song meanings

310. Luna

Alex Russell Beat the Champ , , , , , , , , , ,

From the opening line, “Luna” tells us that Luna Vachon’s story will not be an easy one to hear.

Track: “Luna”
Album: Beat the Champ (2015)

If you’re of a certain age and if you watched wrestling at a certain other age, you might remember Luna Vachon. She was a wrestler, which may not be shocking for Beat the Champ, but she was especially memorable for her persona and her look. She exists for me in a space most wrestlers of the early 90s exist, which I can almost place these memories but not quite. I must have seen her dozens of times or more, but all of it is just outside where I can access.

Luna Vachon is the Luna in “Luna,” which details her life, or at least one part of it. She saw a lot of success, comparatively speaking, but her story ends with a housefire that destroyed much of her memorabilia and then a tragic overdose. “Luna” follows the wrestler tracing “big names” in ash as the fire dies down. The song stops short of what comes after and suggests an eternal next step with the repetition of “and ride // and ride // and ride // and ride.”

John Darnielle says Beat the Champ is about what happens to people who wrestle more than it is about wrestling, and in “Luna” he finds a way to talk about both. We see only a moment or two of Luna Vachon’s life and we only know it’s her from the title, but once the connection is made the song is something completely different. The experience is specific, but the feeling it creates is general. This is one of the last moments, but it’s only that in retrospect. In the moment, maybe this is the start of everything turning around, but as you might know, sometimes, it’s not.

309. Baltimore

Alex Russell Martial Arts Weekend , , , , , , ,

With a catchy hook and a full sound, “Baltimore” shows you what you can expect from John Darnielle’s side project.

Track: “Baltimore”
Album: Martial Arts Weekend (2002)

For my money, “Baltimore” is the best song on Martial Arts Weekend. I tend to listen to the second Extra Glenns/Lens album more than the first, but when I go back to the first I’m always enchanted with how it starts. Pitchfork called “Baltimore” a “back catalog echo song,” but did so in a review that says both that more electric guitar would be interesting and that all John Darnielle songs should be lo-fi, so make of that what you will.

The performance is what does it for me. It’s not all that interesting a song, lyrically, which is a shocking statement for a John Darnielle song, but also only true in comparison. It’s only a slight because of what else there is. What elevates “Baltimore” is exactly what Pitchfork seemed to find uninteresting. The composition stays beautiful, resisting the urge on a lot of early electric John Darnielle to fuzz out into panic or to shock with speed and rage. This is as pretty as John Darnielle is willing to get on a song with more than just quiet guitar.

It’s additionally remarkable that this came out in 2002, the same year as All Hail West Texas and Tallahassee. Neither of those albums sounds like this one, but you can imagine the people behind all of them being similar. “Baltimore” is a fitting start to an interesting diversion in the band’s work and it’s probably the most complete song from that album, though definitely not from those days.

308. Maybe Sprout Wings

Alex Russell Get Lonely , , , , , , ,

Few Mountain Goats characters let themselves soak in the darkness as much as the narrator in “Maybe Sprout Wings.”

Track: “Maybe Sprout Wings”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

Get Lonely is undeniably a “breakup record,” but that tends to diminish the fullness of what it also is. Just as “Wild Sage” isn’t necessarily about someone who is just out of a relationship, “Maybe Sprout Wings” is about a larger loneliness than just losing a loved one in some way. This is about a more cosmic sense of being alone, removed from humanity rather than just one particular human. There are dozens of songs about quiet loneliness, but few dare to tread the space of “Maybe Sprout Wings.” The lines “I thought of old friends // the ones who’d gone missing” stare directly at the abyss with no metaphor to cloak them. This is about the tough times and how they never end, once they happen. If it was bad, it will always be bad in the past, with ghosts and clouds and “nameless things” to haunt you when you go back to those moments.

I don’t know if all of Get Lonely has the same narrator or not. John Darnielle has both emphatically said that it is and isn’t a “breakup record,” but he’s also said that interpretations of his music are open-ended. Other than the obvious The Sunset Tree where the narrator is usually John Darnielle himself, I think this is the album most likely to all come from the same perspective. If we assume that, we’re at the lowest point of the journey during “Maybe Sprout Wings.” It starts with introspection in “Wild Sage” and ends with an emphatic rejection of hope in “In Corolla,” but this is the moment that foretells that ending. It is the right song for some moments, but may your life have few of them.

307. Letter from Belgium

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

“Letter from Belgium” is a song for lockdown that wasn’t intended to be that originally, but now can be your COVID-19 jam.

Track: “Letter from Belgium”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004) and Letter from Belgium (2004)

At the start of quarantine in 2020, John Darnielle tweeted that “Letter from Belgium” is the “quarantine deep cut” among Mountain Goats songs. I’d heard the song hundreds of times before that moment and never connected it to the experience of the moment. It’s impossible not to hear it, though, when you’re listening for it: “We’ve been past the point of help since early April.” Depending on where you live, COVID-19 became a reality in your world around then. A weird line, especially in a song about “waiting for the fever to break.”

