song meanings

351. Only Existing Footage

Alex Russell Undercard , , , , , , , ,

“Only Existing Footage” goes very deep on the problems of creating a film as a metaphor for whatever you need.

Track: “Only Existing Footage”
Album: Undercard (2010)

As far as I can tell, the only other version of “Only Existing Footage” you can find online is this nyctaper version. I highly recommend it, as does the band since they follow the song with some banter saying it’s the best version they’ve ever done. High praise!

Beyond that we have only the studio version, but it’s a beauty. When Franklin Bruno and John Darnielle play live as either The Extra Glenns or The Extra Lens, they often sing songs together or in a kind of a round. I prefer this one with just Darnielle’s vocals, but that’s not to say this is a Mountain Goats song. The distinction between the Extra Glenns/Lens and the Mountain Goats isn’t always a clear one, but songs like this show a little more of a “mood” than the contemporary Goats music did. I’m sure you can find examples that disprove this, but Bruno sometimes seems to add a sort of distant longing that is sometimes more fury or despair with the Goats.

On Tumblr many years ago John Darnielle said he started “Only Existing Footage” but Franklin Bruno wrote part of it as a song about making an album. This is the only song on Undercard where the two share writing credit, but I don’t want to make too much of that. If you didn’t know who wrote which song, you probably wouldn’t ace a quiz. They share sensibilities, which is what makes their work so fascinating. I love the extended metaphor of “Only Existing Footage” and the imagery, no matter what meaning you draw from it.

349. The Day the Aliens Came (Hawaiian Feeling)

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

When you run out of people to count on, you look to the stars for hope in “The Day the Aliens Came.”

Track: “The Day the Aliens Came”
Album: Come, Come to the Sunset Tree (2005)

The last track on the companion album to The Sunset Tree is called “The Day the Aliens Came,” which John Darnielle introduces in an aside to Peter Hughes and John Vanderslice as also being, probably, called “Hawaiian Feeling.” You can unpack that any number of ways. The last line of the liner notes says “respect to the flying man: we’ve got your back.” You can also unpack that, though I am going to assume, almost assuredly incorrectly, that it’s a reference to the anthropomorphized version of your courage called Flying Man from the Super Nintendo game EarthBound. I’m sure that’s not it, but that’s sort of the space you find yourself in on this side of The Sunset Tree. You’re a boy and you must deal with forces that seem too big to deal with.

The narrator of “The Day the Aliens Came” imagines they can get away from this. It’s a fantastic notion that supernatural forces will come blast away your problems, and, indeed, your memory of your problems, but that may be all you have in the end. Mountain Goats albums don’t always end with exuberance, but the ones that do tend to end with this explosive, overstated joy. It’s a great place to leave and it’s delivered with such fury and such hope. We couldn’t be in more different territory than The Sunset Tree with “Pale Green Things,” but this isn’t about reflection. This is about closing your eyes in the middle of it and calling to anyone, anywhere, to come save you. I’m really reaching with the EarthBound reference, but if you know John Darnielle and you know the game, can’t you almost see it?

348. The Last Limit of Bhakti

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

John Darnielle offers a hopeful song at the end of an album with “The Last Limit of Bhakti.”

Track: “The Last Limit of Bhakti”
Album: Isopanisad Radio Hour (2000)

The temptation is strong to approach “The Last Limit of Bhakti” like a book report. There are so many references to crack here and so many ways to dig in. Isopanisad Radio Hour as an album title is already something to unpack, borrowing a title from the Hindu religious texts but then opening with “Abide With Me,” a hymn with references to the Book of Luke. The album takes a pivot into more familiar Mountain Goats territory with “Born Ready” and “Cobscook Bay” but then has two songs that have nearly impenetrable meanings to the point that John Darnielle makes jokes about them when he plays them live.

It’s an excellent album, but all of that leads up to “The Last Limit of Bhakti” and one must reckon with how we got there. Not every album has a clear theme, especially the shorter EPs, but there is often a consistent tone. This one ends how it began, with a deeply religious song but even more than that, a song about how to live. Bhakti is a term for religious devotion and “The Last Limit of Bhakti” finds a narrator who is prepared to go all the way. “When the world is giving your secrets all away // let me give you cover,” they say, and we question if we have this level of commitment. It’s a pretty personal message, but it’s one that you find in a handful of other Mountain Goats songs. So many narrators are obsessed with the wrong things, what if you could channel that energy in a positive way? It’s hopeful, in that way, and a nice note to head out on.

347. Send Me an Angel

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , , ,

Despite the roses and chocolate, the two lovers in “Send Me an Angel” are not headed for a romantic day.

