the alpha couple

072. Alpha Sun Hat

Alex Russell Zopilote Machine , , , , , , , , ,

“Alpha Sun Hat” talks about human sacrifice of two different sorts as the Alpha Couple takes stock in Florida.

Track: “Alpha Sun Hat”
Album: Zopilote Machine (1994)

It’s natural to feel a certain affection for the songs the band loves best. John Darnielle has said “Alpha Sun Hat” is one of his favorite songs to play live and you can really hear that in the few recordings available online. The studio version is quick and driving while the live one slows down the opening verse. On the album the entire song has an intensity to it, but that first verse is deliberately delivered with a quieter tone live. He almost whispers some lines, which gives the poetry of “and I’d like to give in to your oboe-reed voice” a different meaning. When spoken quietly over light strumming and bass it sounds like the final moments of love where someone isn’t quite finished. It’s a familiar space for two lovers in a Goats song and it’s definitely where the Alpha Couple is during “Alpha Sun Hat.”

The album version is the same through both verses, but the reason to seek out a live one is for the build of second verse. The line works in both versions, but “that’s not music you hear, that’s the devil” really needs to be a tonal shift to work best. Darnielle yells it (though compared to some other songs, “yells” might be the wrong word) just as one Alpha character changes their mind about their lover. The Aztecs believed they had to remove the heart to send victorious warriors to eternal glory, and the heart-rending here is only slightly less literal. “If you’re planning your escape, you know I’m all for you” is a line that you can unpack any way you like, but the closing line’s reveal of Tallahassee as the setting means that it might be meant as an empty gesture, since neither of them have the will to leave.

 

049. Alpha Negative

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

 

The Alpha Couple considers the sweetness of evil things as they contemplate their relationship in “Alpha Negative.”

Track: “Alpha Negative”
Album: The Hound Chronicles (1992)

“Ah, c’mon, nobody knows that one.” – John Darnielle at a live show, about “Alpha Negative”

After a few jokes about playing a song from 1992, John Darnielle adds that it’s not like the music he plays now, and that it was written by someone with “more death in his heart” than the current frontman of The Mountain Goats. It calls to mind the intro for “Going to Georgia” where he said that it was a song written by a very different person who had the same Social Security number.

In the original recording, there’s little better than the way Darnielle nervously delivers “cool and smooth and sweet” over and over again. Every mention of “smooth” in the song has an eeriness to it, and it forces you to consider that this person was at least partially complicit in their fate. The narrator drank poison, but they liked it, to some degree. They’re less angry than they are fascinated with their own end. That’s a recurring trait in early Goats narrators, but this one is even more dramatic than the standard fare.

The Bright Mountain Choir adds some sweetness to the whole thing, and they really bring it all together. There are angrier narrators (“Baboon” and “Poltergeist” come to mind) and there are people closer to literal death (“Sax Rohmer #1”) but there is still enough in “Alpha Negative” to think about. “I loved you, and you made me drink poison” says one Alpha to the other, but we know that’s not really the whole story. At this moment, one of them feels like they have a case against the other. They’re still blaming each other, and they’ll need to get to Florida to gain some perspective.

041. Tallahassee

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , , ,

The title track on Tallahassee opens the album with a mournful look at a love that won’t save two people.

Track: “Tallahassee”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

“In the case of “Tallahassee” it seemed like a scene-setting song: it introduced the principal characters, established that there’s been a movement from the other side of the country to here, and took one last look in the rear view at the thing they once had that’s now in collapse.” – John Darnielle, on why the title track is first on Tallahassee.

The only part of Tallahassee that doesn’t happen in Florida happens in Nevada. The Alpha Couple (the common term for the couple on the album) is leaving their home and headed to the place where what’s already fallen apart will finally become impossible to deny. By verse three, the couple admits “there is no deadline // there is no schedule // there is no plan we can fall back on,” but we know they’re wrong about the next line: “the road this far can’t be retraced.” It can be retraced through dozens of other Alpha Couple songs, but they aren’t ready to do that. Not yet.

There is an inevitability to the sadness in both of them. Most Alpha Couple songs are bathed in descriptions of a dark future, so they never really seem to doubt how it will all end. That said, there’s more tied up in why these are “love songs” in “Tallahassee” than so many other places. The verse-ending “And you // you” is delivered with as much love as John Darnielle can muster. Even though you know how the story will end — it’s never a good sign when you say “prayers to summon the destroying angel” on the way to your new home — you have to understand the love these people once shared. It’s easy to see Tallahassee as an angry record, but its title track acts as a dirge for the best parts of The Alpha Couple.