“Letter from Belgium” is about a different cause for alarm, but the panic is similar. These characters are locked in rooms with other substances they need, to the point where they reject the world. They obsess over stage makeup and odd, disconnected artwork. They express fear of neighbors and outsiders. It’s very much in line with the We Shall All Be Healed character study.

It doesn’t matter if you read it through a modern lens or through the album’s. This is a song for when you can’t go outside, whether there’s an external reason for that or not. Sometimes you’re just in there because you have to be in there, John Darnielle tells us, and you’ll make do with what you have. The items are only connected if you get in the right headspace, which is hopefully not a place you find yourself for an extended period of time.

305. In the Craters on the Moon

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

“In the Craters on the Moon” builds to one explosive moment and then is willing to show you the explosion.

Track: “In the Craters on the Moon”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

The first Mountain Goats show I went to was at The Empty Bottle in Chicago in 2007. The good folks at the Mountain Goats wiki have a setlist here and you can even go to Archive.org can listen to it. The most memorable things, now almost fourteen years later, are the multiple versions of “We Bite” and the songs I’d never heard before. Heretic Pride came out a few months later. It was probably possible, through some means, to have heard it by then, but I hadn’t. It was a different time.

“In the Craters on the Moon” is a heavy song. It’s about people who hide from the world and reject help. It’s a common theme in a Goats song, but it usually comes through differently. This one rises until John Darnielle literally yells, as loud as he possibly can. This isn’t totally unheard of, but I think this is probably the go-to version for me. Seeing it live was something else. I don’t want to break the spell of this half-memory by listening to the real thing he said, but he had something at that show in Chicago about going somewhere else during the peak and how you can’t do that on stage.

The Empty Bottle is a weird place. I’ve never seen a show there where the audience was quiet, this one included, but it’s also a place you go to see something you’re passionate about. There are a few hundred live performances of this one and I’m sure most of them involve some form of “going somewhere else.” The lyrics are solid and the beat is great, but it’s all about that yell. It’s terrifying, because that’s how you’d react if someone broke into your stronghold through all your resistances.

304. Birth of Serpents

Alex Russell All Eternals Deck , , , , , , ,

“Birth of Serpents” finds John Darnielle in several places but having one single experience.

Track: “Birth of Serpents”
Album: All Eternals Deck (2011)

John Darnielle has said a lot of things that stick with me, but I think a lot about a comment he made many years ago that “Waving at You” was a song he felt really close to. He said that the quiet ones were the close ones, even though most people thought it was when he was screaming. That answer probably has changed somewhat, especially as he’s written more about his own life in recent times. The last handful of albums have more songs about the real-deal John Darnielle than the first ten.

“Birth of Serpents” is only nominally about snakes. The chorus tells us to picture snakes under heat lamps, but really we’re in Oregon with John Darnielle. He never sings like this, with the last verse almost entirely pitched as high as he can go. So much of what makes the Mountain Goats great is the poetry and narrative, but the performance is central to “Birth of Serpents.” John Darnielle is feeling this one, which he probably always is, but he’s letting it show more here than usual.

He says that it’s about an experience in Portland where a friend told him another person they both used to know was working down the way. John Darnielle went to say hi, but found that they died a year earlier in a car accident. To understand the Mountain Goats is to understand this journey through Oregon and Iowa and California, but it’s also to picture this moment where you almost get to have an experience you thought impossible only to realize that actually, yeah, it’s as done as you feared it might be.

303. The House That Dripped Blood

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , , , ,

Sinister vibes abound on “The House That Dripped Blood” as the Alpha Couple descends into the worst parts of their journey together.

Track: “The House That Dripped Blood”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

“The House That Dripped Blood” could be a book report. The title is from a horror movie. The harmonica at the end is several parts laid on top of each other. The story is about the Alpha Couple and what dark things they get up to in the middle of Tallahassee when it’s all broken bad but every card isn’t on the table yet. Listen to it five times but not six because this is dangerous headspace to hang out in.

But that’s all the basics. Tallahassee is the best Mountain Goats album, though I’m sure John Darnielle would argue with that and most people reading this probably have fierce opinions, as well. It’s the best “album,” I’d say, because it tells a cohesive story and it works front to back. It’s one premise that is explored fully. At this point in the narrative, this is the drinking. “The cellar door is an open throat,” one Alpha tells the other, and we can picture them drinking and wandering around too-dark rooms. It’s horrible and it doesn’t have the hope of the opening songs or the resolve of the final ones.

