songs

454. Outer Scorpion Squadron

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

“Outer Scorpion Squadron” strongly embraces the darkness, even considered among other Mountain Goats songs.

Track: “Outer Scorpion Squadron”
Album: All Eternals Deck (2011)

Many years ago, one of the richest people I’ve ever met in person saw that I was wearing the classic original Mountain Goats shirt that says “I only listen to the Mountain Goats.” The line is tongue-in-cheek, sorta, but it’s also not. This incredibly rich, powerful person said “you only listen to the Mountain Goats? You must want to kill yourself!” The glibness and the horror of it stuck with me as a reminder of how divorced from the real world you can become, as I did not really know this man, but it only occurred to me later that he had to have some familiarity with John Darnielle’s music to even know that it was appropriate to judge his music as “sad,” even though the way he expressed it was appalling.

“Outer Scorpion Squadron” is the kind of song that would make you wonder, at first, why anyone would want to spend time in this space. I’m not defending that guy’s position, but I can understand someone hearing a song about embracing the horrors of your childhood and staying with the ghosts of those moments forever and finding that stressful and upsetting. The Mountain Goats are not a band for everyone and a song like this one may not be the one you want on a sunny afternoon. This is a heavy song on a list of mostly heavy songs. Use it sparingly, but I think most people will find they do need to use it every now and again.

453. Prowl Great Cain

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

“Prowl Great Cain” explodes over and over, but the music clouds the story of someone haunted by their actions.

Track: “Prowl Great Cain”
Album: All Eternals Deck (2011)

The energy in “Prowl Great Cain” is what makes it for me. If you love the Mountain Goats you have to love John Darnielle’s voice, but I think this performance is deserving of special mention. Whether you’re talking about live performances or just the studio cut, Darnielle hits a dozen specific moments of snarl and punches the pucker you have to make with your mouth on “prowl” every time. I’ve leaned on the term “explosion” too hard when describing any song that’s uptempo and has drums, but I think you’ve really got to use it here. I just love the way he sings this one and I love the driving rhythm that somewhat plays against it. If you don’t tense up, in a good way, when you hear “feel the prickings of my conscience in my chest” then I cannot get you there.

You have to take a little bit of a walk for the meaning. The title references Cain, the first murderer in the Bible who is cursed with a life of barren fields and the space to let his conscience work on him, but the narrator here is not Cain. Darnielle has introduced the song as happening in Cambodia in 1976, which will lead you to understand the lyrics as a narrator that has sold out someone, a neighbor or a friend, and how they deal with the knowledge that in this place, at this time, the consequences there are dire. It’s a layered set of references, complex even for the Mountain Goats, but the connection is clear and it rewards listening to it with both layers in your mind.

452. Rotten Stinking Mouthpiece

Alex Russell all survivors pack , , , , , , ,

“Rotten Stinking Mouthpiece” is both a reference to a 1956 film and a journey removed from it entirely.

Track: “Rotten Stinking Mouthpiece”
Album: All Survivors Pack (2011)

I think I might have said this before I started, but several hundred songs in, I have to say the most important element in a Mountain Goats song is specificity. I do not have the same interests as John Darnielle, but I don’t need to in order to appreciate his lyrics. I have virtually no background in the kind of music he listens to, but the sort of greater Ozzy Osbourne universe he’s created and the world of Goths both feel very real because of how much he loves them. Do you need to see the movie The Lady from Shanghai to appreciate the song “The Lady from Shanghai?” Not really, no, but it’s there if you want to go deeper.

“Rotten Stinking Mouthpiece” is a reference to the Lon Chaney, Jr. film Indestructible Man, and I’ll confess it’s one of the pieces of ephemera that I’m not familiar with across the world of things that made John Darnielle who he is today. Someday, sure, but life is short, and I’ve been feeling the effects lately of trying to be a completist about things. One must make compromises, and mine on this afternoon is accepting that John Darnielle loves this thing and wants to share a piece of it as a song. The resulting song is a little haunting and a little insistent, as a Mountain Goats song tends to be, but I want to highlight the joy of slight understanding. Before I saw The Lady from Shanghai, the song about it felt mysterious. After seeing it, there wasn’t a lightbulb of recognition. It’s not a password that opens a door, it’s just another lens. It’s your decision if you want to add to your experience.

451. Catherine Antrim’s Kid

Alex Russell all survivors pack , , , , , , ,

The Mountain Goats ask us to return to Billy the Kid and his magical, special shoes in “Catherine Antrim’s Kid.”

