some sweetness to the whole thing, and they really bring it all together. There are angrier narrators (“Baboon” and “Poltergeist” come to mind) and there are people closer to literal death (“Sax Rohmer #1”) but there is still enough in “Alpha Negative” to think about. “I loved you, and you made me drink poison” says one Alpha to the other, but we know that’s not really the whole story. At this moment, one of them feels like they have a case against the other. They’re still blaming each other, and they’ll need to get to Florida to gain some perspective.

048. Golden Boy

Alex Russell Ghana , , , , , , ,

“Golden Boy” may be a loathed request for John Darnielle, but it’s still great for what it is (and that’s all it is).

Track: “Golden Boy”
Album: Ghana (1999)

I randomized the list of songs to pick an order, but if I hadn’t done that I would have done “Golden Boy” absolutely last. It’s a really difficult song to talk about because there’s probably no good way to do it. If you want to find a bad way, you should read this brutally awkward interview MTV did with John Darnielle. The interviewer is clearly a big Goats fan, but he starts the interview by talking about “Golden Boy” and forces John Darnielle to say “I just find nothing amusing about “Golden Boy” yelling. It’s boring and awful. I might play it more if people wouldn’t routinely wreck the concert moment by yelling it. I just don’t want to feed the troll.”

“Golden Boy” originally comes from a compilation album called Object Lessons: Songs About Products that is literally what it sounds like. “Golden Boy” is about Golden Boy brand peanuts, a seemingly defunct brand of peanuts you used to be able to get in Asian grocery stores in California. It’s essentially a joke in that the message is that you must live a good life and go to the part of the afterlife where Golden Boy peanuts are available. In the context of a series of songs about products, it functions as the most extreme form of advertising possible: the endorsement of heaven.

“Golden Boy” is genuinely funny and it’s funny without being silly. That’s difficult to do, but there are very few songs like it in the catalog. Right there on Ghana with it there are a few others, “The Anglo-Saxons” and “Anti Music Song” especially, but you have to take them for what they are. Don’t yell for the funny songs at a show. Not even the best of them, about “those magnificent peanuts from Singapore.”

047. Snow Crush Killing Song

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , , ,

On an album full of tragic figures, the lovers in “Snow Crush Killing Song” fail to even share one final tender moment.

Track: “Snow Crush Killing Song”
Album: Sweden (1995)

If you were to read the lyrics to “Snow Crush Killing Song” without hearing it, you’d think that it was an entirely different sort of song. “I know you’re changing // god damn you for that” is a message that begs to be screamed in anger. The chorus of “Chinese House Flowers” is at least a cousin to those lines with its pleading “I want you the way you were,” but “Snow Crush Killing Song” is a more complex beast.

You shouldn’t start with the live recordings, but this one from 2009 gives you a taste of what it would sound like with some more fury in it. It starts with the same quiet guitar as the original, but by the time the narrator comes to terms with the fact that this is hopeless, John Darnielle cracks into a tight scream. It’s not the same foot-stomp scream that accompanies “Commandante,” but it shouldn’t be. It’s not “god damn you” because the narrator hates the person they’re with, it’s “god damn you” because the narrator doesn’t have any outs left.

The biggest difference between Sweden and most of the other Mountain Goats albums from the 90s is that the cast of Sweden doesn’t really deserve this. From the possibly innocent sacrifice of “Tollund Man” to the hopeful youths of “California Song,” these are people whose lives have been derailed by outside forces. That’s surprisingly unique among Goats characters, and though we don’t know what lit the match in “The Recognition Scene” or “Snow Crush Killing Song,” we can tell from the tone that these are sad events rather than just rewards for lives lived poorly.

046. All Up the Seething Coast

Alex Russell We Shall All Be Healed , , , , , , , , ,

 

The meth addict in “All Up the Seething Coast” doesn’t resist help, but wants you to know it’ll do no good.

Track: “All Up the Seething Coast”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

On an album like We Shall All Be Healed, where every song is about meth addiction, a song like “All Up the Seething Coast” is clearly necessary. You have your “Quito” and your “Pigs That Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph Of” that represent the glory of getting through it all and you have your “The Young Thousands” and your “Home Again Garden Grove” that challenge that idea and suggest that you might not get through it in the first place. If those are the two options, songs like “Mole” and “All Up the Seething Coast” follow the journey across the line from A to B. “Mole” is an ending (“Against Pollution” is another, from a different perspective) but “All Up the Seething Coast” is the album’s middle.

The addict in “All Up the Seething Coast” isn’t making a judgement about addiction, they’re just laying down the facts of their life. They say “and nothing you can say or do will stop me // and a thousand dead friends can’t stop me” not to ask this other person in his life to stop, but just to express the futility of it all. Spend your energy how it works for you, Samaritan, but understand that legions have died for the cause and I’m still here in this apartment with what I need.

