songs

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.

340. Peacocks

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , , , ,

The Alpha Couple enjoys a diversion and some confusion before the inevitable end in “Peacocks.”

Track: “Peacocks”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

In 2012, John Darnielle tweeted this about “Peacocks” and how the lyrics were originally “way more sexually explicit.” For an album so obsessed with a married couple, there’s very little sexual in the lyrics of Tallahassee. It sounds like we missed an opportunity here, and John Darnielle adding that he’s “totally not joking” is some acknowledgement of how weird it might have been.

What we do have is just a mention of “hands grasping and groping” and the powerful phrase “seizing opportunity right where it lies.” This is after “No Children” and even “See America Right.” We’re well past hope, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a certain kind of love still between the Alpha Couple. John Darnielle says “Peacocks” is about “encroaching dread” but it’s also about that very specific, very distant, kind of love.

The original website for Tallahassee was a marvelous reflection of the themes of the album, with strange videos about Vicodin and haunting game shows and, yes, peacocks in the front yard. Kyle Barbour of The Annotated Mountain Goats includes the whole text of a pamphlet about peacocks that was on that site here, I will call attention to “peacocks mate for life, but one mate will often attempt to kill the other just prior to migration.” It was always going to end badly, but there are moments where the line ticks above zero before that, even if you can’t explain everything all the time.

339. Idylls of the King

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle juxtaposes a soft tune with a creeping message of doom in “Idylls of the King.”

Track: Idylls of the King”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

It is nothing new to call Tallahassee special. It’s a real turning point for John Darnielle, though you could make a case for a half-dozen other albums as the “turning point.” I think something that doesn’t get enough credit is the album’s range, as it goes between screaming, dark rage and almost-wistful melancholy. The narrative barrels on through the Alpha Couple’s marriage as it decays in Florida, but the couple expresses it through songs that ebb and flow.

“Idylls of the King” takes a title from Tennyson, but if it takes more than that I cannot say. The opening verse describes a setting that might be hopeful, but then likens the promise and potential of a new day to clay pigeons to be shot out of the sky. By the second verse, the narrator imagines vultures and locusts surrounding them. Tallahassee as a setting is meant to do a lot of things, but Florida as a mixture of an aspiration and a nightmare is an easy sell even without the failing marriage. This is extreme, but you can see it.

We’re still close to the middle, here. The very next song is “No Children,” where this narrator will no longer hold back, but there’s still some small level of restraint. “How long will we ride this wave out,” they ask, though we know it’s not really going to stop. You don’t say that your dreams are “haunted by armies, armies of ghosts” to anyone that you believe you can build more of a life with, do you? The tune itself may feel light, but the message shows this is as set as the scene can be for the crash that’s coming next.

338. Soft Targets

Alex Russell Bedside Recordings Vol. 1.2 , , , , , ,

John Darnielle shows us two people who want to believe they aren’t the problem in “Soft Targets.”

Track: “Soft Targets”
Album: Bedside Recordings Vol. 1.2 (2003)

People love to debate if any Mountain Goats song is “an Alpha Couple song” or not. Nearly all of them have the word Alpha in the title, but it isn’t true of all of them. This allows you to believe that any song you want to believe is about the miserable, doomed Alpha Couple is, in fact, about them. You have that freedom and no one can tell you otherwise. I get the argument and it seems like a safe bet, but I don’t think so. I think these two have too much perspective and, notably, a baby, though the story of the Alpha Couple sometimes breaks from the otherwise clear “No Children” rule.

“There’s not going to be a hero,” John Darnielle said once about songs like this, and about “Soft Targets” specifically he said “there are just two people fucking up.” This is true of Mountain Goats songs even when they aren’t about the Alpha Couple. The message of John Darnielle, very often, is that people and situations are complicated. The entire first verse here realizes a terrifying scene very clearly, with one person breaking plates and the other desperately trying and failing to deescalate.

It’s the final verse that does it, though. “When I hunt down the vampire that did this to us, I will rip out his heart with my hands” is an all-time scream line for John Darnielle, but it’s also something to investigate. No one “did this” to these people, they did it. “Soft targets” in military speak are people, as opposed to “hard targets” like buildings, and they are casualties. These two characters want to believe an outside force has ruined things, but the call is coming from inside the house.

