music

018. Going to Monaco

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

 

In “Going to Monaco,” one lover strikes a final blow against another after a perceived wrong we aren’t permitted to see.

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

The end of a relationship between two people who both want their relationship to end is fine. There are still emotions wrapped up in that kind of an ending, but it’s an easier break when both people want to leave. It’s far harder, obviously, when there’s a difference of opinion. When one person is in love and another is not, that’s where you have “Going to Monaco.”

The chorus of “and you ask me to hold you // that’s the devil’s work” is, for lack of a better word, mean. There’s spite in this character and it comes through in the snarl when John Darnielle sings the song. The guitar is slow and plodding and the whole thing feels defiant. They’re mad at this person standing on the beach with them, but in “neither of us runs for cover” we learn that they are both going to see this through to the end.

“Going to Monaco” ends without a resolution, but it’s easy to fill in their future. One fights anger and defiance by demanding one last emotional gesture, the kind of thing we often do when we’re backed into a corner. It is the cigarette before the firing squad, and since the other feels wronged, their only remaining move is to deny the smoke. The world is aflame around them and we’re not here long enough to figure out who really made the mistake here — did something happen or are they just like this — but we recognize our own defiance in how they deal with their conflict. The world will continue to burn and one of them will get their way, but not both.

017. Have to Explode

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , , , ,

“Have to Explode” represents final moments and how no one ever realizes they’re in one until it’s too late to react.

Track: “Have to Explode”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

The most interesting thing about “Have to Explode” is its placement on Tallahassee. It’s track eleven, sandwiched in between “International Small Arms Traffic Blues” and “Old College Try.” Those two are as close as Tallahassee gets to pure love songs. They both use drastic comparisons to searchlights in Hell and powder kegs to show that the Alpha Couple, the couple in Tallahassee and so many other songs, really was once in love. They still are, in fact, though that love is something else now.

The screaming, angry, drunken songs like “Oceanographer’s Choice” and “No Children” get all the love because it’s more fun to be angry than it is to be sad. It’s important to live in balance, however, and “Have to Explode” walks the listener from one almost-love song to another. It’s tense, like the fuse it describes and the explosion it forecasts. The entire action of the song is the Alpha Couple alone in the bathroom, sweating out booze that they rightly call “poison” for themselves. They stare at the towels they stole from the hotel and stay up all night not really talking to each other. It’s before the dawn of “Old College Try” when they make their last stand and before the midnight of “Oceanographer’s Choice” where they finally say what they already know in “Have to Explode.”

We never recognize these moments when they happen in our lives. We can only look back at last chances, and the Alpha Couple is no different. It may already be too late, but this is the song for that final night you remember. This is for the last moments in a relationship that aren’t necessarily happy, but they aren’t yet what they will become.

016. Torch Song

Alex Russell The Hound Chronicles , , , , , ,

In the early “Torch Song” two lovers share a moment, and in 1996 John Darnielle comments on rare music on Swedish radio.

Track: “Torch Song”
Album: The Hound Chronicles (1992)

In 1996, in between a Rickie Lee Jones cover and then-unreleased “Minnesota,” John Darnielle played “Torch Song” on a Swedish radio station. In the interview the host asks John if he will play one more, John says he will play one or two, and he plays four. He introduces “Torch Song” with “unless you have the very early tapes, you haven’t heard this one.”

The early fans collected tapes and live shows to complete collections as they sought out rarities like “Doll Song” and “You’re in Maya.” A lot of the early Goats songs are still only rumored to exist, and fans know the names of songs they’ve never heard and may never hear. There are different schools of thought on if those days were better or worse, but YouTube and Archive.org have opened up the catalog. There are still some songs with mystical names like “8 to 20 on a Weapons Charge” that will likely never see the digital light of day, but you can more or less hear everything, now.

Almost no one has a physical copy of The Hound Chronicles, but the digital world allows you to hear the tape version or the one from that Swedish interview. “Torch Song” is a frantic song about the comparison of the heat of actual light and the body heat of a lover’s fingertips “like a torch.” Like a lot of the super-early stuff, it’s here-and-gone fast, but it’s the version in that Swedish interview that’s worthy of note. The host says that even though that’s “an old one” (in 1996), he thinks he’s heard it. John is insistent that he likely hasn’t, and he was probably right. The world has changed, but to truly enjoy the very early Mountain Goats, one must remember how rare these once were.

015. Riches and Wonders

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

 

“Riches and Wonders” sounds like a love song at first, but hides darker truths about our fears of intimacy.

Track: “Riches and Wonders”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

All Hail West Texas just might be the quintessential Mountain Goats album. It’s the bridge between the original lo-fi and the evolution of John Darnielle as a lyricist. Songs like “The Mess Inside” and “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” define the band to this day, over a decade after their original release. There’s more fire and intensity on other tracks, but “Riches and Wonders” hits the desperate, sad, longing notes harder than it originally appears to, allowing it to burrow in upon multiples listens.

