songs

202. Song for Cleomenes

Alex Russell Beautiful Rat Sunset , , , , , ,

John Darnielle goes deep into history to tell the story of a very specific, very evil trick in “Song for Cleomenes.”

Track: “Song for Cleomenes”
Album: Beautiful Rat Sunset (1994)

In San Francisco in 2001, John Darnielle played his cover of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” He ended the song and the crowd shouted requests from all across the catalog. Darnielle told the crowd to keep the requests coming, as he wasn’t confident about any of the remaining songs on his set list.

He played nine more songs, most of them safe picks that you might still hear at a show today. He started that list, however, with the ultra rare “Song for Cleomenes.” I can’t find any other recordings of it, though it seems he’s played it other times. This rendition is only vaguely like the studio version on Beautiful Rat Sunset, but that doesn’t matter. It’s the same driving, terrifying guitar, punctuated by screams as the crowd learns the story of Gaius Verres.

The song tells you all you need to know: Gaius Verres was a horrible criminal who abused his civic power for his own gain. Cicero destroyed him in court and he had to leave town, largely on the testimony of the boat-burning trickery in the song.

People seem to delight in finding inaccuracies in the historical songs, but that seems to miss the point. The live version is slightly clearer than the studio version about what happens in the end and editorializes more about Cicero’s prose, but the differences don’t matter. It’s about the joy John Darnielle clearly finds in telling a story that most people won’t know, but ultimately relating it. Two characters, you and the narrator, end up on a beach watching boats on fire. It’s surprising to find yourself in the song, and it makes you wonder what you were doing in 73 BC.

201. Design Your Own Container Garden

Alex Russell See America Right , , , , , , , , ,

One half of the Alpha Couple reflects on different, if not happier times, in “Design Your Own Container Garden.”

Track: “Design Your Own Container Garden”
Album: See America Right (2002)

A container garden is any garden in a pot or a container. It’s a way to describe anywhere a plant could be grown other than the ground. It’s a stretch, but the phrase “Design Your Own Container Garden” might refer to the Alpha Couple, who have uprooted themselves from the west coast and relocated to their miserable future in Florida. It might also just be a phrase John Darnielle saw in a catalog, thus a similar play on “See America Right,” the title of the single the song exists on.

The narrator drives out to a specific intersection in Los Angeles. As of this writing, it features a fried chicken chain restaurant, a check cashing place, and a storage center. The details don’t matter, but the specificity helps us picture that this corner matters. We have those in our lives, too. This member of the Alpha Couple doesn’t care about LA, they care about what happened when they were in this spot.

They mention “old friends, old friends” and later call them “here ghosts, old ghosts.” You can’t go home again, John Darnielle tells us again and again, but you can wander around where home used to be and feel the feelings that are left behind. “Design Your Own Container Garden” is filled with death imagery, as the narrator talks about feeling like a buzzard and walking through wreckage. It’s the “space we left behind” to this character, and it’s clearly not something they view positively now. It makes sense to be a b-side because it doesn’t fit tonally with Tallahassee, but it’s also interesting to wonder when in the timeline we are. Is this after everything, or does this character already feel sad even though they don’t know the worst of what’s to come?

199. Night of the Mules

Alex Russell Chile de Árbol, Protein Source of the Future...Now! , , , , , , ,

Vague religious references and a group of foreboding animals populate “Night of the Mules.”

Track: “Night of the Mules”
Album: Chile de Árbol (1993) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

Chile de Árbol is a strange collection. One song is about the end of the world and the Easter Bunny, another is about Billy the Kid, and the other three are challenging to approach even at a basic level. “Night of the Mules” seems to be about generalized menace, with only the title to suggest where the source of said menace lies.

A few years ago John Darnielle opened a concert with “Night of the Mules.” He’s said recently that he likes to open shows with old or rare songs so few people in the crowd will know the first one. It’s a powerful effect, and it usually quiets the crowd as people try to figure out what they’re listening to or if they’ve heard it before. “Night of the Mules” doesn’t need much updating to fit in with a modern Mountain Goats show. It’s all fierce guitar and sneers, so it’s a perfect wake-the-crowd-up jam to hear up top.