It’s not the kind of song that gets played live and it’s fairly clear in its message, so it doesn’t get much dissection in the normal places. The most anyone ever comments on is the “sugar” metaphor. Meth apparently totally undoes your appetite, but you still crave sweetness. They may “show up for dinner when you tell me to” but they’re going to live by their rules: lots and lots of what they need and nothing else.

045. Going to Bogota

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

“Going to Bogota” helps connect the furious, loud parts and the (even more) furious, quiet parts of Nothing for Juice.

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

After my favorite live version of “Going to Bogota,” John Darnielle tells the audience that he’s not feeling well and wants to switch to something where he doesn’t shout. Anyone can appreciate that sentiment, but it’s good that it happens after “Going to Bogota” because the final verse is some of the best reckless-abandon yelling the Mountain Goats have.

Nothing for Juice is full of contrasts. “It Froze Me” and “Waving at You” remain two of the most subdued performances in the catalog even two decades later, but “Going to Kansas” and “Full Flower” are both sonic assaults. A lot of that is the production — we’ve already talked about how “Going to Kansas” starts with a really, really long screech — but some of it is pure intensity. John Darnielle used to say that “Waving at You” was as angry a song as any he has, but true as that may be, the primal parts of us sometimes just need to yell.

“Going to Bogota” starts in familiar territory. “I know what I want // and I know what we need” is the kind of opening that you immediately understand, though your specific understanding may vary depending on your circumstances. Our characters travel through Columbia and attempt to find a happiness they’ve forgotten. These two don’t want to destroy each other as much as your traditional Goats characters, and the narrator seems to be on the brink of actually starting a dialogue. It’s the one thing no two lovers in a Goats song can do, but a tent in South America may be the closest any two of them ever get.

044. Stars Fell on Alabama

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

John Darnielle rewrites a traditional love song in the style of the Mountain Goats with “Stars Fell on Alabama.”

Track: “Stars Fell on Alabama”
Album: Nine Black Poppies (1995)

The original “Stars Fell on Alabama” is very sweet, and I highly suggest the Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong version before trying to approach this one. The terminology will get stretched here if we call the song by the Mountain Goats a “cover” because it appears to share little beyond a title. It’s that fact that says everything, since you have to consider why John Darnielle borrowed the title of such a sweet song to write a song that ends with someone pulling a gun on someone they love.

Darnielle says he wrote the anti-love anthem “No Children” when he heard the Lee Ann Womack song “I Hope You Dance” on the radio. I won’t link it here, but it’s so super-saturated that it’s difficult to listen to even once. What does “promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance” in a love song even mean, really? Darnielle’s catalog is designed for someone who hears that and doesn’t hear their world. “No Children” isn’t a love song for a new generation or anything, but it’s meant to sound familiar. You know “I hope you die // I hope we both die,” whether you want to or not.

The comparison here isn’t as stark, because the sweetness of the original “Stars Fell on Alabama” is far more genuine than “I Hope You Dance.” While this one isn’t an attempt to “fix” a message, it’s still a rewriting of a love song. In both songs two lovers spend time alone together, but in the Goats version it’s not “I never planned in my imagination a situation so heavenly // a fairy land where no one else could enter” it’s “and your pistol glistened.”

043. Pure Intentions

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

“Pure Intentions” may sound a little dated, but it offers two fascinating minutes of the early Mountain Goats style. 

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

“The sound of the singing on it makes me cringe, but I am aware of a few people who think this is as close to perfection as I’ve come.” – John Darnielle, talking about Songs for Petronius on the liner notes of the compilation Bitter Melon Farm.

Peter Hughes, the bassist for the Mountain Goats, was recently asked in an interview about fans who prefer the early boombox stuff to the modern version of the band. He spoke of those fans the same way John Darnielle usually does. They both essentially said that they understand why people love the torn-down, robotic weirdness of the early singles and cassettes. The band has been around since 1991, and it’s certainly true that there’s been an “evolution” from the early tracks to what the band is now. Whether you think the recent albums are better or worse is a matter of debate, but I tend to agree with Peter Hughes when he says “If John had continued to make a boombox-recorded version of each record alongside the full studio album, which one would you spend more time with? For me, I wouldn’t listen to the boombox one.”

“Pure Intentions” is pure early Goats. It’s a little hard to listen to from a sound quality perspective, but it wasn’t really intended to be judged against Tallahassee. For the most part, all five songs on Songs for Petronius work more as history lessons than they do as things to sit down and listen to in 2015. It’s interesting to hear Darnielle’s early songwriting. “You’re so pretty // I could burst // and I wonder // who’s gonna talk first” wouldn’t be totally out of place on a later album, and it certainly does plant that seed of “what are these two people up to?”