Track: “Catherine Antrim’s Kid”
Album: All Survivors Pack (2011)

I think it’s a legitimate question to ask why there are two songs that reference Billy the Kid’s “special shoes” in the Mountain Goats catalog, but you probably already have an idea of your own. He’s a tragic figure, in a way, but also what a weird detail to focus on. An old friend of mine was obsessed with the original “Billy the Kid’s Dream of the Magic Shoes,” a song from 1993 that is exclusively about Billy the Kid and his magic shoes. I am wary of making a statement like this, but I think that song is nonsense. I don’t mean that in a negative way, but I don’t necessarily think there’s something to unlock here. I think “Catherine Antrim’s Kid,” titled after Billy the Kid’s mother, is largely a reference to that song and a mild attempt to double down on something that never really referenced anything in the first place. Billy the Kid, near as I can tell, did not believe he had magic shoes. But who are we to say?

Picture yourself as John Darnielle, nearly twenty years later in 2011. I love that the “follow up” references Paul Westerberg. I don’t have to tell you that Billy the Kid wouldn’t know who that is and that’s the point, but this isn’t just a funny detail. It’s the clearest way to explain the difference between the two versions of Darnielle as a songwriter. “Catherine Antrim’s Kid” is a little bit beautiful, when you can forget it’s about the myth of a murderous outlaw, and it’s got a charm the original just doesn’t have. For all the folks who long for the old days, this one asks you to put that aside.

450. Never Quite Free

Alex Russell All Eternals Deck, all survivors pack , , , , , , ,

Some might say “Never Quite Free” is misunderstood, but it serves a greater purpose when read a different way.

Track: “Never Quite Free”
Album: All Eternals Deck (2011) and All Survivors Pack (2011)

I have a set list from a show I saw a few years ago where “Never Quite Free” was the final song before the mid-show solo break that John Darnielle does. It’s listed as “NQF” with a full-page line after it to show the delineation. I remember that performance, with John Darnielle smiling and beaming as he belted the lyrics. He’s spoken about it a lot, often saying that fans think it’s a liberating, positive experience, but it’s about not being able to ever escape something. It’s right in the title, right there, clearly, that you will never get free. The contrast between the message and how people seem to receive it is something we’ve talked about a lot in this series, but this is an interesting one because I don’t think it’s as purely opposite as the others.

You can’t get free of your past, but the freedom comes from acknowledging that. Watching John Darnielle close his eyes and tell a few hundred people in a dark club that they are not going to escape whatever they hope will eventually fade away should be a kind of terrifying experience, but it’s liberating to own whatever you cannot cast off. “Wish me well where I go,” Darnielle says, “but when you see me, you’ll know.” He’s not literally talking about himself, but that’s often how I hear it in this context. The Mountain Goats are a different thing to everyone, but if you really love songs like “Never Quite Free,” part of it is that even the infinite fear in yourself can be contextualized. What a gift that is.

449. The Autopsy Garland

Alex Russell All Eternals Deck, all survivors pack , , , , , , ,

The meaning behind “The Autopsy Garland” is in the text, but the personal nature of it adds another layer.

Track: “The Autopsy Garland”
Album: All Eternals Deck (2011) and All Survivors Pack (2011)

You don’t need to dig to find this, so I’ll spot you the explanation of “The Autopsy Garland.” It’s about Judy Garland and how she “never had a chance” given the sort of people in her life. John Darnielle once called it “intensely personal” and said that the version of it you hear on the album was complex and irregular for their style and it did not lend itself to live performance. It has, very possibly, only been played live one time, six days ago as of this writing, in Kentucky.

The song itself is a purposefully grotesque look at the people who harmed Judy Garland, but I am especially interested in that one live performance. It was either not recorded or isn’t uploaded yet, but I rather like that. I am obviously an obsessive, which I don’t need to admit to here in the 400+ range of this series, but I still do like the unknowable. John Darnielle has said before that he likes that some things get destroyed and that you can’t ever collect everything. That, plus the fact that he once said he didn’t want to try to place this live, makes it special to know that it did happen, but you can’t hear it. Some people did, which is great, but that hidden element has a wonder to it. It’s even better that it was played first, a spot John Darnielle has said he sometimes reserves for songs the crowd won’t know. Five years ago I saw the band open with an Ani DiFranco cover that had what I imagine to be a similar effect. Some things may never happen again.

448. Beautiful Gas Mask

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

“Beautiful Gas Mask” has some painful, difficult imagery, but it’s also something you can dance along with as you worry.

Track: “Beautiful Gas Mask”
Album: All Eternals Deck (2011) and All Survivors Pack (2011)

All Eternals Deck is a hard album for me to get my head around. It came out at the busiest time of my life, during a time of extreme transition where I felt overwhelmed all the time. When I think of it I remember how many times I listened to “Damn These Vampires” and how great the ending of the album is, leading several clearly thematically connected songs into each other to leave the listener with a sense that the whole thing was about one idea. It’s not correct to say I don’t love All Eternals Deck, but it does share, to my mind, something with Transcendental Youth in that I love both albums but I find some of the material difficult to connect with directly. This is entirely a personal opinion and not a statement on either album, but it’s something I’ve tried to analyze for myself as to why I left a few of these songs for the very end.

