songs

101. Going to Kirby Sigston

Alex Russell Ghana , , , , , ,

“Going to Kirby Sigston” looks in on the life of two people in a town of 100 in the north of England.

Track: “Going to Kirby Sigston”
Album: Ghana (1999)

Kirby Sigston is home to 100 people. It’s just north of Leeds in England and it is 72 degrees Fahrenheit there today. In the early 90s, John Darnielle got a postcard from a friend in Kirby Sigston and was so taken by the name that he used it for “Going to Kirby Sigston.”

That’s how most of the “Going to…” songs seem to start. They’re as much about characters in different physical space as they are about listeners appreciating how important physical space is. When you listen you can imagine yourself in an impossibly small village in the English countryside and you can consider what differences that life would contain. The characters board up windows, dance outside, and eat “cold, black eggs” from their “special chicken.” It’s probably going to be a difficult adjustment for most of you.

The song itself is quick. It’s over in two verses and two minutes and it raises some nagging questions. This couple is less clearly defined than many in the catalog, so it’s hard to tell what their relationship is like. They seem happy enough, though dancing isn’t always a good sign in a Mountain Goats song. Depending on how you want to read it, the “I had a present for you hidden somewhere” line is either sweet or ominous. No matter how you take it, “Going to Kirby Sigston” is a short experiment about a couple trying to live a totally different kind of life. John Darnielle seems to allow that couple a few sweet moments, if nothing else.

100. Lovecraft in Brooklyn

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle channels the dark personality of H. P. Lovecraft more than the monsters in “Lovecraft in Brooklyn.”

Track: “Lovecraft in Brooklyn”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

H. P. Lovecraft is best known for creating the horrific monster Cthulhu and other fictional monster-gods. Even without knowing the man at all you can be assured that his worldview is a dark one. I haven’t read much Lovecraft, but it’s clear that he believes humanity to be inconsequential to the universe. The Old Ones in his stories are hateful, destructive beings that are either unaware of or uninterested in humanity’s desires or future.

Such a person is definitely at home in the Mountain Goats catalog. They’re much angrier than most of the narrators we have, but no less lonely. They’re at the end of their rope, perpetually. But this narrator isn’t Lovecraft himself, they’re just using the author as a parallel to their worldview. They say they “feel like Lovecraft in Brooklyn,” which requires that we understand a little about that specific time in the writer’s life.

Some misanthropes hate all of humanity and some hate specific parts of it more than others. Lovecraft is the latter, with specific hatred saved for non-English, white gentlemen. During his time in Brooklyn he was robbed and had a difficult time financially and he blamed his misfortunes on immigrants.

That’s the headspace for our narrator in “Lovecraft in Brooklyn.” They’ve set themselves against humanity in all forms. They view blood on the ground and monsters in the darkness of Brooklyn. They even imagine the end of their actual home.

It’s all dark, but it turns darkest towards the end. Our narrator goes to buy a switchblade and tells the pawn shop clerk about evil thoughts. When we see a sketchy stranger this is exactly who we hope it isn’t, but John Darnielle reminds us to look closer.

99. The Alphonse Mambo

Alex Russell The Coroner's Gambit , , , , , , ,

Tap your toe to “The Alphonse Mambo” and ponder the energy it takes to have the conversation you need (but don’t want) to have.

Track: “The Alphonse Mambo”
Album: The Coroner’s Gambit (2000)

The Mountain Goats Wiki is an amazing resource of live shows. This list makes a fair case that “The Alphonse Mambo” might be the most played song from the early Goats era. There are a lot of good reasons for that, but chief among them has to be that it bridges the beginning and the current day of the Mountain Goats. John Darnielle often describes himself in the early years as one guy stomping his foot with a guitar. These days his live shows combine huge, loud performances with a full band and quiet, uneasy piano songs that highlight the beauty in the strange and lonely people of our world.

