song meanings

288. Blood Royal

Alex Russell Ghana, Orange Raja, Blood Royal , , , , , , , ,

“Blood Royal” marks the beginning of a collaboration for John Darnielle, but also is the result of a display of honesty.

Track: “Blood Royal”
Album: Orange Raja, Blood Royal (1995) and Ghana (1999)

In 1996, just after Nothing for Juice came out, John Darnielle performed in Maryland at a place called Fletcher’s. It closed in 2009 when ownership changed hands. The Facebook page for the place has three posts, two just before they closed and one update six years later with a poorly, but lovingly shot photo of the outside. It’s always a little hard to tell from the recordings, but it sounds like it was maybe a weird show. The crowd talks too much and John Darnielle keeps making jokes about enthusiasm when he prompts the crowd with questions. It’s a very curious look at another time, with discussion of smoking on stage in a place that doesn’t exist anymore and barely exists as a thing to be researched.

This is one of the only live versions of “Blood Royal” you can find. It’s a good one, but not completely dissimilar from the official one. Alastair Galbraith was even there to play violin, as he does on the standard track. Galbraith says he once saw John Darnielle perform with the Bright Mountain Choir and appreciated his intensity and honesty. When John Darnielle asked him to collaborate, it was a no-brainer.

That show at Fletcher’s isn’t essential to your understanding of this song, but it is worth hearing because that’s why Orange Raja, Blood Royal exists. John Darnielle is the beating heart of the Mountain Goats and always has been, but the band has developed because people saw what he was doing and found it undeniable. “Blood Royal,” haunting and strange at first listen, isn’t just the product of that collaboration, it’s part of the reason it all exists in the first place.

287. Quetzalcoatl is Born

Alex Russell Zopilote Machine , , , , , , ,

“Quetzalcoatl is Born” is not really about Quetzalcoatl, but even beyond that provides space for you to make it about anything.

Track: “Quetzalcoatl is Born”
Album: Zopilote Machine (1994)

“Quetzalcoatl is Born” opens with a clip from a Barbara Streisand song. That’s how old it is, it’s still from the days of albums with samples and oddities designed to deepen the experience and provoke questions. Maybe that’s overstated and maybe it was all just to be weird, but I am fascinated by it nonetheless. This is the song that closes Zopilote Machine and it closes with a creation story.

You can, and should, read about this elsewhere. It takes more space than I have to explain what’s happening in “Quetzalcoatl is Born,” but put briefly, it’s the story of the creation of the sun and the moon. The gods leap into the fire and the sun is born of the least likely of them. It’s a story about how excellence can come from anywhere, no matter who goes into the fire, and what great things are possible when that happens.

At Zoop II, a legendary request show from 2009, John Darnielle played this live. The crowd is into it and it’s worth hearing, but it’s extra notable for following “This Year.” You cannot follow “This Year” at a Mountain Goats show, even one where everyone is as passionate as they are at this one. Some of the crowd howls and yips at weird moments, but that’s gonna happen. What makes it great is to hear how much John Darnielle loves it. “Into the fire you go, go, go” he insists, and you forget what this is supposed to be about in place of what it could mean in that moment.

286. Stench of the Unburied

Alex Russell Goths , , , , , ,

With some of the best wordplay on the album, “Stench of the Unburied” shows us one moment and suggests many others.

Track: “Stench of the Unburied”
Album: Goths (2017)

Most of the modern Mountain Goats albums are “the _______ one.” Beat the Champ is “the wrestling one.” The Life of the World to Come is “the Bible one.” Goths is, well, you get it. That said, I don’t think you need to be all that familiar with the subject matter to appreciate the album, but Goths bucks that trend. I loved it immediately when I heard it, but I’ll admit that I still like general songs like “Shelved” more than the more directly specific songs about actual, real-deal goths. It’s just not my world, so it doesn’t connect with me the way it does with people who lived or live in this space.

“Stench of the Unburied” is the space between those two worlds. It’s hyper-specific, down to the mention of a German electronics company, but it’s also about a feeling of impending doom that requires no experience in the culture the song references. “Incoherent but functional” is John Darnielle at his absolute best, and “say what you will for the effort // you can’t fault the technique” tells us even more about this character than the grime on their clothes does.

When I listen to “Stench of the Unburied” I’m always reminded of “Beat the Devil,” a pretty deep cut that I love a lot. Both songs are about the sudden realization of police breaking up a druggy, tense situation and both songs suggest this was all going to break down way before it became obvious to the narrator. These aren’t the same people, but they’re in the same moment and they’re feeling the same thing. Taken literally it’s grim, but it’s one of the many rungs on the ladder that Darnielle’s characters must climb.

285. Satori In Denver

Alex Russell Moon Colony Bloodbath , , , , , , ,

Our main character wanders around Colorado, hopeful but not that hopeful, in “Satori In Denver.”

Track: “Satori In Denver”
Album: Moon Colony Bloodbath (2009)

I really love Moon Colony Bloodbath. The full album is less than twenty minutes long and it’s not really an essential piece of the catalog, but it really had a huge impact on me. John Vanderslice and John Darnielle are similar, but different enough that their collaboration here creates a complex album even though it’s so short. You have enough detail to get the story but not enough to not wonder about everything else.