Track: “Send Me an Angel”
Album: Sweden (1995)

John Darnielle played “Send Me an Angel” in 2002 at The Empty Bottle in Chicago. It’s a very good version of the song and worth hearing. The ending repetition of “roses” over and over becomes extra haunting in this version and you really get a lot of time to wonder exactly what these characters are talking about and exactly what happened to lead to these competing ideas of roses and chocolate in a foreboding morning scene. Immediately after it, John Darnielle says “this is a love song” and plays “Jenny.”

Depending on the setting and the time period, John Darnielle may offer up explanation of a song or of a mood or something else. His stage banter is legendary and we could fill a book with great moments. This particular one goes uncommented on and is interesting to me only because of that fact. John Darnielle had to be in the right headspace to sell the very sad, wavering repetition at the end of “Send Me an Angel” and then shift gears into the pretty sweet, somewhat funny, “Jenny.” What was in his mind during that transition? What does he think about “Send Me an Angel?”

We don’t have much to go on, but it’s one of the sadder moments on Sweden. This is a song about the moment before the explosion. With just the lyrics, you could almost find it sweet. The vocals tell you otherwise, as a hushed John Darnielle sets us up to expect the worst even though the gifts make it seem like a happy occasion.

346. Sept 19th Triple X Love! Love!

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , , ,

Formalities abound in “Sept 19th Triple X Love! Love!” as a character tries to remember a long-past time of love.

Track: “Sept 19th Triple X Love! Love!”
Album: Sweden (1995)

“Sept 19th Triple X Love! Love!” seems to me to be an indecipherable title. I’m sure it means something and it’s possible that it means something obvious that people have figured out and it’s just me. John Darnielle once said, before playing it live, that he couldn’t even pronounce the title. My best guess is that John Darnielle saw it on a sign somewhere and couldn’t determine the meaning, making it perfect for a strange song in the middle of an album called Sweden.

This is supposedly a sort of sister song to “The Recognition Scene,” the best (or second-best) song on Sweden. The title of the sister song is direct and has been frequently explained as the moment in a story that everyone realizes what is going to happen. “The Recognition Scene” imagines a moment where the ending is clear but has not yet arrived, which is a very familiar scene for Mountain Goats characters. “Sept 19th Triple X Love! Love!” finds a similar moment, but less directly clear. One character cuts down a tree at the command of another, but they think back to another time and a memory. “When you touched me I felt fire come through,” they say, but this is about another day. Here, in the present, we are performing necessary tasks and following directions. We only realize this as a sadness when contrasted with another moment.

345. Flashing Lights

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , , ,

Leaving town is a metaphor and an actual plan in “Flashing Lights.”

Track: “Flashing Lights”
Album: Sweden (1995)

There are very few songs in the Mountain Goats catalog that describe uncomplicated, positive love. Usually, characters feel great, powerful, drawing force towards each other that sometimes resembles love, but it usually comes with months or years of creeping contempt and dread. That’s just how narrators are in John Darnielle’s world, though that is becoming less and less true in the “modern era” of the Mountain Goats.

Just as these folks are rarely purely in love, they are rarely directly antagonistic. It’s not uncommon for a song to show us a relationship on the downswing, but we generally don’t see it too far along that curve. “Flashing Lights” is a rare song in that way. “You swear you’re leaving town,” one says to the other, but “empty promises // empty promises,” they amend.

Every song on Sweden has a Swedish “subtitle” in the liner notes. The line for “Flashing Lights” is simply “the coldest winter.” There are other songs where people physically fight or songs where people hurl crueler barbs than this one, but it really is powerful to hear one person tell another that they swore they’d leave but they didn’t. It’s very much within John Darnielle’s wheelhouse to have that character stay as long as the other does, however. Our narrator asks the other one why they haven’t left, but we infer from that they also aren’t leaving. “Why haven’t you left” is a question that reflects back on the speaker, telling us this story isn’t over even if they say it is.

344. Deianara Crush

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , , , ,

One lover tells another about what happened to Hercules and what it means for them in “Deianara Crush.”

Track: “Deianara Crush”
Album: Sweden (1995)

Deianira, or Deianara, or any number of other spellings of the same name, was Hercules’ wife. As you can somewhat gather from “Deianara Crush,” Hercules died burning in a flaming shirt. The full story tells us that Deianira wanted to ensure that Hercules would be eternally faithful to her and a trickster centaur assured her that mixing his blood with olive oil would do just that. It did, in a sense, as a shirt with this concoction on it burned Hercules forever, which killed him. It wasn’t what she had in mind, but it did, in fact, end his ability to run around on her.