337. Isaiah 45:23

Alex Russell The Life of the World to Come , , , , , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle speaks about illness and managing through it in “Isaiah 45:23.”

Track: “Isaiah 45:23”
Album: The Life of the World to Come (2009)

Isaiah 45:23, the verse, forms one of the lines of “Isaiah 45:23,” the Mountain Goats song. The verse is about devoting your life to the Lord and accepting his divinity. John Darnielle cribs this with “let every knee be bent and every tongue confess.” Much of Isaiah deals with this level of intense devotion and the fiery language needed to get the population back on track in the eyes of the Lord after being swayed by idolatry.

John Darnielle says it’s a song about illness and how we respond to the news that we’re going to have to live with chronic pain. This is explicit in the song, with “the pain begins to travel, dancing as it goes.” Maybe you have a relatable experience and maybe you don’t, but either way you can imagine the moment you get the news and the ways you’ll have to adjust. After a former life as a nurse and a health scare of his own, John Darnielle knows both sides of this coin.

The versus use religious language, but the chorus is more universal while still expressing a connected idea: “and I won’t get better // but someday I’ll be free // ’cause I am not this body // that imprisons me.” There are other Mountain Goats songs in this vein, but few that go this explicitly to the idea that some things that feel permanent actually aren’t. At one point, often in a scary way but sometimes in a hopeful one, you will think of yourself as someone who can’t be hurt that way anymore.

336. Pale Green Things

Alex Russell The Sunset Tree , , , , , , ,

“Pale Green Things” closes The Sunset Tree with an open question about how to remember a complex figure in your life.

Track: “Pale Green Things”
Album: The Sunset Tree (2005)

It is a helluva thing that John Darnielle was willing to create The Sunset Tree at all. It’s common to call an artist’s work “personal” and that word applies to a lot of what the Mountain Goats make, but this album requires a further examination of that term. It’s possible to listen to much of the album without squaring yourself in John Darnielle’s personal experience, but that is not true of the closing song “Pale Green Things.” By the time the album ends, the journey through abuse and the challenges of youth has been through a number of experiences. It ends with a difficult, conflicted note.

The line that unlocks everything is in the final verse, where John Darnielle describes a phone call about the death of his stepfather as “she told me how you died at last // at last.” The repetition is important because of the implied question mark on the second part. How could you say it that way, on the one hand, but what if that’s the only way to say it?

This is the album with “This Year” and “Up the Wolves.” The Sunset Tree is largely an album about sad, distant memories and how they can be both difficult and important. It’s a wonder that he was willing to go this deep and that he was willing to share it. You probably relate to some of it broadly, which is why the general, fast, loud ones have been played hundreds of times and endure to such a degree. “Pale Green Things” is a song for one person about one time.

335. Daniel 12:8 (third)

Alex Russell The Life of the World to Come , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Two versions of “Daniel 12:8 (third)” offer slightly different takes on how to view a moment you’re afraid is full of importance.

Track: “Daniel 12:8 (third)”
Album: The Life of the World in Flux (2009)

The Book of Daniel is all about what might happen. Daniel interprets God’s messages and hears from angels. He performs superhuman feats to prove his divine access and lays down with lions and survives flames sent to destroy him. It’s really easy to understand, as stories like these go, and it’s hard to argue with the idea that he knows what he needs to know. The kings of his day come to be impressed and come to listen to him, but only after he can prove it.

There are many ways to take these lessons and there’s an argument about faith that comes from Daniel’s doubters only believing him after seeing irrefutable proof. Daniel 12:8, the verse “Daniel 12:8 (third)” takes a title from, finds Daniel questioning an angel. Even after interpreting dreams for kings and hearing other divine messages, Daniel is only human and needs help understanding the angelic message. He asks “what will the outcome of all this be?”

This song didn’t make it to The Life of the World to Come. It’s only on the demo album The Life of the World in Flux. Further complicating this, we have the “third” version on the demo and the “first” version John Darnielle released separately. The versions differ only in their ending, with the first version offering a hopeful ending and the third version decidedly less so. There are multiple interpretations you can draw from each version, but this song stems from a time when John Darnielle was thinking about his health and about his life to that point. Through that lens, Daniel’s confusion and fear may be about a turning point where things will either get better or they won’t.