042. Color in Your Cheeks

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

“Color in Your Cheeks” examines that quiet moment where everyone in the room knows they aren’t supposed to say anything.

Track: “Color in Your Cheeks”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

All Hail West Texas got a re-issue recently, so hopefully the people who love the “polished” stuff are now getting a chance to hear the “low-fi” stuff. Even though it’s the last of the boombox albums, All Hail West Texas has enough cred that it’s tough to imagine any Goats fan hasn’t heard it. It’s a delightfully quiet album, with songs like “Pink and Blue” and “Distant Stations” representing the peak of “difficult subject matter/quiet recording” mastery.

“Color in Your Cheeks” is a great starter song for the album. It’s the third track, but the opener is the fiery, furious “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” and the second track “Fall of the Star High School Running Back” is a wonderful parable, but not necessarily the greatest indicator of what’s going on in All Hail. “Color in Your Cheeks” hammers home the idea of being lonely in a crowd. Each verse represents a different person coming to a home-away-from-home in the hopes that they’ll be able to get some solace.

Later in the album you have “The Mess Inside” and “Riches and Wonders” and you know you’re in a real Goats album. You’re dealing with two people who are in love but having a really, really damn hard time of it. “Color in Your Cheeks” is somewhat of a rare message for the band. Even though there are seven specific places listed (eight if you count “across the street”), it’s not about specifics at all. When they play the song live, John Darnielle sometimes randomizes the list or includes other locales. Soviet Georgia or no, when you’ve come from a long way, a drink and some people to be quiet with can be all the gift you need.

041. Tallahassee

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , , ,

The title track on Tallahassee opens the album with a mournful look at a love that won’t save two people.

Track: “Tallahassee”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

“In the case of “Tallahassee” it seemed like a scene-setting song: it introduced the principal characters, established that there’s been a movement from the other side of the country to here, and took one last look in the rear view at the thing they once had that’s now in collapse.” – John Darnielle, on why the title track is first on Tallahassee.

The only part of Tallahassee that doesn’t happen in Florida happens in Nevada. The Alpha Couple (the common term for the couple on the album) is leaving their home and headed to the place where what’s already fallen apart will finally become impossible to deny. By verse three, the couple admits “there is no deadline // there is no schedule // there is no plan we can fall back on,” but we know they’re wrong about the next line: “the road this far can’t be retraced.” It can be retraced through dozens of other Alpha Couple songs, but they aren’t ready to do that. Not yet.

There is an inevitability to the sadness in both of them. Most Alpha Couple songs are bathed in descriptions of a dark future, so they never really seem to doubt how it will all end. That said, there’s more tied up in why these are “love songs” in “Tallahassee” than so many other places. The verse-ending “And you // you” is delivered with as much love as John Darnielle can muster. Even though you know how the story will end — it’s never a good sign when you say “prayers to summon the destroying angel” on the way to your new home — you have to understand the love these people once shared. It’s easy to see Tallahassee as an angry record, but its title track acts as a dirge for the best parts of The Alpha Couple.

040. Gojam Province 1968

Alex Russell Satanic Messiah , , , , , , , , ,

In the history of “Gojam Province 1968” people solve one problem only to find they can only do so much.

Track: “Gojam Province 1968”
Album: Satanic Messiah (2008)

Satanic Messiah is a four-song EP that contains a song called “Wizard Buys a Hat.” When he introduces the song live, John Darnielle sometimes mentions that he felt uniquely compelled to come up with something worthy of that title. It’s a great joke, but it doesn’t really prepare you for the rest of the EP. The albums are mostly thematic, but I haven’t found that the EPs follow anything like that. One of my favorites, Babylon Springs, has one song about a wrestler getting his righteous revenge on a world that has no use for him (“Ox Baker Triumphant”) and another about the sweetness of the “good” parts of infidelity (“Alibi”). The result is a bunch of great songs, but a puzzler when looking for a thread.

When you have a song like “Gojam Province 1968” you need no theme. It doesn’t go with “Wizard Buys a Hat” but it doesn’t really need to go with anything. In 1968, and, yes, in Gojam, the populace rose up against excessive taxes they were unable to afford. The government heard their pleas and met the resistance with reform. It’s a small victory in history, but a very big one for people who were “bashing in the heads of tax collectors.”

John Darnielle sings it softly and lightly plays a beautiful piano tune. For the last few years the band has been adding more and more quiet piano, which can sometimes feel at odds with the original one-man-stomping-and-destroying-a-guitar John Darnielle that many fans love. The best of the piano songs wouldn’t work any other way, though, and “Gojam Province 1968” needs to be this delicate. The end of the song leaves you with a “where do we go from here” feeling, and that’s the real point of this pretty song about ugliness.