songs

271. Jeff Davis County Blues

Alex Russell All Hail West Texas , , , , , , ,

“Jeff Davis County Blues” takes a specific route through Texas but offers only a haze of a person’s life.

 

Track: “Jeff Davis County Blues”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

I once drove from El Paso to Fort Stockton, which intersects with the route described in “Jeff Davis County Blues” only briefly, right at the start. A fan made a map of the route here, and it’s interesting to take a look as you listen to the song. It doesn’t really matter where this narrator is driving, but the choice to list it like a map in the song’s lyrics does beg you to view it like one. I was driving this route in 2008 as part of a much larger drive, but I will always remember this part of Texas as even more wide open than Kansas, where we’d just been, and how that surprised me.

Assuming our narrator takes this exact route, they’re driving about five hours and taking a particularly indirect route. “I have no place to go,” they tell us, but they also say they are going to Midland. Over the drive, the narrator seems to decide that home is something they deserve (or at least desire) to come back to, after all. We don’t know why they aren’t there, but we know they spent three days in jail before the song’s events. We don’t know all that much for certain, but we’ve got a lot of clues.

The photographs on the passenger seat are the biggest clue. This is someone who wants what may be lost and they are visualizing it, quite literally. They are going home, but also they say “I hope you won’t mind.” There’s an inkling there, and maybe much more than that, of an idea that this person isn’t welcome in Midland. We don’t know what’s coming next, but we do know that this person’s fears might be justified.

270. Source Decay

Alex Russell All Hail West Texas , , , , , , ,

You can search the postcards in “Source Decay” or you can live in the memory of why they are coming to your house now.

Track: “Source Decay”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

The obvious brother/sister song to “Source Decay” is “Jenny” but it’s at least a cousin to “The Mess Inside.” Both “The Mess Inside” and “Source Decay” wander over geography and use distance and memory to explore what it means to be in one place and think about another one. But we really must leave that there and talk about the Jenny that lives in “Jenny” and a handful of other songs to consider “Source Decay.”

I don’t know if this is a common opinion or not, but I think “Source Decay” is the best song on All Hail West Texas and it’s a personal favorite of mine across the catalog. I love the guitar and I love the delivery, especially how it thuds satisfyingly on lines like “walk the floors a little while.” I strongly recommend the cover by Holy Sons on the official covers album, which gives it a swampy, slower vibe.

The person sending the postcards is Jenny, John Darnielle has said, but also it doesn’t matter. “Source Decay” may be the ultimate example of why this whole exercise is complicated. John Darnielle answered a question on his blog about this song and said that exploring exactly what’s happening and exactly what the narrative tells us is impossible. He says that life doesn’t have one clean line and the exercise of looking through postcards for patterns is the point, not finding what the tapestry says. Jenny’s sending postcards here just like she’s calling or picking someone up on a motorcycle in other songs, but she’s still just part of what’s happening. You can consider the story of “Source Decay” forever, but what you should try to explore is how the events make you feel.

269. Distant Stations

Alex Russell All Hail West Texas , , , , , , ,

We’re asked to consider a rock really, really deeply, but also why we’re considering it, in “Distant Stations.”

Track: “Distant Stations”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

“Distant Stations” opens with seven lines about the narrator finding a rock. “It was a triangle with soft, rounded edges,” they tell us, and add that “it was darker than English moss.” The description goes into extreme detail. You really do not need to know this much about this rock, but you do need to understand why this person feels like this information is critical. This is a certain sort of person, you see, and they need you to hear about this triangle rock they found.

This kind of obsessive behavior could be viewed a few different ways, but it seems like it’s a way into how this person views the world. In the second verse, John Darnielle sings possibly the longest line in any of his songs with “I threw a rock at a crow who was playing in the mulch of some rose bushes by the motel office.” It’s deliberately too long and it’s uncomfortable both to sing and to hear. The result is a small tension that the narrator seems to feel about their situation. They’re wandering around a motel and throwing rocks at birds. It’s anti-social behavior and it’s not something that someone does when they’re deeply in love or satisfied.

Abstracted from “Distant Stations” this sounds like a strange story. Within the song, these are just the choices this person makes as they live a solitary life. John Darnielle says it’s about inaction and about what someone does if they have the mind of a stalker but can’t or won’t act on their fractured way of relating to people. The narrator says “I never told you where I was,” which drives home that they are waiting on someone who won’t, but also can’t, show up.

268. Absolute Lithops Effect

Alex Russell All Hail West Texas , , , , , , , ,

The healing message of “Absolute Lithops Effect” takes on new meaning as we spend time indoors.

Track: “Absolute Lithops Effect”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

I am writing this entry at the end of 2020. I started this process many years ago. I try to leave the personal out of this as much as I can, because I don’t think everyone has my experience and I think the more universal you can make this the better chance it has of connecting. It’s impossible to do that with “Absolute Lithops Effect” in 2020.

