songs

291. For Charles Bronson

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

John Darnielle talks about longevity and surviving in “For Charles Bronson.”

Track: “For Charles Bronson”
Album: All Eternals Deck (2011)

The folks that created Charles Bronson’s Wikipedia page did something I’ve never seen before: They added a “genre” column to the filmography section. It draws a distinction between “war drama” and “war” as different genres somehow, but I mention it because it shows that Charles Bronson basically did one thing for fifty years. He was a guy with a gun in a truly staggering number of films, from westerns to whatever a “comedy drama” is.

John Darnielle says he was watching a Bronson movie and looked up his story. That’s the really basic explanation for how we got “For Charles Bronson.” This is his story, more or less, and there’s not much that needs to be said about the text itself. John Darnielle really stretches his voice for the delivery, from contemplative in “try to hold the gun straight // and true // and steady” to the extended, thunderous “pull back the hammer” with his signature scream in the middle of the word. It’s not necessarily a love letter, but it is the right degree of awe for someone who did so much.

That’s what makes it memorable, for me. It’s straightforward and if you took out the specific city mention and the title it would be defensible as a song about a dozen Hollywood guys from the era. But it’s interesting because it does just what it should and makes you wonder why it exists. Charles Bronson led a remarkable life and stands for a remarkable thing that most Mountain Goats characters can only dream of. “Be grateful for the attention,” John Darnielle tells us in this story about finding what you do and doing it.

290. Hye Kye

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

It’s hard to know how to pronounce “Hye Kye” or just what’s happening in it beyond all the Christmas trees.

Track: “Hye Kye”
Album: Unreleased (Released online by John Darnielle in 2008)

Before we talk about it, John Darnielle asks that people donate to one of two charities if they download “Hye Kye” so here is that link. He released this song and two others after the fanbase donated to help a friend of his who was mugged and hurt badly. He’s put out a number of older songs over the years in similar situations, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t drop the link.

I have no idea how you say “Hye Kye.” I am guessing it rhymes and the first part is “high,” but I have absolutely nothing to base that on. The usual sources are stumped on the name, though Kyle Barbour at The Annotated Mountain Goats did the legwork of pointing out that Indian Hill is also in “From TG&Y” and that Gemco is a defunct department store chain.

It’s a classic Mountain Goats story. Our narrator comments on the weather and then does something odd. There’s really not all that much to decode here. It isn’t better or worse off for that reason, it’s just what it is. This is someone who is carrying a Christmas tree to a parking lot and then they get overwhelmed and lie down among the trees. Is it after Christmas, and is this all the waste? Is it before Christmas, and this is all for sale? But then why is our narrator carrying a tree to where all the others are? When I hear a song like this I don’t care about that answer, but I do wonder what this meant to John Darnielle when he wrote it. The name can stay a mystery, but I’m fascinated by the premise.

289. White Cedar

Alex Russell Transcendental Youth , , , , , , ,

“White Cedar” finds a narrator in a painful loop they hope to break.

Track: “White Cedar”
Album: Transcendental Youth (2012)

In 2012, Pitchfork interviewed John Darnielle about the release of Transcendental Youth. I love that they just said essentially “White Cedar is sad, what’s up with that?” He said that it’s about a narrator accepting that they are going to be in the hospital a lot and that they have to come to terms with that reality. This person probably isn’t going to be okay and they probably aren’t going to get to the day they describe in the song. His answer is really worth reading in full, but “White Cedar” goes off in a different direction.

The narrator in this song hopes for a future they likely won’t see. “My spirit sings loud and clear // even in here,” is powerful, when one considers the reality of “here.” The comment sections of Mountain Goats blogs and videos are filled with people who say they just got out of facilities that were supposed to reform or fix them and how they didn’t always work. John Darnielle asks us to ignore that part and to think about what you do when you wake up handcuffed to the bed.

“Mole” is the obvious sister song, with the same setting and a similar idea. The difference is that “White Cedar” finds a narrator really hoping this isn’t how it’s going to go. “You can’t tell me what my spirit tells me isn’t true” is a willful statement, undercut deliberately by the questioning “can you?” They don’t know, because they can’t know. There’s hope in all cases, but the gaps we fill in through the story untold in “White Cedar” makes it hard to find that hope. This is a song for when you have to look extra hard.

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.