nothing for juice

411. 1 Corinthians 13: 8-10

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

“1 Corinthians 13: 8-10” predates the album full of biblical songs and calls to mind another place and another time.

Track: “1 Corinthians 13: 8-10”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

Most of the songs titled after Bible verses are on a much more recent album, but “1 Corinthians 13: 8-10” is an outlier. John Darnielle commented on it at a live show saying that people were generally uncomfortable with this faith and that it set him apart among people who were in his musical community. That obviously changed down the line, or at least John Darnielle changed how he responded to it. There’s a whole album of these, now.

This one is from 1996 and it’s about a series of verses where the meaning is up for debate. The way I read them, Paul is saying that love is the only thing that will persist at the end of all things. He means a different kind of love, but in the context of the song it’s appropriate that our characters are observing a loving gesture and picturing Warsaw in 1939. In moments of intense danger, in the moments where you are afraid of things, remember they are temporal.

I’ve been to Warsaw a lot and it is a beautiful city, but it’s also very much in touch with history. 1939 was a difficult year for Warsaw, but so were many years that followed it. In this song we hear soldiers coming down a hall, and historically, that never means anything good for Warsaw. I don’t have room to get into it, but there is a section of old Warsaw that they left destroyed as a reminder. One imagines these two making a heart with their hands and they realize what we’re meant to remember and what we stand to lose if we don’t.

367. Blueberry Frost

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

“Blueberry Frost” is a short song with a simple chorus, but it really goes to a sincere place as a love song.

Track: “Blueberry Frost”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

Just before playing “Blueberry Frost” in Chicago in 2006, John Darnielle said it “is a love song that I don’t think [we’ve] played together before.” He had played it solo, though fewer times than other similar songs. It’s just one of those straightforward-style love songs that can be extra beautiful on the right night where you can see yourself there, down by the water where so many Mountain Goats narrators find themselves. It’s 103 seconds long, over and done before you have a chance to think about anything more than that.

“Full moon // deep grass // cold water” is an odd chorus, even among other odd choruses at the time for the band. Contrasted with lines like “when I said your name out loud // something broke inside me,” it stands out even more. It really forces you to imagine this setting. I joked earlier about the ubiquity of water, and John Darnielle has made the same joke about his early songs, but here it occupies even more of the lyrics than usual. We aren’t just asked to picture it, we’re made to by the lack of other details. That phrasing really is the standout part, too, especially if you allow yourself to take it somewhat literally. Obviously the “broke inside me” isn’t right, but picture the mere act of saying a lover’s name out loud really knocking you emotionally down. It’s a level of seriousness and sincerity we don’t often allow ourselves outside of songs like these.

366. Heights

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

With sinister strumming and some choice words, we get a dark vibe in “Heights.”

Track: “Heights”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

If you want to hear “Heights” live, you have a single option of hearing it at this show in 2015. At another show they opened with it, but I can’t find a recording of that one. John Darnielle has said he likes to open sets with a song the audience might not know, and this definitely fits the bill. At that live show you can hear John Darnielle say he’s picking up a sheet with the lyrics on it. He says something close to “ah, right, seashells.” When you write this many songs and title them things that may or may not be in the songs themselves, sometimes you need to remember if this is the one about seashells.

“Heights” sounds like it could be a potential love song, maybe, but the delivery is so sinister. That doesn’t invalidate the “love song” descriptor, not for a Mountain Goats song, but this one is especially dark. John Darnielle almost snarls the “you were giving the game away” line one character says to the other. It always feels a little like you’re intruding on characters in songs like this, but here you feel like you really ought to be going.

Nothing for Juice ends with one of my favorite Mountain Goats songs, “Going to Scotland.” That’s another song that could be a love song but has some other things going on. You could say this about so many songs, but I like to imagine these are the same people, just a lot younger. A lot can change over time.

364. Alpha Double Negative: Going to Catalina

Alex Russell Bitter Melon Farm, Nothing for Juice, Songs for Petronius , , , , , , , , , , ,

From the perspective of the woman in the Alpha Couple, we see someone shut down in “Alpha Double Negative: Going to Catalina.”

Track: “Alpha Double Negative: Going to Catalina”
Album: Songs for Petronius (1992) and Nothing for Juice (1996) and Bitter Melon Farm (1999)

“No, I Can’t” is on three albums. Since it’s on one album with an alternate version as well as the original, it is, I believe, the “most” released Mountain Goats song. Second place goes to one of two songs that are going “Going to” somewhere and in the Alpha series, “Alpha Double Negative: Going to Catalina.” I’m sure all of that math is wrong, but what fun, huh?