“The Alphonse Mambo” is a stomper, for sure, but it’s also about a couple in distress. The song endures because it’s thematically appropriate around whatever other song he’s playing. There are often people in distress at the center of a Goats song, but Darnielle’s confirmed that this one only features the narrator. He’s working up the courage to have a tough conversation with someone else in this 16th floor room in Tampa Bay, but he’s going to need some more painkillers and some more courage to do it.

The live versions (especially the two at Farm Sanctuary, which you should seek out) highlight the song an all-timer, but the studio version has nearly as much of the fervor. You can hear John Darnielle shake as he sings the “waiting for the other shoe to drop in Tampa Bay” ending, and that teeth-clenched delivery sells the tension our narrator is feeling. They want to believe that they can get this whole thing done, but that period of “waiting for the other shoe to drop in Tampa Bay” might be a long one.

098. Going to Tennessee

Alex Russell Protein Source of the Future...Now!, Why You All So Thief? , , , , , , , ,

 

Two lovers share a quiet moment and feel a different kind of warmth as the sun sets in Memphis in “Going to Tennessee.”

Track: “Going to Tennessee”
Album: Why You All So Thief? (1994) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

John Darnielle loves geography. There are at least 50 “Going to…” songs in the catalog, but I never expected to find one about my hometown. I’m from Memphis, Tennessee, which is a far less exotic location than Bolivia or Denmark or Malibu, but it’s a specific kind of place that conjures an image in your mind even if you haven’t been there.

Darnielle’s song “Going to Tennessee” is heavy on specifics even though it avoids the ones you’d think. There’s no Elvis or Beale Street or anything even like them. We only get scattered facts, like the lack of a baseball team and the presence of Arkansas nearby.

“Going to Tennessee” uses specificity to set the stage on the Mississippi River in Memphis, but it’s after more general emotions. The couple lives close to the interstate and they share tender moments in their likely dingy apartment. One washes their face and the other says “I am glad I am alive,” which is an extremely rare sentence in a Mountain Goats song. We’re left to discern that they share at least a kind of love. That’s not uncommon by itself, but these two exit their song in an interesting place.

John Darnielle has said the song is about “cheating death” and there is no better way to feel like you’ve gotten one over on the end times than to feel boundless love. The sun is setting in one of the hottest towns in America, but the couple describes their skin as “warming up.” It’s not solely a love song, but that ending suggests at least one more day of joy for two people in the Bluff City.

097. Sourdoire Valley Song

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

John Darnielle asks us to consider the lives of ancient mankind in their own context in “Sourdoire Valley Song.”

Track: “Sourdoire Valley Song”
Album: All Eternals Deck (2011)

In the vein of “Tollund Man”, “Sourdoire Valley Song” makes us consider our elders. The titular valley is in France, where a 60,000-year-old neanderthal skeleton was discovered in 1908. Many people picture the discovery, but John Darnielle considers the life that man must have lived.

The opening verse talks about what we all know. “The Old Man” as he’s generally known sharpens new tools from old rocks and hunts game for the first time in history. He’s pleased with his tools and his process. He’s got the world on a string.

But the chorus complicates his simple life. The grass grows after he’s gone and covers his things and his existence. He’ll be hidden for thousands of years, though his ability to consider that is likely limited. He’s certainly unaware of the Olduvai Gorge in Africa, a more significant and much older site with remains of ancient humanity.

Both sets of ancient man led life as best they could. Darnielle doesn’t focus on the sad realities of life in “Sourdoire Valley Song.” Of course they will be forgotten for thousands (or millions, in Olduvai Gorge) of years, but for now they have remedies for sickness and they lead happy lives. They even have roots you chew for “atmosphere” which conjures some great images.

Towards the end of the song, Darnielle mentions that his ancient characters want to “live a long life.” They seem to believe this is possible with luck, which brings up something I’ve never considered. “Longevity” is relative. “The Old Man” died at 40, but who is to say that was a short life 60,000 years ago? Context is everything.

096. Tianchi Lake

Alex Russell Heretic Pride , , , , , , ,

“Tianchi Lake” references a being that’s mythical in our world but seems to be a normal part of the world of the Mountain Goats.