The only commentary I can find is one quote where John Darnielle says the song is about an ending that will come for everyone. Kyle Barbour, author of The Annotated Mountain Goats, suggests that it’s a Biblical song because of the presence of kings, holly, and mistletoe, but he also hears “praying” in the second verse where I hear “braying.” That’s as good of an answer as anything I can come up with, but I’m more comfortable calling this a generalized view of an end times. The religious reading is backed up by the opening sample from Genesis about Abraham’s attempt to save the city of Sodom if ten good men exist there, but mules coming to destroy everything seems more like a John Darnielle original idea to me.

198. Seed Song

Alex Russell Protein Source of the Future...Now!, Yam, the King of Crops , , , , , , , ,

“Seed Song” pivots in the middle to tell the beginning and end of a story about life.

Track: “Seed Song”
Album: Yam, the King of Crops (1994) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

The first two verses of “Seed Song” follow a familiar construction for the Mountain Goats. It starts with a narrator telling us that it has not rained in a year, but someone still wants to sell the character seeds. A different character in the following verse insists that these people buy seeds from a catalog, but it still refuses to rain. “We sent him away,” the narrator repeats four times, to really drive the point home.

John Darnielle loves using repetition and emphasis. In “Seed Song,” these devices work well with the hypnotic tune and create a sense of relentlessness in the listener. The idea is straightforward (it is not raining, no one has use for seeds) but the implication is much bigger than that. We are made to understand that these people are in trouble, immediately, and it is repeated to the point that it is unmissable. “Seed Song” opens Yam, the King of Crops, and the first two verses are a dark way to start an album. In typical Mountain Goats fashion, things must get worse.

The construction of the third verse is similar, but the audience changes. The narrator addresses us directly with “And I know you’re waiting // for the ironic ending.” This plays with expectations, because at this point you must wonder what will happen to these people. The reality is that most stories end this way, as the narrator tells us “I know you’re waiting // for the rain to come by // so am I.” The repetition of “so am I” four times again follows the previous verse’s construction, but without the hope of a happier ending.

197. Going to Jamaica

Alex Russell Ghana, Taking the Dative , , , , , , , ,

Communication is key, and the poor substitute of gifts of flowers proves that in “Going to Jamaica.”

Track: “Going to Jamaica”
Album: Taking the Dative (1994), Ghana (1999)

“Going to Jamaica” is the survivor from Taking the Dative. Of the six songs on the album, it’s the one that sounds closest to the band’s later output. As a result, it’s the one you’re most likely to hear during the solo set in the middle of a Mountain Goats concert in this era of the band. Most versions of the song maintain what makes the original work so well, with biting punctuation at the end of each verse and slow, longing guitar.

There is debate about if this song involves the Alpha Couple, but the presence of an Alpha song directly after it on Taking the Dative (“Alpha Gelida”) seems to suggest otherwise. The distinction isn’t all that important, as “Going to Jamaica” hits all of the Alpha themes: desperation, lack of communication, unclear solutions to unclear problems. These two aren’t having the real conversation they need to have and they might still be early enough in that they know that, but it won’t change.

In both verses, the character we don’t hear from asks the narrator when they can leave. The narrator originally says “I’m not at liberty to say,” but changes to “Well, it’s any day now” by the end of the song. Neither of these feel honest, and both are followed by the same next step. As a distraction, the narrator pulls flowers out of the ground or “from the hands of children” for their partner. The same move twice gives the impression that the narrator is winging this and isn’t doing a good job. The camera pans away before the explosion, but we get a good sense of where this story is headed.

196. Wrong!

Alex Russell Ghana, Taking the Dative , , , , , , , ,

The curiously vague, sleepy “Wrong!” describes a familiar feeling without spoiling the universality with details.