The album is the story of people who are sent to the Moon for sinister, corporate purposes and how they come back. “Satori In Denver” sees our spaceman wandering around Colorado, not really following the rules. “Anklet buzzing on my leg,” tells a little bit about how the world tracks these employees and “thinking up lies to tell” tells us more about how the employees rebel in small ways. We’re let in, but not all the way in, and this is as close as Moon Colony Bloodbath gets to hope.

Satori is a Japanese term for understanding, in the sense of coming into an idea through contemplation. Our character is changing by contending with their world. They have performed dark tasks, possibly uninterrogated, but now they wonder what it all means. This isn’t a hero or a villain, necessarily, but it is someone who has done things we’ll learn about later in the album and they want to know how they should react. We get some of that through the delivery, as well. Darnielle hits high notes when it’s all about introspection, but by the end it’s about driving towards what happens next and it’s all low and grim, telling us what’s really in store.

284. Divided Sky Lane

Alex Russell Sentries in the Ambush , , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle steers into Elliott Smith territory (though he’d tell you that’s wrong) with “Divided Sky Lane.”

Track: “Divided Sky Lane”
Album: Sentries in the Ambush EP (2019)

On the podcast episode of I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats about the production of “Divided Sky Lane” John Darnielle spoke frankly about the production of the track and why it didn’t make the album. It’s a waltz, which is already a bold choice. It’s also a waltz with double-tracked vocals. “Elliott Smith didn’t invent the waltz,” John Darnielle says with frustration in his voice, but he says that any time you do a song like this and you use that device, you inevitably draw the comparison. Phoebe Bridgers contends with the same comparison but does so deliberately.

“Divided Sky Lane” doesn’t fit on In League with Dragons for a bunch of reasons. It sounds really strange when you listen to it with the other songs on the album, but it’s also about personal, possibly romantic, longing. John Darnielle rattles off every song and crosses them off a list of topics in that podcast episode and says that the album isn’t about that, so the song doesn’t fit. Both sonically different and thematically dissimilar, that’s how you find the cutting room floor.

In his early career, John Darnielle saved the best for the EPs and the international-only releases. He said that he did that on purpose out of some kind of willfulness, but that doesn’t happen now. The EPs are always interesting, but “Divided Sky Lane” isn’t better than any song on In League with Dragons, in my opinion. The vocal effect is creepy and compelling, but I think it clouds out the loneliness of the song. I’m sure many people disagree, but it’s always felt like a curiosity to me that I can’t quite unlock.

283. In League with Dragons

Alex Russell In League with Dragons , , , , , ,

The title track of In League with Dragons shows us what dragons can do for us and asks us if we’re prepared to see it.

Track: “In League with Dragons”
Album: In League with Dragons (2019)

In League with Dragons is two albums, really. It’s a fantasy epic and it’s a retrospective of John Darnielle’s songwriting career. Even this duality is a simplification, obviously, as everything any artist makes can be said to be in conversation with everything else they’ve said. I think the man himself would have a lot of problems with this reading, but we need to sit in it for a moment to talk about the title track.

“In League with Dragons,” the song, is a melding of the two ideas. The narrator is navigating life until a dragon comes and burns up everything that troubles them. There a lot of narrators hoping for this outcome (or at least a similar enough one) but this one is likely going to get what they want. One of the many messages of the Mountain Goats is to bide your time, that darkness fades and you will be rewarded for your patience. “In League with Dragons” is about what you do when your moment actually gets here. Do you look and watch the flames or do you feel complicated about retribution, even justly given?

“It’s so hard to get revenge // the human element drags you down,” John Darnielle tells us. We want to be the kind of person who turns the other cheek. We want to rise above and to grow. But sometimes, as in “Up the Wolves” and a dozen other songs, we want to watch the fire that’s finally here to do what fire does.

282. Possum By Night

Alex Russell In League with Dragons , , , , , , ,

“Possum By Night” challenges us to consider beyond the first-take, surface level consideration.

Track: “Possum By Night”
Album: In League with Dragons (2019)

When I first listened to In League with Dragons I didn’t get into “Possum By Night.” I thought it was fine, but nothing on it clicked with me and I moved on. Based on the number of performances, John Darnielle loves it. That happens, sometimes. There are hundreds (thousands?) of Mountain Goats songs and they don’t all need to work for everyone. One of his absolute favorite songs he’s ever written (not this one) is my least favorite song he’s written and that’s a me problem. When that happens, I feel like I need to crack the code and understand what about it isn’t working for me.

The band opened the encore at this show with “Possum By Night.” That did it for me. It’s not that it’s significantly better or worse live, it’s that you feel the passion of the crowd that way. The band toured with a logo of a possum with a sword and had a huge banner of it behind them at this show. It’s a clear mascot for what John Darnielle wants to say with his characters — a possum is misunderstood to be scary, but really it’s a creature that just wants to “find my own way — and it was in that performance that whatever needed to be connected in my brain became connected. As with most songs I didn’t like, it was a me problem.