There are two standard versions. The original is on Songs for Petronius and the re-release with Bitter Melon Farm seven years later. It’s a little slower and much more deliberate than the version on Nothing for Juice, and I think it’s not quite as good. The Nothing for Juice version has backing vocals and the character sounds less unsure. By the rising “and I see a stranger in your eyes” there’s a mix of fear and fury that really sets this version apart. The guitar, and, obviously, bass, are more in the style of the time, but I think even without those differences it’s just the better take.

In 1998, John Darnielle told a crowd in Tallahassee, years before the album named for the city, that it is unique because it is from the position of the woman in the Alpha Couple. Most of the time we don’t know, and you are reminded as always to not take one comment at one concert as gospel, even coming from John Darnielle himself. I’m most interested in the way he chose to say it, asking the crowd if they spotted it during the performance. I like imagining this as a mystery that he hoped you were able to solve.

185. Million

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

Never has a person bringing a blanket home seemed more sinister than in “Million.”

Track: “Million”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

Iowa shows up from time to time in John Darnielle’s world. His second novel, Universal Harvester, considers the darker and stranger elements of what happens in a quiet, small community in the state. John Darnielle loves the idea of places many people either think they know but don’t or don’t even think they know. Whichever Iowa is for you, live show banter will help fill in the idea of places like Colo, Iowa, where so many of the mid-90s Mountain Goats songs were born.

“Million” opens with Finland, which couldn’t be further from Iowa, as our narrator returns home to the Midwest with a blanket. One person brings an Iowan a blanket from Finland in a quick song on Nothing for Juice that’s nestled between songs about addiction and madness. It’s a simple idea, but it’s deepened by the hard strums and the wavering delivery.

“The moon is high over Iowa at night,” John Darnielle repeats. This would generally be a description of something pleasant, but here it’s some kind of threat. The narrator notices “questions only a masochist would ask” in their lover’s “big brown eyes,” which is another odd confluence. We’re in picturesque country with description of flowers and moonlight and one character has traditionally positive features but there’s a sense that something worse is coming. “Million” feels creepy without being specific about what’s afoot, but don’t try to tell yourself it’s nothing as you listen to the final voice crack over “Iowa at night.”

184. Then the Letting Go

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

 

“Then the Letting Go” opens Nothing for Juice with one look and little time to contemplate what we see.

Track: “Then the Letting Go”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

“This is the hour of lead 
Remembered if outlived, 
As freezing persons recollect the snow – 
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.” – Emily Dickinson

With whisper-quiet songs like “Waving at You” and “It Froze Me,” Nothing for Juice is a unique album. It does end up stomping and screaming in “Going to Scotland,” but it opens in New York with “Then the Letting Go.” The title comes from the final line of the an Emily Dickinson poem about dealing with difficult emotions. The poem reflects on how one’s heart feels and how the effects of pain can linger before concluding with a grim image. There is a hopeful way to view it, sure, but it seems more likely that your final act is to “let go” in this context.

It seems like an odd choice for an opener. John Darnielle and Rachel Ware harmonize well and it’s one of the stronger songs on the album as a result, but it feels very brief. The song opens with “Down home in the South Bronx // down home” and “Saw you walking down the street again // saw you looking sweet again,” both lines that repeat the same ideas and expand them only slightly. The changes are small, but they add depth. It closes in similar fashion, with one head turn from the narrator and four questions that start with “why.” Many Mountain Goats songs are smaller collections of images, but few of them are just one look. We get just this one image of a narrator looking at a lover, a friend, or death itself, and then we’re gone.

179. Orange Ball of Pain

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

 

Two characters consider a delicious treat and ignore the encroaching world in “Orange Ball of Pain.”

Track: “Orange Ball of Pain”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

The four “Orange Ball” songs may not be connected by anything more than their names, but it’s hard not to think about them together. They cover the emotions of the early Mountain Goats well, with two “lighter” songs, one “angry” one, and the predictably sad “Orange Ball of Pain.”

John Darnielle almost whispers the song, similar to his delivery on other Nothing for Juice tracks “Waving at You” and “It Froze Me.” Thematically, they’re not connected (the former is about divorce and the latter is a love song, so, not too connected) but the style is unmistakable. Nothing for Juice rises and falls repeatedly, with explosions like “Full Flower” and “Going to Kansas” interrupting quiet ruminations on when it all went wrong and the times it didn’t, before those other times.

In contrast with the whisper and quiet guitar, “Orange Ball of Pain” opens with some hope. The narrator brings home an unspecified baked good and offers some to another character. “And then the cold sorrow gripped me by the throat” breaks the mood, before some closing lines about the unrelenting nature of snow in the characters’ lives.