Track: “Wrong!”
Album: Taking the Dative (1994), Ghana (1999)

There are very few Mountain Goats songs with an exclamation point in the title. Given what John Darnielle can accomplish in a song with a mundane title, “Wrong!” seems ripe for yelling and screaming. The result is surprising, with a lazy beat and the unmistakable sound of the early keyboard songs. This isn’t an angry anthem, it’s a quiet song sung under one’s breath.

John Darnielle says his angriest songs aren’t the screamers, they’re the ones that one character delivers to another in a hushed, furious tone. The classic example is the divorce story “Waving at You,” but “Wrong!” seems like it’s part of that tradition. It’s short enough to quote entirely, but you really just need the first verse: “You know // you know // you see // what’s going on with me // but you don’t do anything // you don’t do anything // you don’t do anything.” This character is at the end of a rope with this relationship and blames their partner even for their own problems.

The lyrics are simple and the music is minimal, which allows “Wrong!” to occupy any space needed for your situation. This could be a married couple headed towards divorce or it could be friends that don’t satisfy the needs they once did. This could be a new couple having their first fight. There aren’t any concrete details, so it’s anything. It’s certainly more universal than some of the more specific images in other songs, which is somewhat surprising for John Darnielle. There are a few songs like this out there that fill in the cracks when songs about a couple in Florida whose lives are crumbling don’t exactly match your current struggle.

195. Chino Love Song 1979

Alex Russell Ghana, Taking the Dative , , , , , , , , ,

The simplest of scenes provides the setting for a connection in “Chino Love Song 1979.”

Track: “Chino Love Song 1979”
Album: Taking the Dative (1994), Ghana (1999)

As far as I can tell, one of the only live performances of “Chino Love Song 1979” was in California in 2014, where the Mountain Goats played all of Taking the Dative in order. The crowd erupts during every local mention and the performance is worth hearing just to hear the blown out, sped up version complete with bass. In the fury of the moment, John Darnielle quadruples the closing refrain. The crowd yells along with him through every version of “I saw you // against the soda machine // I saw you leaning there.” It’s a really simple set of lines, but it says so much with such a straightforward image. You can see it, can’t you? There is no suggestion of how it should make you feel, but it does make you feel something.

The song is 20 years old at the time of that live show. John Darnielle misses or specifically removes a few lines, which really drives home how important that closing image is. The rest of the song is mundane, especially with descriptions of everyday life like “the traffic on Riverside Drive was thin // but by no means nonexistent.” The cars don’t matter and the sunflower that consumes the second verse doesn’t matter. These images and surrounding details are just there to get us to the moment where one character sees another one.

If it’s autobiographical, John Darnielle was twelve years old in 1979. It doesn’t need to be about him, but one wonders what late-twenties John Darnielle thought about himself as a younger man if so. It requires two steps outside of our own existence to imagine another person imagining another version of themselves. Whoever it is, it’s astounding how much we get out of simple images and a casual setting.

 

194. Standard Bitter Love Song #8

Alex Russell Ghana, Taking the Dative , , , , , , , , ,

“Standard Bitter Love Song #8” borrows a threat from an accused witch to talk about teenage love.

Track: “Standard Bitter Love Song #8”
Album: Taking the Dative (1994), Ghana (1999)

Lloyd Center is a three-story mall in Portland, Oregon. It’s an odd blend of ideas: the skating rink where Tonya Harding learned to skate, a for-profit college, a defunct Sears, and professional offices. It’s also a mall in Portland, which seems like an impossibility based on what we all think of when we think of Portland. Its Wikipedia article has a section titled “Crime,” though, so it makes sense as a location in a Mountain Goats song.

There are a few songs that share the “Standard Bitter Love Song” title, though there may not be eight. That doesn’t stop the existence of “Standard Bitter Love Song #8,” where one character pines over another at Lloyd Center. Most of the songs with this title structure are even angrier than normal Goats songs in this vein, and this one is no exception. Our narrator has “a mouth full of anger” and curses the couple with the damning “God will give them blood to drink.”

