music

008. Full Flower

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

Love and devotion can’t conquer addiction in the Mountain Goats’ “Full Flower.”

Track: “Full Flower”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

On an album like Nothing for Juice, a lot of songs can get lost. John has said in interviews that his most brutal song (a trait many fans would ascribe to something like “No Children” or “Baboon”) is “Waving at You.” “Going to Scotland” is on many fans’ top 10 lists. It’s easy, in a quick pass through the early years of the Mountain Goats, to miss so much.

Nothing for Juice is the last album with Rachel Ware in the group. While most people would insert the divide between “early Goats” and “the new stuff” somewhere later down the line, this is as good a place as any to say the “early stuff” ends. “Going to Kansas” opens with a full five-second alarm, essentially. Songs like “Orange Ball of Pain” and “It Froze Me,” while holy to long-time fans, are tough sells to folks without deep love for John Darnielle’s craft. It’s not a starter album, and “Full Flower” is right at home on “not a starter album.”

At a running time of 2:10, it’s over quickly. You focus on the driving electric guitar in the background and the haunting, distant vocals. The guitar builds over the refrain into the loud, angry beat that covers John’s repeated “I would give anything in the world up for you // but I will not stop.”

Every single line in “Full Flower” features the word “I.” The entire song is the narrator simply stating facts. They give a benign description of their world, but the titular flower shows up in the second verse, and it’s clear that this is a person consumed. They care for the recipient of the song, but like so many characters in the world of the Mountain Goats, wanting to stop and stopping are very different beasts.

007. No Children

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , , , ,

 

Both a love song and an anti-love song, “No Children” is iconic because it is “sweet in the way of rotting things.”

Track: “No Children”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

You do not have to speculate about “No Children.” It is the most famous song in the entire Mountain Goats catalog, with the possible exception of “This Year.” It’s mostly that “No Children” mixes dark lyrics with bright melody and delivery, but it’s at least partially that you can take the song whichever way you like. The darkest among us can find some beautiful statements about intensity and dedication beyond reason in there. The average person can recognize — no matter how sweet that person is — the time in their life they could look out over everything and say “I hope it stays dark forever.”

John Darnielle wrote the song because he felt that many songs about love weren’t genuine. He’s often quoted as saying that he wanted people to have a song for that moment in their love that they would need a song like “No Children.” It’s brutal, no doubt, but it’s honest. It’s universal. It’s powerful for the refrain of “I hope you die // I hope we both die” but even though that’s what you’ll scream and pump your fist to, it’s the rest of it that sells the message. It’s the rest that complicates that cry from the center of the darkness.

The most important lyric in the song is “hand in unlovable hand.” The couple in “No Children” is The Alpha Couple, two people found in dozens of Goats songs that drive across the country to try to save their marriage in a tiny house in Florida. They drink and fight the inevitable in a crumbling house all over Tallahassee and other songs on previous albums, but “No Children” is a romantic view of their end. It gets darker — much, much darker — but in “No Children” they still feel some kind of love.

006. Cobscook Bay

Alex Russell Isopanisad Radio Hour , , , , , , ,

In “Cobscook Bay,” the narrator comes to terms with permanent loss and searches for meaning in the birth of baby cows.

Track: “Cobscook Bay”
Album: Isopanisad Radio Hour (2000)

In “Cobscook Bay” the narrator is in Maine, but their friends are in California. The first verse follows the narrator reflecting over a sunset in Cobscook Bay, a part of Maine mostly known for fishing and shipping. They remember Jill, who left though we know not to where, Gail, who fled to Dana Point in California, and a third, unnamed friend, who left with Gail. All three are gone, thus being “alone most of the time these days.” It’s a fairly blunt description of the narrator’s circumstances, though the immediate “you both committed suicide” may be a metaphor or just a dramatic way of saying what “leaving” can feel like to a friend.

If there was any doubt, it’s cleared up in the second verse. The narrator spends half the verse describing the beauty of a cow giving birth and caring for calves. It’s a gorgeous image, and it’s not the only use of cows as stand-ins for perfection in the world of John Darnielle. He doesn’t eat meat, and he waxes poetic about the animal world at live shows. Other than calling them “snow white” there is no attempted description of the cows, which suggests that John believes you’ll just take his word for it that this is a beautiful sight. It works.