Track: “Tianchi Lake”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

The songs on Heretic Pride aren’t really connected. John Darnielle has said that they’re each about an obsession of his and that’s really as much as there is to go off. That isn’t much, but it’s enough for most of these. It’s certainly enough for “Tianchi Lake,” which is directly about a lake monster in China.

In the illustrated press kit that was released alongside Heretic Pride John Darnielle said “depending on whether you believe it or not, this is a true story, sort of.” That sums up the Mountain Goats’ relationship with the world of strange, mythical (maybe!) beasts. In Heaven Lake (or Tianchi) in China there supposedly exists a creature called the Lake Tianchi Monster. Some people report that it resembles a buffalo. Some say it has a human head. Some say that there are six of them and they all have wings.

In Darnielle’s song, it has the “body of a sea lion // head just like a horse.” The song is mostly a description of the lake and the monster, but there’s also an interesting commentary on how people react to it. Lots of our fear of the unknown comes from its nature as the unknown. Maybe you don’t really believe in ghosts or aliens, but maybe when you have thought about them you’ve been uncomfortable. Darnielle’s world allows for more direct interactions. The children, the preacher, and the crowd that see the monster in “Tianchi Lake” have solely positive or neutral reactions with the monster. That’s because they aren’t interacting with what might be, they’re just by a lake that has a known monster in it. The world of the Mountain Goats has monsters, yeah, but they’re less scary if you accept that as fact.

095. Wait for You

Alex Russell Babylon Springs EP , , , , , , ,

“Wait for You” closes an EP on a quiet, hopeless note as a character waits for someone who likely isn’t coming back.

Track: “Wait for You”
Album: Babylon Springs EP (2006)

The Babylon Springs EP covers all the emotions the Mountain Goats love to cover. “Ox Baker Triumphant” and “Alibi” open the album with rousing, screaming fury. Both characters make bad decisions that they feel they have to make to stay true to themselves. We can judge their intentions because we’re separate people, but in their minds they’re doing what must be done. “Sail Babylon Springs” and “Sometimes I Still Feel the Bruise” look inward at sad relationships past their prime (well past, in the latter’s case).

After you’ve made those two parallel journeys over four songs you’re left with “Wait for You.” It would seem impossible that a song could step down in mood from the crushing blows of “Sometimes I Still Feel the Bruise,” but leave it to John Darnielle to find the sadness in a rainbow.

In the second verse the character waits for a loved one that may be coming and may not. They see a rainbow in the distance and imagine that it “wrapped its coils around the earth like a serpent” to choke them. There are a handful of examples of this in Goats songs, but this is one of the best ones. Often normally hopeful or sweet imagery is twisted in the minds of Goats narrators, but it takes a special kind of darkness to see a portent in a rainbow.

By the end of the song the narrator has decided that the person they’re waiting for isn’t coming. That much is to be expected, but they do say that the waiting still serves a purpose. “But I waited all the same,” Darnielle says softly, and you appreciate the perspective of waiting for waiting’s sake on someone that is totally gone.

094. Alpha Desperation March

Alex Russell Bitter Melon Farm, Transmissions to Horace , , , , , , , , ,

 

“Alpha Desperation March” is either creepy or funny depending on your perspective, but it’s definitely evocative.

Track: “Alpha Desperation March”
Album: Transmissions to Horace (1993) and Bitter Melon Farm (1999)

“Alpha Desperation March” is primarily one of the earliest songs in the Alpha series about the Alpha Couple, the miserable lovers that show up in dozens of Mountain Goats songs before their entire album Tallahassee. It’s also a test for the band. It’s a bitter song told from the perspective of an angry lover who confronts their other half and then laughs uncomfortably at them for nearly 30 seconds.

It may be challenging to start with “Alpha Desperation March” if you’re new to the band. The early Goats songs have a high price of admission sometimes and the uncomfortable laughter at the end is a prime example. If you’re well versed in the world of John Darnielle you’ll understand it as an eerie coda to the argument his narrator has over the course of the song. You might understand that without any other Mountain Goats knowledge, but it would assume that you’ve had some hard times with someone that involved money and love and I don’t want to assume anything about you.