The strumming tells you the general feeling, but it’s the voice crack over “I want to go home // but I am home” that will hit you like a hammer. From the opening “our love gorges on the alcohol we feed it” you know you’re dealing with people who haven’t fully adjusted to each other. Love is often expressed through song as difficult to get right, but capable of defeating all troubles. That’s not the case, and these two definitely know that.

Some moments, like “we stay up all night” and “we are strong, we are faithful” almost suggest a passion distinct enough to conquer the difficulties of the cast of All Hail West Texas. The reality shines through in the most telling lyrics: “you find shelter somewhere in me // I find great comfort in you.” That sounds nice, but what they’re really saying is that they don’t know what part of them could provide safe emotional harbor to anyone (see “Autoclave” for a much more direct version of this feeling) and they’re finding comfort, not love. These two are “making it work” but they have no delusions about that being what love is supposed to be like.

014. Historiography

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

 

The narrator of “Historiography” only remembers one (or ten) things about love and wants to tell you about that one (or ten).

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

Historiography is the study of how history is written and kept, and that is a concept central to the Mountain Goats. Unreliable narrators, loners, people lost to society, and other misfits are sprinkled through the catalog, and it’s important to always consider the source when reading history, be it of great nations or of a relationship.

“Historiography” is originally from Transmissions to Horace, which may be considered the third official Goats release. It’s tough to number them — especially because Transmissions to Horace was released in its entirety, with other albums, on Bitter Melon Farm six years later — but it’s enough to say that this is one of the earliest existing songs. The title of the album suggests that John Darnielle is talking to history itself as it name drops the famous poet from the early days of the Roman Empire. This particular transmission is filled with forlorn strumming and an overall tone that makes you hear rain that isn’t really falling.

Our narrator is in love. It’s the kind of love that strikes you dumb and makes you say passionate, immediate things. They recount their own history of a beautiful moment by repeating “all I remember” about the situation. The early “you were warm // and that’s all I remember” is a sweet sentiment, but by the tenth thing that is “all I remember” it’s clear that our character is too in love to focus on the structure of how they show it. “Historiography” is aptly named, because it doesn’t so much matter what happened as it does how they record it. The narrator cares more about getting everything said than they do about wondering if each thing really is the only thing they remember. Moment to moment history is as important as that of time when you’re this in love.

013. Burned My Tongue

Alex Russell On Juhu Beach , , , , , , ,

The narrator of “Burned My Tongue” offers up a one-sided view of someone who left them alone on a beach in India.

Track: “Burned My Tongue”
Album: On Juhu Beach (2001)

The beach at Juhu is said to be beautiful, and it’s apparently the defining feature of the suburb of the most populous city in India. On Juhu Beach is also a suburb in a way, since it’s an out-of-print collection of five songs that originally came in a hand-sewn cover in 2001. The five songs of On Juhu Beach are all oddities, and at first glance the only tie that binds is the common element of repetition. Most of the songs feature extended use of the same line over and over, but none more than “Burned My Tongue.”

John Darnielle says “it burned my tongue” or “it burns my tongue” 12 times in the 22 lines of the song. It becomes haunting long after it’s already insistent. The narrator wants the audience to be totally aware of their pain, which is both physical and otherwise. They burn their tongue on a life-giving prayer, the name of a lover, a song they doesn’t want to sing alone, and the pain of being alone in Juhu, but also on grains cooked in butter. It might be too much to assume that it’s supposed to be funny that a person so tortured would accidentally mention one actual use of burning one’s tongue in the middle of so much dramatic language, but it certainly puts the character in perspective.

Not every narrator in a Mountain Goats song is in the right. Our hero here might be in Juhu alone, 30, and angry because of something they’ve done. They tell us “I gave you all I got // what more’ve I got to give” but that’s their opinion. We never hear anything distinct about the lost love beyond their impact on the narrator, and it’s worth considering how reliable they really are.

012. High Doses #2

Alex Russell Come, Come to the Sunset Tree , , , , , , , , , ,

 

The hero in “High Doses #2” is prepared to fight the good fight, but would much rather hear a loving voice in a tough time.

Track: “High Doses #2”
Album: Come, Come to the Sunset Tree (2005)

Come, Come to the Sunset Tree was a limited edition release during the tour for The Sunset Tree proper. It features eight of the thirteen songs from The Sunset Tree and three bonus songs, all of which have become fan favorites. Some of that is owed to the “rare” label placed on them, but there’s some logic to those songs being special. John Darnielle has said that he loves feeding the “collector” impulse and is often tempted to release his best work in ways that make it extremely difficult to find. That’s died out (sorta) with their relative success, but a lot of the most unique Mountain Goats songs of the earlier years are hidden on EPs and imports.

“High Doses #2” is one of the bonus songs, and it’s the one you hear talked about least often of the three. “The Day the Aliens Came” is the most fun you can have at the end of humanity and “Collapsing Stars” is a special kind of revenge fantasy, but “High Doses #2” gets right in the mind of the young John Darnielle in The Sunset Tree years.