The band has several anthems for outsiders. “Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1” and “You Were Cool” are recent examples, but there are a lot. “Possum By Night” is another one, and a sweet one when viewed the right way. It’s also a lesson in thinking what a song might be for someone else. I’ve found that second layer of consideration to be worth it nearly every time.

281. Doc Gooden

Alex Russell In League with Dragons , , , , , , ,

“Doc Gooden” shows us a snapshot of a baseball pitcher who hopes it’s coming back but knows it probably isn’t.

Track: “Doc Gooden”
Album: In League with Dragons (2019)

Dwight “Doc” Gooden pitched in Major League Baseball for 16 years. He was excellent and then he wasn’t. He battled addiction and he’s been arrested several times for a variety of offenses, mostly drug related but not entirely, and he was on a VH1 reality show about addiction with Lindsay Lohan’s dad and a guy from Baywatch.

There are a lot of Mountain Goats songs about people who are troubled and a lot of them aren’t about real people. The benefit of using an unnamed character is that we only know what you tell us about them. Someone standing by a river as a boat pulls away also has another life we don’t get to see. We fill in what we need to be true about them to support the story. John Darnielle loves quotidian details in songs to help tell us what kind of person this is, but it’s never enough to know them completely.

That’s not true for “Doc Gooden.” This is someone who is in the falling action of their career, but they don’t know it’s going to get much, much worse. They are engaged with failure directly, though, which is unique. “Summon up the spirit of a brighter time // looked back last week against the Blue Jays” is a fascinating set of lines. Gooden wants to feel better about how it used to be, but the immediate past tells him he’s not that guy anymore.

We know, because we exist outside of this song, what is going to happen after this. We know that even this distant hope for a triumphant second act isn’t going to pay off. It deepens the sadness because it’s real, and it especially does because even the worst that Gooden is bracing for isn’t as low as it’s going to go.

280. Clemency for the Wizard King

Alex Russell In League with Dragons , , , , , , ,

A leftover from an album that became something else, “Clemency for the Wizard King” tells us one thing directly but leaves room to wonder.

Track: “Clemency for the Wizard King”
Album: In League with Dragons (2019)

I was in a bar in a few years ago and the bartender had a Mountain Goats tattoo. I asked them about it and during a brief conversation they said they loved the band but didn’t love the new albums. Heretic Pride was the first Mountain Goats album I encountered “new” and I do, fairly or not, consider that a personal “break point” for the band between old and new. I’m sure for this person it was something similar.

It’s interesting to see how people respond to new albums as the band gets bigger. John Darnielle has said that a lot of people didn’t give The Life of the World to Come a fair shake because of the subject material. I have to wonder what those people thought of a “rock opera” about a fantasy land with wizards and dragons. It’s certainly not that strange, given the rest of the material John Darnielle has made, but it’s not The Sunset Tree.

In League with Dragons is partly what it was originally (fantasy town drama) and partly something else. It ends up being personal and distant at the same time, and it’s much more interesting as a result. “Clemency for the Wizard King” is from the first part, and John Darnielle joked when introducing it once that it’s about people asking for clemency for a wizard. It couldn’t be more direct. It’s a little odd, on an album with “Younger” and “Done Bleeding.” The album rewards successive listens as you tease out the story and fill in the missing pieces yourself, and while it’s not a deeply personal ballad, “Clemency for the Wizard King” does exactly what it needs to do.

279. Passaic, 1975

Alex Russell In League with Dragons , , , , , , , , ,

Ozzy Osbourne is in front of thousands of people, but he just wants them to get high in “Passaic, 1975.”

Track: “Passaic, 1975”
Album: In League with Dragons (2019)

There are many real people in Mountain Goats songs, but I don’t think anyone shows up as often as Ozzy Osbourne. John Darnielle loves his music, but he seems equally interested in the story of how Ozzy came to power. There are other songs about his early years in a slaughterhouse and his mental state, but “Passaic, 1975” finds him in front of tens of thousands of audience members and not making the best use of the opportunity.

Or is he? In Memphis, in the song, Ozzy blacks out in front of a huge crowd despite a unique piece of tech supposedly keeping the show interesting and exciting. John Darnielle shows us over and over again that Ozzy doesn’t care in the way we think we’d care, he just wants to get high. Not only that, but he wants you to get high. It’s the greatest aspiration he can think of, so why do any of the rest of this stuff?

If you’ve been to a live show and heard someone yell for “Going to Georgia” in the middle of the wind up to a slower song, you can’t help but hear a line like “contingency plans in case the new one flops” as a line with a double meaning. The Mountain Goats aren’t Black Sabbath, obviously, but John Darnielle has to see some of his much younger self in Ozzy’s methods of dealing with the fame he’s found. I think reading too much into it is probably a mistake, though. This is the story of Ozzy getting what he supposedly wanted and finding that there are, to borrow another Mountain Goats line, “brighter things than diamonds.”