The end of the song recalls the beginning, as the narrator is back at sunrise in Maine trying to consider what their friends “falling off that cliff somewhere in California” means. They may or may not be literally dead, but they are gone from their life, which is certainly its own kind of death. One last oddity: this may be the only narrator who has for sure never seen California, the holiest place in the world of the Goats. In that sense, they’re missing out twice.

005. 1 Samuel 15:23

Alex Russell The Life of the World to Come , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

In “1 Samuel 15:23,” a supposed crystal healer speaks of their life and the choices they’ve made.

Track: “1 Samuel 15:23”
Album: The Life of the World to Come (2009)

Every song on The Life of the World to Come is titled after a biblical verse, but the album is not about Christianity. John Darnielle has said that he likes the literature of the religious text, and the source material of 1 Samuel 15:23, the first track on the album, is exceptionally compelling. In the preceding verse, the prophet Samuel chastises King Saul. He tells him that obedience to the Lord is more powerful and more important than complicated religious sacrifices and burnt offerings: “To heed is better than the fat of rams.” In our title track here, he continues the condemnation and likens rebellion (to the Lord) as “like the sin of divination” and compares insubordination to idolatry.

Greater people have broken down what those two verses mean, but in the world of The Life of the World to Come, they seem to describe our narrator’s ability to heal but not to save themselves. They can heal you with crystals and they can protect you when you lack protection, but they seem unfulfilled by it. Samuel warns the king to avoid things like crystal magic, but our speaker here says it works for them. One thing to be clear about: they says it works for them. Maybe you get healed and maybe you don’t, they aren’t really clear on that. All they’re saying is that their career as a healer who is spoken of as powerful is working. There’s no commentary on if rejecting dark magic or embracing the light of the Lord is the purer (or more successful) path.

The album has lots to say about the emotions tied up in biblical language, but “1 Samuel 15:23” is about making your way through life as best you can. If all else fails, plant grapes.

004. Until I Am Whole

Alex Russell Transcendental Youth , , , , , , ,

In “Until I Am Whole,” the Mountain Goats look at the first moments of depression and how we struggle to even want to feel better.

Track: “Until I Am Whole”
Album: Transcendental Youth (2012)

Until Beat the Champ comes out this year, Transcendental Youth will remain the most recent studio release by the Mountain Goats. It’s difficult to get perspective immediately on an album, and even though it’s been a few years, the tracks all still feel very recent. There’s always going to be a lot of thrashing on a Goats album, but the last few also have a lot of low-key, introspective songs about sad subsets of the populace. Transcendental Youth is the culmination of that journey.

2004’s We Shall All Be Healed is famously about John Darnielle’s time hanging out with speed freaks and other lost people in the Pacific Northwest, but the album is very specifically about drugs. From the hospital in “Mole” to the liquor store in “Against Pollution” to the quiet, terrifying interiors of “All Up the Seething Coast,” the settings on the album are all different places that drugs take the characters. We’re back in the same setting (specifically Snohomish, Washington, home of Blues Traveler’s John Popper and “the Antique Capital of the Northwest”) on Transcendental Youth, but now we’re looking at a wider scope of people.

The Mountain Goats love the unloved, and the outcasts of this album are some of the most tragic of them all. “Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1” is John’s most recent ballad for people in temporary tough spots and “Harlem Roulette” finds a singer overdosing after a big payday. “Until I Am Whole” isn’t the saddest song on the album, but “hold my hopes underwater // stand there and watch them drown” is not the kind of message you find in a song about hope. The character doesn’t know if they can make it through this, and they’re on the precipice where they haven’t decided if they’re going to try or not.

003. Raid on Entebbe

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

The title of the song tells you where you are, but it’s all about the general intensity for “Raid on Entebbe”

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

The title is clear: Raid on Entebbe is a 1977 television movie about a real-life raid on a Ugandan airport in Entebbe. You can get caught up in the life of Idi Amin and what the title means, but let’s look closer.