It’s a classic from the early era and I call it a test because it’s completely understandable that someone who just wants polished, produced, full sound will probably not understand the love for “Alpha Desperation March” and that’s OK. There are plenty of albums that fit those descriptions, but it’s amazing in a totally different way that John Darnielle was already capable in 1993 of writing “see I’m perfectly aware of where our love stands // but the plain fact is that you owe me eight grand // if it helps to jog your memory I lent to you one Tuesday when we were drinking.” You can just see this argument and you can feel it with the bite on “drinking.”

 

 

093. The Water Song

Alex Russell The Hound Chronicles , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle has some fun with metaphor as his narrator struggles to explain himself in “The Water Song.”

Track: “The Water Song”
Album: The Hound Chronicles (1992)

The early songs have simple names. In present day you get things like “Marduk T-Shirt Men’s Room Incident” but in the early days you got “Sun Song” and “The Water Song” and “Water Song II.” There’s nothing wrong with simplicity, it’s just interesting to see how the band has evolved.

The women who provide the backing vocals on the early records are collectively known as The Bright Mountain Choir. They’re really prominent on some of the best early stuff and they add some lightness to the surprisingly fun refrain of “let them kill me” that repeats 17 times in “The Water Song.” The early songs have a way of juxtaposing the extreme with incongruous joy.

It’s a song about the difficulties of communication. The narrator can’t get through to the person they’re talking to, so they try using metaphors. In the first two verses they use water, but the most beautiful part of the song is the third verse: “you’re the salesman // I’m the buyer // you’re the tractor // I’m the tire // I’m the glass // you’re the water that fills me.” There’s something about the cadence that sells it. Even though it’s hard to imagine what the exact conversation is, you can appreciate the attempt at colorful language in a personal crisis.

“The Water Song” rarely gets played live, but I encourage you to listen to this one to appreciate it. John Darnielle leads the audience as they sing the rousing, handclapping chorus and it feels like a song he could write now. He’s clearly embarrassed about some of the early, simpler songs, but “The Water Song” sounds great there. Despite that, he closes the song by saying “in probably its farewell appearance, ‘The Water Song'” so get it while you can.

092. Insurance Fraud #2

Alex Russell The Coroner's Gambit , , , , , , ,

The couple in “Insurance Fraud #2” go through some hypothetical solutions to money woes that turn far more real than they’d like.

Track: “Insurance Fraud #2”
Album: The Coroner’s Gambit (2000)

876 people live in Colo, Iowa. Many years ago John and Lalitree Darnielle also lived there while John wrote The Coroner’s Gambit. It’s a sad album about loneliness and death. That may be calling water “wet,” but this specific album is more about those things than the other ones.

Often at live shows John describes his time in Colo with alternating descriptions. Sometimes he talks about how quaint the tiny house in the middle of nowhere was and sometimes he calls his landlord a slumlord and says it was depressing. We all have those feelings about old houses we used to live in, and the disparity between those feelings is all over The Coroner’s Gambit. “There Will Be No Divorce” is one of his best love songs. “Elijah” and “Shadow Song” are sad, but they’re a kind of productive sad that allows you to process feelings about dead friends and family members.

Then there’s “Insurance Fraud #2.”

A few songs in the catalog are numbered. There are many “Standard Bitter Love Song(s)” and “Heel Turn 2” is #2 because the first one only gets played live. This one is unique because #1 is just the first take of #2. John Darnielle says he rerecorded it because he had to rerecord a ton of songs in Iowa that were ruined by a nearby train. He left the train sounds in this one and the result is haunting and fascinating.

The song itself is direct. It’s the kind of extreme darkness that most of us never consider, but it’s par for the course for one of Darnielle’s couples. The song features a few examples of insurance fraud, but the creepiest part is the ending where one of them realizes that a person capable of such evil will come for them next.