037. Alpha Incipiens

Alex Russell Zopilote Machine , , , , , , , , ,

The first song about The Alpha Couple shows that the iconic lovers weren’t ever all that great for each other.

Track: “Alpha Incipiens”
Album: Zopilote Machine (1994)

Every song about The Alpha Couple is fascinating. The timeline is fun to try to figure out, but you can’t do it for certain. You can figure out that some have to happen before others based on geography — they start on the west coast and end in Florida — but beyond that it’s all conjecture. In that way The Alpha Couple is less a story to be uncovered and labelled and more the ultimate idea of two people crashing and burning when combined.

When you listen to the spite on “Oceanographer’s Choice” you feel like the hate is so bitter and so real that the love must have been some serious business. Anyone who learns to hate that hard has to have loved even harder, right? Well, the timeline may be up for debate, but The Alpha Series has a definite start and a definite end. Their final song (chronologically) is “Alpha Omega,” and by then they’re down to just one of them. Their first song is “Alpha Incipiens” from Zopilote Machine, and that’s been confirmed. That much, John Darnielle says, he’ll give you.

Are they in love in “Alpha Incipiens?” The fast-paced, screaming song tells the drunken tale of one of them trying to understand the other as the drinks begin to flow. They will get drunk and they will get desperate as their story unfolds, but it starts with simple, ice-cold vodka and “the only thing I know is that I love you // and I’m holding on.”

It really foretells Tallahassee and the oncoming trainwreck very well. Even on one of their first mornings — and in their first tale — the couple gets drunk and has trouble talking to each other. Communication will become the least of their problems.

033. Southwood Plantation Road

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , , , ,

 

“Southwood Plantation Road” sees The Alpha Couple’s defiant, giggling last attempt at love when it’s already far too late.

Track: “Southwood Plantation Road”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

Geography is extremely important to the Mountain Goats, but whether that’s literal geography or not, well, that’s another matter. “California” means the actual state of California as often as it means “something generally good.” “Florida” generally means an unpleasant end.

The most important piece of mythology in the catalog is The Alpha Couple. The Annotated Mountain Goats has done all the work for you, but at the most basic level they are two people who used to love each other and are now together through hate, inertia, alcohol, and a love of self-destruction. Most people don’t realize a relationship was destructive until they get out of it, but both the Alpha Male and Alpha Female (they are never named, and those distinctions are as lovely as they are ironic) know it’s horrible and they don’t want to stop.

Tallahassee isn’t the full story (there are dozens of other Alpha songs) but it’s the story of their end in a decaying house in Florida. The house was inspired by the name of a real street — Southwood Plantation Road, which is an uninteresting stretch of wooded backroad — and an actual house (on a different road) that John Darnielle saw on a visit to Florida. In “Southwood Plantation Road,” the Alphas move into the house that would be the tomb of their love if it hadn’t died long ago. They make claims they can’t believe. One of the only truths they actually share is “I am not going to lose you // we are gonna stay married.” Are they “in love?” It’s really impossible to define what it is at this point, and their emotions for each other mean different things to different listeners. In this house, in this song, though, they are drunk and they are giggling and they are going to stay.

017. Have to Explode

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , , , ,

“Have to Explode” represents final moments and how no one ever realizes they’re in one until it’s too late to react.

Track: “Have to Explode”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

The most interesting thing about “Have to Explode” is its placement on Tallahassee. It’s track eleven, sandwiched in between “International Small Arms Traffic Blues” and “Old College Try.” Those two are as close as Tallahassee gets to pure love songs. They both use drastic comparisons to searchlights in Hell and powder kegs to show that the Alpha Couple, the couple in Tallahassee and so many other songs, really was once in love. They still are, in fact, though that love is something else now.

The screaming, angry, drunken songs like “Oceanographer’s Choice” and “No Children” get all the love because it’s more fun to be angry than it is to be sad. It’s important to live in balance, however, and “Have to Explode” walks the listener from one almost-love song to another. It’s tense, like the fuse it describes and the explosion it forecasts. The entire action of the song is the Alpha Couple alone in the bathroom, sweating out booze that they rightly call “poison” for themselves. They stare at the towels they stole from the hotel and stay up all night not really talking to each other. It’s before the dawn of “Old College Try” when they make their last stand and before the midnight of “Oceanographer’s Choice” where they finally say what they already know in “Have to Explode.”

We never recognize these moments when they happen in our lives. We can only look back at last chances, and the Alpha Couple is no different. It may already be too late, but this is the song for that final night you remember. This is for the last moments in a relationship that aren’t necessarily happy, but they aren’t yet what they will become.