The Sunset Tree is about how to respond to abuse, and “High Doses 2” is the song you scream into the mirror as a replacement for the target of your anger. Our hero is “wringing my hands // grinding my teeth” and is obsessed with violent imagery. From paper cuts to flesh wounds, our narrator has plans for the people who have wronged them. The violence is warranted, but it’s the phone call that says it all. After calling their sister and not reaching her, they lament “the points where contact fails us.” The lesson: find someone to help you through it, but be ready to fight when it’s time to fight.

011. Going to Bolivia

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , , ,

In “Going to Bolivia” John Darnielle offers the listener one potential outcome of life without successful connections with others.

Track: “Going to Bolivia”
Album: Sweden (1995)

What meaning can you find in insanity? John Darnielle is “on the record” about a lot of his material, but he’s extremely clear about “Going to Bolivia.” In that interview from 2008, he picked “Going to Bolivia” as one of five character songs that he wanted to explain. His explanation is interesting, but it leaves more questions than it answers. He says that the protagonist of the song is “a little crazy” and that we “get the sense that he’s been isolated for a little while.” That’s what we know for sure: this is an unhinged person who is on their own, waiting for someone to return to them in Bolivia.

Beyond that, what is there in “Going to Bolivia?” Sweden is filled with isolated characters that probably shouldn’t be left on their own, and this is yet another poor soul like that. “Tollund Man” focuses on a man cast aside by his tribe, “The Recognition Scene” describes two people lost to each other, and “Prana Ferox” looks at two people who should be lost to each other. The world of Sweden is a lonely world — as contrasted with an angry or a remorseful world, like some other The Mountain Goats albums — and one wonders what John wants us to get out of this particular character. The song seems to be without implied judgment, so it’s left to the listener to invent a back story for just why this character is hearing distant carnivals and fearing the sight of the natural world. Whatever you decide made him this way, he’s a warning to other people that life can turn inwards on you very quickly, and that you need to be worried when you see animals that aren’t there.

010. Broom People

Alex Russell The Sunset Tree , , , , , , ,

“Broom People” uses specific images to talk about the general feeling of young love being the only damn thing you need.

Track: “Broom People”
Album: The Sunset Tree (2005)

Most of The Sunset Tree is a very personal look at John Darnielle’s abusive stepfather. Songs like “Lion’s Teeth,” “Dance Music,” and “Magpie” get right at the heart of the fear and the sadness of what it’s like to be young and afraid. The album is also concerned with the entirety of sad childhood in a lot of ways, and that’s where songs like “Broom People” come in.

While “You or Your Memory” and “Pale Green Things” offer John’s stepfather a chance to be a more complicated character than the brutal villain he is through most of the album, it’s in “Broom People” that we really get to know the boy himself. His stepfather doesn’t even make an appearance. The closest the song comes to the album’s dark center is in lines where he’s suggested, like “I write down good reasons to freeze to death” or the appearance of “well meaning teachers.”

“Broom People” is about the ways we hide. He’s on the record about the song and he says it’s about a girl that he slept with three times a day when he was 14 years old. She’s not Cathy, which only matters for the narrative because it’s not the same name from “This Year.” In that fact we find a little commentary on the fleeting nature of “love” as a teenager. Everything is intense immediately, but that doesn’t cut into the reality of lines like “down in your arms // in your arms, I am a wild creature.” This is a place for John to hide from a life that he can’t find any other way to process.

All of The Sunset Tree is about making the best of bad situations, but only “Broom People” ends with — at least temporarily — a happy protagonist.

009. Home Again Garden Grove

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

In the intense “Home Again Garden Grove,” two characters with a dark past drive towards similarly dark futures.

Track: “Home Again Garden Grove”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

Every song on We Shall All Be Healed is about John Darnielle’s time in Portland and California and the meth addicts he knew while he lived there, but none of them are as intense as “Home Again Garden Grove.” Most the album tilts more towards the low-key. Songs like “All Up the Seething Coast” and “Mole” are concerned with the quiet sadness of addiction, and their tones reflect that. While “Palmcorder Yajna” and “Quito” are certainly rockers, “Home Again Garden Grove” is the Mountain Goats at their foot-stomping best.

John Darnielle once defined his early career as “one guy stomping his foot on stage for anyone who would watch,” and you can feel those early 90s shine through in the manic chords of “Home Again Garden Grove.” The song opens with preparations as John and a friend prepare to go score some heroin. The album’s cast is motivated almost solely by the acquisition of drugs, but this song is the only one entirely about the hunt itself. They wrap themselves up and avoid the police in their quest. It’s methodical and the driving beat helps it all feel inevitable and practiced.

Though the angry guitar is the best part, the second half deserves special mention. John speaks to his driver of happier (or at least other) times: “I can remember when we were in high school // our dreams were like fugitive warlords // plotting triumphant returns to the city // keeping TEC-9s under the floorboards.” The next line is just a panicked, primal”Ahh-ah!” Must of the rest of the album describes considering the duality of “getting high” and destroying yourself, in “Home Again Garden Grove” the characters know what they’re doing and just don’t care about “shoving our heads straight into the guts of the stove.”