nothing for juice

091. Alabama Nova

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

“Alabama Nova” isn’t the live show staple that it used to be, but it’s still one of the catchiest songs from the early catalog.

Track: “Alabama Nova”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

“We used to play this one every night!” – John Darnielle, 10-18-2004 at The Earl in Atlanta

Mountain Goats fans tape everything, much like Grateful Dead fans before them. I can’t speak for Deadheads, but it seems like Goats fans do it just as much to catch moments like this one as they do to catch good renditions of each song. If you listen to the recording in 2004, you’ll hear a fan yell for “Alabama Nova” and then Darnielle sound shocked as he delivers the above line. He sounds just as surprised that he’s playing it now as he is with the fact that he ever stopped.

Nothing for Juice is an excellent album. It’s also an album with Rachel Ware, though, so a lot of it doesn’t make the rotation these days. After the song in Atlanta Darnielle says that the last time he played it was nearly a decade ago in Germany. “Singin’ a song about Alabama to the Germans!” He sounds wistful, in a way, and it’s cool to hear the reverence that he has for his own old stuff.

The song itself is a stripped down, sub-two-minutes discussion between two characters. It’s difficult to dissect because it’s so sparse. In many ways it feels like just a simple song where the guitar and the bass play off each other well and the harmony really works. It’s not going to bring the house down and it doesn’t have any lines you’re going to tattoo into your soul, but it’s catchy enough that a non-Goats fan can enjoy the bass and a Goats fan can speculate about deeper problems this couple isn’t talking about as they talk on that front porch.

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.

056. It Froze Me

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

“It Froze Me” is one of the few true love songs that doesn’t examine the bad that sometimes follows the good.

Track: “It Froze Me”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

Nothing for Juice has “Going to Scotland” on it, so you would be forgiven for missing that it has an even better love song. John Darnielle is explicit when he introduces “It Froze Me” live. He almost always seems to say — and says this this exactly — “this is a love song.” You don’t get that level of specificity from Darnielle often, and you get that succinct of an answer even less often. He’s a wordsmith and he’s given to lengthy, beautiful descriptions of his work. When he tells you “this is a love song” you have to stand up and take notice.

There doesn’t seem to be much else to consider for “It Froze Me,” but that’s what makes it special. “Going to Scotland” can be taken a dozen ways and every way is “right.” With “It Froze Me,” it’s just one person seeing one other person and being locked in space and time as they consider their connection. In the middle of a career about divorce and destruction there exists one song about which all you can say is “this is a love song.”

As you unfold the catalog and you consider the development of John Darnielle the songwriter alongside the development of John Darnielle the person growing up in the world, you latch on to different elements. Maybe in your low points you think “Waving at You” is your anthem. Maybe in your most solitary you find some hope in “Wild Sage.” Maybe when you’re stricken with guilt you consider what “Cotton” means to other guilt-stricken people. John Darnielle has often said that he hopes his songs are there for you when you need something to sing, and “It Froze Me” is his song for you and yours in the good times.

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.

031. Going to Kansas

Alex Russell Nothing for Juice, The Hound Chronicles , , , , , , , , ,

 

 

A mix of cacophony and desperation, “Going to Kansas” deals with the end of the world and the end of love at the same time.

Track: “Going to Kansas”
Album: The Hound Chronicles (1992) and Nothing for Juice (1996)

There are two versions of “Going to Kansas.” The one from The Hound Chronicles is very slow and seems almost pleading, while the one from Nothing for Juice is frenetic and insistent. The Nothing for Juice version is the one that gets played live — even in the early 90s, before Nothing for Juice— so it can be said to be the “standard” version of “Going to Kansas.”

The slower one has its charms. There’s a partial repetition of the line “you know what I mean” where you can really hear John Darnielle getting into the song and he belts out the essential “when my head was resting on your breastbone // I could hear your beating heart” in a satisfying way, but damn does it sound strange when compared to the quicker one. In a great live performance in 2006 with original Goats bassist Rachel Ware, John describes it as a song written “by a crude guitar player, for the crude guitar.” On Nothing for Juice, it opens with a seventeen-second screech, and “crude” seems about right for the insane, end-of-the-world effect the song maintains for the entire four minutes.

Whether you can get into the dissonance of “Going to Kansas” or not, you can definitely appreciate the connection of the end of days and the tenuous way two people are often tied together. Rachel chimes in to end a few lines, and the presence of another narrator makes the song full-on heartbreaking. They’re standing on some precipice, both literal and figurative, and one can’t stop noticing basic things about another (hair, green clothes) to try to delay the inevitable. In the Goats-go-electric version, the original, or any live recording, you can always hear the stalling and the hope, and the scene never gets any easier to think about.

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.