The refrain appears to come from The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne, where a character who is sentenced to death for witchcraft condemns their accuser with a similar line. It’s a gallows threat designed to leave those who will survive you with a chilling fear, which makes it perfect for the overblown emotions of a young person who feels spurned at the skating rink.

The song holds on this image. The narrator sees them leave and looks over the railing. The power of the standard bitter love songs is their ability to make dramatic images seem so perfect for mundane problems. Someone shoots a kite with a shotgun in one of them, but we get why. You grow out of these emotions, but when you’re skating-rink age, what’s more relatable than a lonely Friday night?

193. Orange Ball of Peace

Alex Russell Ghana, Taking the Dative , , , , , , , , ,

“Orange Ball of Peace” lets us inside the mind of someone we wouldn’t normally want to visit.

Track: “Orange Ball of Peace”
Album: Taking the Dative (1994), Ghana (1999)

In June of 2014, John Darnielle played the entirety of Taking the Dative at a show in San Francisco. If you listen to it, you’ll hear the glee in people’s voices as they realize that he’s just playing it all the way through. Every now and again (and mostly in California), the band revisits a very old album and surprises a crowd. Some bands do this with “classic” albums where the audience knows every song, but John Darnielle likely has other motivations. At the 20-year anniversary of Taking the Dative, it’s as likely as anything else that he just wanted to see if he could still play all six songs.

This is the only chance to hear certain songs. Songs like “Wrong!” aren’t live show staples. The same is true for “Orange Ball of Peace,” though it is more recognizable overall as one of the four “Orange Ball” songs. It’s the standout of those, too, if for no other reason than the chorus: “I’m a fireman // I’m a fireman.”

Our narrator had expectations placed upon them as a young person. “They wanted me to be a lawyer,” they tell us, but no dice. They throw off all expectations and become a “fireman.” The second verse clears up that they mean they’re setting fires as they “watch the flames climb higher” and feel smoke get in their eyes.

“Orange Ball of Peace” may just be a short song about an arsonist, but it’s an interesting demonstration of economy of language. We don’t know why this person does what they do, but the first verse makes us sympathetic. That reversal of first to second verse allows us to find a dark situation fun, which you can hear over the crowd as they scream “I’m a fireman // I’m a fireman!”

192. Going to Bangor

Alex Russell Bitter Melon Farm , , , , , , ,

 

Through a striking (but strange) image, we see two people struggling to communicate in “Going to Bangor.”

Track: “Going to Bangor”
Album: Bitter Melon Farm (1999)

In the liner notes for Bitter Melon Farm, John Darnielle talks about the emotion he hoped to stir up after playing “Going to Bangor” in Holland:

“I had envisioned romantic young Dutch men and women taking to the streets, pulling the old men away from their chess games and forming them into minor league baseball clubs with names like the Dordrecht Wild Ferns or the Ooij Interminable Dysfunctional Relationships.”

He makes a joke after that about it not having that impact. In the usual sources, that remains the full commentary on “Going to Bangor” both from fans and from John Darnielle himself. That’s not uncommon with the early songs, but it’s interesting in this case because it can be interpreted as a judgment on elements of the song. Certainly there are better Mountain Goats songs about “interminable dysfunctional relationships,” but “Going to Bangor” is a worthy entry to the catalog. It belongs in a category with so many other songs about shocking, mysterious imagery. The first verse concludes with “all the signs // are easy to read,” but is that true of a line about wild ferns growing?

There’s a lot to potentially unpack in “Going to Bangor,” but it seems likely that it’s not supposed to be figured out. The second verse is dominated by one character approaching the narrator with a mouth full of cranberries. They drip juice out of their mouth and we view this scene through the eyes of the narrator, who tells us they feel lied to and doubt their partner. It’s rarely this weird, but this is emotionally common ground for the Goats. You can certainly picture people forming baseball teams around it now, even if you couldn’t then.