John Darnielle specifically mentions sorrow and sadness and the song is called “Orange Ball of Pain.” It’s somber, but it’s largely about eating a delicious dessert. So many Mountain Goats songs stop and relish a delicious fruit or a pleasant burst of natural beauty amid other disaster, but few spend this much time there. Given the other material on Nothing for Juice, it seems likely that even though the diversion is lengthy it may not be enough to carry them through. You should still eat the cake, even if it won’t save you.

174. Going to Reykjavik

Alex Russell Nothing for Juice , , , , , ,

One character considers their options and pines for a missing love during some introspection.

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

The power of a good song is often the same as our ability to relate to it. Most love songs remain as general as possible and talk about feelings, since we can all relate to “that one night” or “loving you so much.” No one has mailed most of us coffee from Thailand and most of us don’t have oil lamps and wind chimes, which makes “Going to Reykjavik” a bit of a risk in that department.

John Darnielle writes relatable music, but the details are often so specific that they couldn’t describe your life. In “Going to Reykjavik” the narrator drinks Thai coffee and boils milk as they think about someone absent. These scenes give way to a general “I am coming to you” repetition of a chorus. There is a longing here that you may recognize in yourself, even if the setting doesn’t feel familiar.

“Going to Reykjavik” directly follows “Waving at You” on Nothing for Juice. “Waving at You” is a furious song about divorce. It’s quiet and angry and best sung through clenched teeth. “Going to Reykjavik” feels like it could be about the same couple, but in a very different time. The guitar feels solemn and there is pain in John Darnielle’s voice. These two may still be in love and only separated by distance, but one then has to wonder why the narrator describes themselves as “broken and tired” directly after supposedly remaking themselves.

160. I Will Grab You by the Ears

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

We are left to wonder what having one’s ears grabbed means in “I Will Grab You by the Ears.”

Track: “I Will Grab You by the Ears”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

At an average of 20 shows a year, the Mountain Goats have played somewhere around 500 live shows at the time of this writing. It’s really impossible to say for sure, though you can begin to put together a catalog. The fan base for a group like this is obsessive and given to cataloging, but you can never be sure you’ve caught everything. There will be some benefit show that John Darnielle played last minute for 18 people or something from the early days when no one was keeping meticulous records and it will stop you from being absolutely sure about your history.

It is with those caveats that I say that “I Will Grab You by the Ears” has never been played live. I obviously can’t be 100% sure, but everything seems to support my claim. It’s a short song buried in the middle of a long album from 1996, with songs like “It Froze Me,” “Going to Kansas,” and “Going to Scotland.” There are some songs that John Darnielle seems to put out in the world and never revisit. Given the vastness of his work, that’s not surprising.

The main point of contention around “I Will Grab You by the Ears” seems to be the title. A narrator walks around a lake and tells someone “I will grab you by the ears // and you will know something.” John Darnielle snarls the lines a little bit, and combined with the deliberate, slow strumming it seems somewhat like a threat. It sounds to me like an idiom that John Darnielle created, but it might also be a physical threat. Either way, the narrator seems determined to get their point across, though we don’t find out what it is.

138. Waving at You

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

“Waving at You” is sung in a whisper, but it’s far more furious than most of the much louder songs.

Track: “Waving at You”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

The Mountain Goats have significant range, but most fans will tell you their favorite songs are the screaming, foot-stomping ones. They’re the ones that bring the house down at the first, second, and (sometimes) third encores and they’re the ones people belt out on New Year’s Eve to rage against the previous and future years. You can’t think of the Mountain Goats without thinking of that death metal band in Denton or the Alpha Couple’s furious love or the speak freaks on the west coast, but there are some songs that fall outside of the norm.

John Darnielle whispers “Waving at You,” relatively speaking. He sounds far away, tinged with longing and regret. The great majority of Mountain Goats narrators are sad, but most of them aren’t at the stage of life that the “Waving at You” person sings about. John Darnielle likes characters that are in the middle of their fury or misery. Those people are easy to understand because they narrate their feelings to try to understand them. He has an entire song (“The Recognition Scene”) about the moment you realize what your situation really is. The person in “Waving at You” is several years beyond those moments.

There are other reflective Mountain Goats songs, but John Darnielle says this is one of the best of the early ones. He’s said in interviews that this one feels more real to him and that you can read his quiet delivery as the story consuming him. There’s a lot to love about yelling and screaming, but the bubbling tension in “Waving at You” that explodes only through frantic strumming comes across like catharsis denied. Our character can’t shake this habit and “Waving at You” reminds us that not every moment ends, even years later.