Lithops are plants commonly called “living stones” because they look like rocks. They use this as camouflage to survive in harsh climate. John Darnielle uses this as the central image for a song about waiting around and hoping to bloom in emotionally harsh climate. When he wrote this song more than eighteen years ago he could not have imagined how it would sound in 2020. This narrator is recovering from “one long sweltering summer” and their plan is to go to a friend’s house and forget their time inside. Who among us doesn’t feel like that is the key to everything after a year of quarantine and the collapse of so much else?

“I am taking tiny steps forward,” our narrator says, “and I feel sure that my wounds will heal.” In the context of All Hail West Texas, this is a revolutionary statement. The Mountain Goats do not always offer such direct statements of redemption and hope. This person has spent “one blind season alone in here” and now they “are going to find the exit.” It’s striking, both in 2002 and in 2020, to hear someone insist that they are going to get through this. Whatever traps you, be it internal or external, it’s a message that will do you some good to hear.

267. Pink and Blue

Alex Russell All Hail West Texas , , , , , , ,

“Pink and Blue” asks us to consider not just what came before the events of the song, but what came before that.

Track: “Pink and Blue”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

John Darnielle says that he doesn’t play “Pink and Blue” live because the album version is the definitive one. I don’t have the data on this, but that doesn’t seem like a statement he makes very often. “Pink and Blue” is a great song, from a great album, and I don’t know that I ever noticed the lack of live versions until he pointed it out. I can see what he means, though, and I don’t know how you’d improve on this.

Two nine-day-old twins are abandoned and we see a moment of their lives. “Nice new clothes on you and an old carboard produce box for a cradle” is a beautiful image, but a sad statement at the same time. This is as positive a spin on it as you can put, but the circumstances around what led to this moment lingers in the background. John Darnielle adds fun color about crows talking politics and the scenery outside to distract from the central image. Even still, we’re back to the twins in the box and we’re asked to think, however briefly, about what world can abandon the most vulnerable.

A lot of Mountain Goats songs are about this idea. “Pink and Blue” is a pretty little song that doesn’t go very deep, but that’s exactly the point. “Counterfeit Florida Plates” doesn’t directly ask us to consider the mental health aspect of homelessness, but it does if you spend some time under the surface. In the same way, “Pink and Blue” is a sweet-enough way into a much more complicated, desperate reality. We don’t spend any time on what led to this and that’s not the point. It’s about the circumstances that led to that choice that matter.

266. Balance

Alex Russell All Hail West Texas , , , , , , ,

“Balance” finds two characters in the late stages of something we usually don’t want to consider.

Track: “Balance”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

You really should listen to I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats, a podcast that didn’t exist when I started doing this but is essential listening now that it exists. John Darnielle talks to Joseph Fink in each episode about a Mountain Goats song and the conversation spirals out into connected (and not connected) topics. I can’t imagine the audience of people who will read about Goats songs but doesn’t listen to this podcast is a big one, but if you’re in that group, you have some homework to do.

In the episode about “Balance,” the pair say it’s song about a moment that doesn’t look at the causes that got you to that moment or what comes next for you after that moment. There are a ton of songs that fit this description, but it’s a great way to approach this one. The content is all miserable topics like “the interest on delinquent loans” but the connective tissue ends both verses on a specific note: “not too far gone to care.”

We almost never find out what happens to people in these songs. It’s simplistic to say that, because that’s true of almost all narrative. You always have to fill in the blanks yourself, whether it’s a great novel or a story song about lovers drinking sweet tea and falling out of love. The cover of All Hail West Texas says the album has seven characters, however, and you can do the work to try to figure out where else we learn about these two. I don’t think you need to do that to appreciate “Balance,” which is what John Darnielle is getting at in that podcast episode. You know what happens next because you know what generally happens next when you look at someone like this.

265. The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , , , ,

“The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones” is about what you think it’s about.

Track: “The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones”
Album: Unreleased (Released on Soundcloud by Rian Johnson in 2017)

The Mountain Goats song “The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones” is about a Jedi who eats everyone else’s bones. There’s a powerful urge in me to make this entire entry just that sentence, but there is more to say.

The title really does tell you what you’re dealing with, but it’s worth explaining the story. When The Last Jedi was announced, John Darnielle joked that his song “The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones” wasn’t accepted as part of the movie. The title was pretty clearly a joke, but director Rian Johnson told him he had to write it and because John Darnielle is who he is, he did.

I don’t think the content of “The Ultimate Jedi Who Wastes All the Other Jedi and Eats Their Bones” needs much discussion. It’s in the same vein as “Foreign Object” and “Beach House” as a “funny” song, but one that’s mostly funny because you don’t expect it to be delivered the way it is. “Specifically just their bones,” the narrator insists, and says over and over that this Jedi is going to eat their bones. It’s hard to miss, but the repetitions of something you already know is part of the joke of so many Mountain Goats songs.