The last live performance, as far as the Wiki is concerned, was in 2008. The final show opened with “Have to Explode,” one of the best Goats songs to open with, and closed with “Houseguest” into “No Children” into “Wild Sage” into “Palmcorder Yajna,” which is a pretty wild order to do that in. “The House That Dripped Blood” is a vital part of the album, but it feels a little weird to take as a set piece. It’s important as a means to get you from hope to despair, but be careful spending too much time on this part of the journey.

302. Spent Gladiator 2

Alex Russell Transcendental Youth , , , , , , ,

“Spent Gladiator 2” is John Darnielle’s insistent reminder that you have to hold out when it gets dark, even though that’s hard to do.

Track: “Spent Gladiator 2”
Album: Transcendental Youth (2012)

The Mountain Goats Wiki includes more than 150 live performances of “Spent Gladiator 2.” You could spend an entire day listening to all of them. I can’t recommend that, but you could. For several years in a row, “Spent Gladiator 2” was likely to be the last song the band played. It was often the conclusion of a second encore, sometimes with just Peter Hughes on bass and John Darnielle doing a slowed-down version with no mic. I once saw him wander through the crowd and sing it more or less at people, which was a truly special experience.

It’s the companion song to “Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1,” which is much more triumphant and furious. The second one shows us a different type of resistance, with clenched teeth and final straws rather than burning bright. “Stay alive,” John Darnielle still says, but “maybe spit some blood at the camera.”

The message of Transcendental Youth is a consistent one. There is power in hope, even when it seems like there isn’t. The imagery in “Spent Gladiator 2” is grim, but it’s still worth standing up again. It’s always worth doing that, John Darnielle wants you to know. You’d pick up the same command from angry songs like “Up the Wolves” or frantic ones like “Dance Music” or a hundred other songs, but John Darnielle closes the show with “Spent Gladiator 2” because it’s the hardest lesson to learn. When you’re good and mad you’re likely to get back up, but you need to do it when it’s way harder than that, too.

301. For the Portuguese Goth Metal Bands

Alex Russell Goths , , , , , ,

You don’t need to know much about Portuguese goth music to appreciate “For the Portuguese Goth Metal Bands.”

Track: “For the Portuguese Goth Metal Bands”
Album: Goths (2017)

In the leadup to the release of Goths, I remember when John Darnielle excitedly released “Andrew Eldritch is Coming Back to Leeds.” I’d never heard of Andrew Eldritch. It’s a really specific song about a topic I knew absolutely nothing about, which is not uncommon as an experience when listening to the Mountain Goats. You may or may not know the boxer Pinklon Thomas or the wrestler Ox Baker. You may not have seen The Lady from Shanghai. I don’t know that you have to be familiar with the subject matter to enjoy the song, but it helps.

I don’t listen to the kind of music John Darnielle listens to. If you follow him on any social media platform, you’ll see that he’s excited about new and old music all the time. He recommends recordings enthusiastically and seems to take in more music than anyone I know. It’s a great way to be and it’s really cool, even if it isn’t always to my tastes. I’m not a fan of any of the bands referenced on Goths and I’m not even really all that familiar with the scene. It doesn’t matter, especially for a song like “For the Portuguese Goth Metal Bands.” This is so specific that most people won’t be familiar, so it has to be talked about with some universality.

It’s a song about being big in one place but still aspiring to have something else. John Darnielle says he wouldn’t expect to draw huge crowds in Japan and likens that to a band that’s enormous in some countries but might not play big rooms in America. It’s an interesting space to get lost in, even if you have no idea who Celtic Frost is.

300. Down Here

Alex Russell Full Force Galesburg , , , , , , ,

“Down Here” starts with a reference to Venus and only gets weirder from there.

Track: “Down Here”
Album: Full Force Galesburg (1997)

There are six annotations on “Down Here” on Kyle Barbour’s excellent site The Annotated Mountain Goats. They detail what the atmosphere of Venus is like, what a red-crowned crane is, and even what Lithuania is. Barbour’s site is instrumental to the more arcane details of Mountain Goats songs, but it’s also funny when it explains what Illinois is or what window blinds are. You get in the game to figure out what “The Monkey Song” is talking about but then you have to take that to the logical conclusion.

I am just going to say it: I have no idea what “Down Here” is talking about. I love the delivery of lines like “A telegram from Lithuania // and the news is not good” where you can hear John Darnielle snarl over the cranked-up guitar. It’s a great song and one I’ve heard dozens and dozens of times. Barbour’s annotations can unlock secrets for songs, especially the ones about myths, but sometimes there’s not enough on the page. I’ve said before that this whole exercise is an experience rather than an attempt to “solve” these songs, and I legitimately do not believe it is possible to draw a universal meaning from this one.

And that’s fine! The final verse is a construction you may have heard before, and Barbour links to this truly fascinating post where people spiral into discussions of this style through history. This may just be another story of a narrator facing doom of their own creation, but they’re talking about their end in a way that many before them did for generations. I’m not going to throw up my hands completely, but I do love that this one is just a little too weird to put a finger on entirely.