There’s Rachel Ware, but she’s in the background now. She doesn’t even sing most of the first verse, it’s all John until the last two lines. It’s frenetic, but controlled. Everything about “Raid on Entebbe” contributes to the idea that the speaker is intense and hurried, but they’re definitely comfortable with the way they interact with the world. “They always do this when I come home” comes off as almost bothered, even though they’re talking about regime change. It would be too much for us, but our song’s hero is too busy to care.

“Incredibly, impossibly dry air” is a very John line. Everything is more powerful when it’s more specific, and even without the location in the title you can feel that air. You can imagine yourself standing outside, tucking your shirt in and hoping that the world doesn’t end around you. The lyrics take a backseat, though, which is rare in a Goats song. It’s one of the shortest songs in the catalog, but it’s even shorter lyrically. There are 65 seconds of lyrics and roughly 160 words in the whole song. That’s essentially unheard of for the man that fit “I threw a rock at a crow who was playing in the mulch of some rosebushes by the motel office” in one line in “Distant Stations,” but “Raid on Entebbe” is all about feeling. It’s not about what actually happens, but it’s about the Goats making you feel anxious. Every listen will make you reach for a watch that you don’t wear.

 

002. Going to Queens

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , , ,

 

As two people consider the sounds of children in New York through a window, they realize they may not know each other 

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

“Going to Queens” fits into a number of categories for Goats songs. Most notably, it’s part of the “Going to…” series. Depending on which title you use for some of the unofficially named deep-cut, live-only songs, there are somewhere around 40 or 50 songs that feature “Going to” in their title. Fans think about the series in different ways, but they all recognize the importance of location in John Darnielle’s world. It’s partially about being specific — “Queens” is mentioned in the song before “New York City,” and it tells you so much more about where they are — but it’s also about the beauty of the mundane. In “Going to Queens,” the couple isn’t on one particularly beautiful street corner or in one awesome bedroom, they’re just in the same place that lots of other people are. They aren’t special, everything is special.

Sweden is the second studio album, and “Going to Queens” is a standout track. Despite seeming slight at first listen when compared to the later material, it actually conveys a lot with a little. It features the original female vocalist, bassist, and only-other-Goats-member Rachel Ware, and she lends a haunting quality to the track. She’s actually louder than John in the song, and John comes off almost uncertain in his delivery. It suggests that the characters are talking to each other in an intimate moment when their bodies are “heavy on” each other, and that they don’t really have enough of a connection to keep going. It’s a common sentiment, and “Going to Queens” benefits from being adaptable to multiple situations. Everyone understands saying “You were all I ever wanted // you were all I’d ever need” and hoping that this time, saying it out loud will make it become true.

001. Up the Wolves

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

 

John Darnielle says it’s about “the moment in your quest for revenge when you learn to embrace the futility of it.”

Track: “Up the Wolves”
Album: The Sunset Tree (2005)

The Sunset Tree is emotionally raw. It dives deep into John’s childhood and isn’t uncomfortable holding the camera too long on a shot of abuse. In other songs he’s being directly attacked or broken down, but the meaning of “Up the Wolves” is more abstract. With stand-ins of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome who, according to myth, were raised by a wolf, John offers an anthem to people in tough situations. Those two waited, anxiously, secure in the knowledge that the wolf was coming home. John wants his troubled listener to know that some kind of wolf is coming home for them, too.

Every comment section about “Up the Wolves” is overrun with fans of The Walking Dead, since the song was used in an emotional moment during a recent season of the show. It’s a fitting scene, filled with catharsis and literal fire, and once you see two beloved characters give in to a foolish impulse just to keep morale high during a dark time, you understand that no other song would fit.

You may take issue with the amount of “hope” in “Up the Wolves.” It’s entirely possible that the wolf doesn’t come back. That isn’t all that important, though. Like so many songs by the Mountain Goats, it’s not about the result. It’s about the importance of recognizing that troubles may be temporary. Much like the opening lines to a more recent Goats song (“Do every stupid thing // that makes you feel alive”), the lyrics of “Up the Wolves” plead with the listener to wait for a proverbial wolf. Get yourself in “fighting trim” and “bribe the officials” when you have to, but beyond all else, don’t lose hope.