He’s played it twice, that I can find, since releasing it himself and it seems safe to say those two might be the only two performances. In one he joked that he hoped someone would delete the recording, but conceded that he knows people don’t operate like that. The other performance tells the whole story of how Rian Johnson and John Darnielle got to know each other, and if you’re interested in such things you should check it out.

264. Jenny

Alex Russell All Hail West Texas , , , , , , ,

The fantasy of running away from life’s problems is a seemingly real possibility in “Jenny.”

Track: “Jenny”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

Jenny is a character in four Mountain Goats songs. She calls the narrator in “Straight Six” and “Night Light” and she sends postcards in “Source Decay.” She’s only an active participant in the song that bears her name. In “Jenny” she shows up on a motorcycle and steals the narrator away into a night free of consequence. They roar off and chant a happy tune. This is the ideal vision that you want when things are not going well.

John Darnielle says that Jenny doesn’t show up when things are going well for people. All four songs show us characters that are struggling and characters that want to live in better times. We don’t know enough to know if these fears are warranted. “Jenny” unites these ideas and helps us understand what Jenny, the character, is supposed to represent. She’s a lack of responsibility and a chance at a simpler, better life. Is that actually better? It depends on your perspective and your dreams for yourself, but these characters seem to believe it would work for them, thank you.

By the end of the song “Jenny,” even God has taken eyes off of these characters. In the context of the song, this represents a lack of pressure to a cosmic degree. Everything is open to this narrator and Jenny, and that means that everything that came before isn’t a concern anymore. In most situations, you wouldn’t trade your entire past for a clean slate. You mostly are a product of your past and you hope to learn from mistakes and benefit from experience to improve your future. Even still, you can appreciate the desire to hop on the back of the bike and ride off with Jenny.

263. The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton

Alex Russell All Hail West Texas , , , , , , ,

Jeff and Cyrus stand in for all the downtrodden in “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton.”

Track: “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

“The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” is arresting, the first time you hear it. It’s a story song where you will learn about Jeff and Cyrus, who go through turmoil as teenagers because the adults in their lives don’t understand what they’re trying to do. These two want to create something that reflects how they feel about the world. “When you punish a person for dreaming their dream // don’t expect them to thank or forgive you,” says John Darnielle, and he sums up the universal response of people who the world tries to correct. Round pegs won’t go in square holes, and forcing them isn’t going to help.

It’s become one of the band’s most popular songs. The Mountain Goats wiki lists more than 200 live performances and that list is no doubt incomplete. With rare exceptions, most shows end with “No Children,” “This Year,” or “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton.” They’re the scream-along songs that unite a crowd, which is great energy to put out into the world and to bring an audience together. If you’ve never seen the band live, you can only hope they end on one of those.

The song is self explanatory, but it’s worth spending a moment on the “hail Satan” part. The ending devolves into John Darnielle (and the crowd) yelling versions of “hail Satan.” Satan feels like a simple concept, but it isn’t, and this song asks you to latch onto this as an idea of righteous rebellion rather than a symbol for pain and destruction. John Darnielle has talked about this a lot over the years and I encourage you to go to the source, but it’s worth noting this isn’t direct praise of darkness. It’s a light that comes from standing in your own truth.

262. Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1

Alex Russell Transcendental Youth , , , , , , ,

The message of the Mountain Goats couldn’t be more clear than it is in “Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1.”

Track: “Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1”
Album: Transcendental Youth (2012)

John Darnielle has written a lot of songs about what happens to people who can’t escape addiction. “All Along the Seething Coast” and “Steal Smoked Fish” come to mind, both of them feature characters who are addicts and who probably aren’t going to make it through things to see the other side. The message is never hopeless, but it’s sometimes realistic about the odds and the feelings that come from being in those situations.

“Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1” starts off Transcendental Youth with an aggressively hopeful counter message. It’s about Amy Winehouse, who didn’t make it, but no one really makes it. It’s reductive to think about someone’s life in those terms, but John Darnielle wants us to consider the challenge rather than to pity people. There are so many songs that approach life through this lens, often ones that people hold up as anthems. Go to a live show and listen to how people sing along with songs like “Broom People” and “You Were Cool” and you’ll see what I mean.

John Darnielle once introduced “Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1” by saying it speaks for itself. He’s right, which is why I don’t have much to add beyond marveling at the message. “Just stay alive,” John Darnielle says, over and over, and by the end of the song he’s screaming it. The message to people struggling could not be more clear. It’s impossible to miss the message, but it’s worth commenting briefly on the delivery method. “Spent Gladiator 2” is the sister song and it’s a much quieter one, but the explosion of the first one really forces you to pay attention. If you’re in a position where this song can help you, John Darnielle wants to do all he can to make you listen to it.