“Deianara Crush” finds two people thinking about this myth and what it means. One tells the other how Hercules died and the other says “that’s something I’d rather not be reminded of.” As with other songs from Sweden, John Darnielle’s vocals are especially on point with some signature whine on the vowels in “Hercules,” but it’s the finality of the last line that really sells the song. We don’t spend a lot of time with these two and we don’t get any concrete details that tell us how we got here, but what a scene we do get. Imagine your partner, silent for a time, then saying your name in a unique way, only to give way to a story about how, in chasing a perfect love, a mythical figure destroyed the greatest hero of all time. You can draw many things from this moment and the meaning behind it, none of them good.

343. Some Swedish Trees

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle and Rachel Ware really sell the feeling of “Some Swedish Trees.”

Track: “Some Swedish Trees”
Album: Sweden (1995)

It’s sometimes strange to listen to the Sweden era of the Mountain Goats these days. The energy is the same, but it was a totally different band when it was just John Darnielle and Rachel Ware. “Some Swedish Trees” opens with a false start and John asking Rachel if she didn’t want to start that way and Rachel saying they never start that way. There are a few songs with these asides left on the recording and they add some character. The Mountain Goats aren’t “better” or “worse” these days, but they are undeniably more polished. You don’t get these little jokes now.

Rachel’s distinctive bass makes this song go, though you still might hear it today as part of the solo set, as John Darnielle played it at this Chicago show in 2018. The vocals are strong, with the extended vowels on lines like “if you were gazing westward” that only John Darnielle can sell. The studio version really shows off Rachel and John’s harmony, though, and I think it’s the quintessential version even with the intentional goof up top.

You could dismiss it as just another song where two people from California see each other and comment on some other things briefly. It definitely is that, but it’s sung with more passion than the others in this category. It’s brief, but I keep revisiting it just to hear the swells, similar to what makes “There Will Always Be an Ireland” special. There doesn’t need to be a lot going on beneath the surface because what does happen is so intense.

342. Old College Try

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , , , ,

The Alpha Couple takes one last look at each other with the slightest memory of the good times in “Old College Try.”

Track: “Old College Try”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

It’s up to you to decide if you feel bad for the Alpha Couple. They get drunk and scream at each other and they persist in misery well past knowing there is no solution for their situation. “I wanna say I’m sorry // for stuff I haven’t done yet” is the sort of thing you say to someone you are not actually sorry about hurting. You know you are going to be one of the characters in “Oceanographer’s Choice” and you know you are possibly the narrator of “No Children.” John Darnielle has said before that people come up to him at live shows to say they are just like the Alpha Couple and he doesn’t know what to do with that. It’s not a thing to aspire to be, but it’s something you sometimes end up as if you aren’t careful.

“Old College Try” is as close as they get to redemption. It goes immediately worse after this and then it ends. This isn’t the last chance to save it, because it’s well past that. This is, however, the moment to recognize that you maybe could have saved it once. “In the way those eyes I’ve always loved illuminate this place // like a trashcan fire in a prison cell // like the searchlights in the parking lots of hell” is exactly this mixture. The narrator cannot actually be sweet, but they are overcome by the memory of why they once wanted to be with this person. The combination of drugs and booze and resentment is too strong now, but there was something beautiful here, once, and it is almost, almost enough just to remember it.

341. See America Right

Alex Russell See America Right, Tallahassee , , , , , , , ,

Several drunken bus rides and some brief mentions of much worse things populate “See America Right.”

Track: “See America Right”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

The Mountain Goats Wiki lists more than 250 performances of “See America Right.” It’s been played 15 times, minimum, in Chicago alone. The Mountain Goats have spent somewhere north of eight solid hours playing “See America Right,” the under-two-minutes single from Tallahassee. It’s undeniable in retrospect, but one has to wonder if anyone involved could have imagined that at the time. “No Children” is the standout, obviously, but “See America Right” is the single for a reason.

The guitar is muted but driving, with drums behind it that make you feel like you’re running. John Darnielle delivers the vocals with a robotic drone and some vocal effect that isn’t on any other song I can think of. He embodies one of the Alpha Couple members, furious and drunk, as they meet up with the other one and bring home a case of vodka. Much of the album hints at what happens directly here. It’s such a short song, but it’s the clearest picture of this narrator possible. It’s crammed full of similar, drunk, desperate moments, but it all paints a complete picture.

“I was getting out of jail” does some heavy lifting as a lyric, but “my love is like a dark cloud full of rain // that’s always right there up above you” is as direct as possible outside of the chorus of “No Children.” John Darnielle answered a question about the ending here and explained why it sounds so robotic and terrifying, but if you’ve followed the story to this point you know that it needs to feel like a howl in the night.