“Beautiful Gas Mask” is one such song. It’s about paranoia, which I find less relatable than many of the other problems Mountain Goats narrators experience. It’s a great song with a catchy chorus and I’ve always been fond of the drums, but the personal connection relies on your ability to feel this peril. Leave it to the Mountain Goats to have you tapping your toes as you hear about being caught in jaws and crushed like fleas.

447. The New Hydra Collection

Alex Russell Dark in Here , , , , , , ,

The Mountain Goats continue to examine people who operate outside of humanity in “The New Hydra Collection.”

Track: “The New Hydra Collection”
Album: Dark in Here (2021)

I really like Dark in Here. This is not a hot take, but sometimes the albums take time to grow on me. I still haven’t found one I don’t like, which also shouldn’t be surprising now nearly 500 of these into my tenure. Dark in Here hit me immediately and nothing hit me as hard as “The New Hydra Collection.” As of this writing, there’s exactly one live performance you can go hear. The band calls it “a new one.” There’s probably no argument that it’s the best song on the album, but something about it really appeals to me.

The story will hit you the first time you hear it. Someone is “hell bent on doing the work that you cowards won’t do.” The title tells you, but the lyrics reinforce, yes, we’re gonna bring some sea monsters up out of this lake. With any other band you might wonder what we’re talking about here, but with the Mountain Goats, it’s safe to assume a cigar is a cigar. There’s not even a purpose here, this is just about doing it and making people feel the fear.

It’s funny but not silly, which is an important distinction and something I feel like gets lost. This is a horror story about calling enormous, dangerous beasts from the water. The song even makes clear everyone knows this is horrific, but the language is so casual. The song is a jam, which takes you further away from the horror. The result is something worth considering as you try to imagine who this person is and what they really want from these hydra.

446. Marduk T-Shirt Men’s Room Incident

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

Fan interpretations of “Marduk T-Shirt Men’s Room Incident” got so dark that John Darnielle himself had to correct the record.

Track: “Marduk T-Shirt Men’s Room Incident”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

“Marduk T-Shirt Men’s Room Incident” is exactly what it says it is in the title. It’s an incident that happens between two people where one of them is wearing a T-shirt for the band Marduk. There are several songs I’d also nominate for this honor, but I think this may be the best jumping off point to discuss John Darnielle’s view of song interpretations. A lot of fans assumed something untoward is happening here, given the person in the T-shirt is a clearly distressed person referenced with female terminology who is in the men’s room during what we are told is an “incident.” John Darnielle went so far as to directly respond to people on the band’s forums to tell them he would never write a song from the perspective of someone who might do what people assume this narrator has done. He added that we don’t know what happened to her, which is, as he said, “kind of the point.”

You bring yourself to every piece of art you consume, but also you should try to meet the art where it is. This is a song about people we must assume are strangers and the source of her distress is unknown to us. That keeps it general in that this could be anything, but the audience interpretation that the author had to strike down shows that people want to fill in the blanks. Something troubling happened here, but it’s less about what that was and more about a chance encounter and how we never really know the full story about the people we happen across in this life.

445. How to Embrace a Swamp Creature

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

“How to Embrace a Swamp Creature” is a very relatable song, but you have to be willing to admit that.

Track: “How to Embrace a Swamp Creature”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

The full quote from this show in San Francisco in 2008 is too long to quote here, but I encourage you to go read it in full on the Mountain Goats Wiki or listen to the show. In summary, John Darnielle says that “How to Embrace a Swamp Creature” is about going to see someone you used to know on some sort of spurious claim when really you just want to see them again and you probably want one exact thing that you hope you both want. It’s an adolescent emotion, one would hope, but maybe it’s one you remember in your own life. Maybe you’re more honest with yourself, I don’t know. The live show banter discusses going to get an album from someone but then being honest on the idea that “you could go get that song off the internet like the rest of us.” I mention it both because it’s such a great discussion of the idea and because you can hear the crowd reacting and imagining their own version from their past.

There are a few biblical references in “How to Embrace a Swamp Creature,” which is not unheard of in a Mountain Goats song about secrecy and human relationships. The true narrative is right there in the text, though. You don’t need to track anything outside of what you’re hearing. You just need to cleave out the parts that are the narrator pretending to avoid what they’ve decided is inevitable. We often think of our impulses as immediate things, but I love this song because it chases the feeling from the first moment of your day up until you have to decide what you’re willing to tell this person who used to be someone else to you.