the mountain goats

177. How I Left the Ministry

Alex Russell Undercard , , , , , , , ,

 

A series of romantic gestures from two unlikely characters complicates a quick look at a preacher’s infidelity.

Track: “How I Left the Ministry”
Album: Undercard (2010)

Franklin Bruno, John Darnielle’s partner in the offshoot band The Extra Lens, wrote “How I Left the Ministry.” I was shocked to learn that, but it makes sense because of how savage the result is. The only difference between the two seems to be that John Darnielle implies most of his darker results and Franklin Bruno is comfortable with more explicit language, but even that is me reaching. The two are clearly kindred spirits and that’s what makes their side band work.

“How I Left the Ministry” opens with a set of explosive tones that could be mistaken for “triumphant” if not for the first verse. Immediately, our narrator tells us that they’re in a major car accident and they’re with their neighbor’s wife. Undercard opens with a screaming, roaring song called “Adultery,” so we’re definitely in familiar territory, but it’s unique because of the title. The song never mentions it, but “How I Left the Ministry” is a much more powerful title after you know what happens to our narrator.

At 102 seconds, “How I Left the Ministry” is over in a flash. It’s one car accident and several reflective lines and then it’s gone. That makes it all the more impressive how many details are crammed into 12 lines. The person in the passenger seat traces a heart on the driver’s leg and we feel empathy. The power of a song like this (and spiritual, younger cousin “Alibi”) is in the ability to twist our expectations. This is a religious figure in the community and someone’s wife, so in the absence of other details we aren’t expected to want them to make it to the Days Inn. It’s never that simple in a Mountain Goats song, no matter which name they’re using.

176. Cold Milk Bottle

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , , ,

 

Our narrator insists that they’re making it okay after a toxic situation in “Cold Milk Bottle.”

Track: “Cold Milk Bottle”
Album: Sweden (1995)

I talk about live shows a lot because they’re so fascinating. “Cold Milk Bottle” has been played at least twice, and was recorded at this New York show in 1997. The setlist from that night is outstanding, and it’s hard not to smile at the fact that right after “Cold Milk Bottle” John Darnielle rants at the crowd to stop requesting “Going to Georgia” because they’ve all heard it “at least twice.” Considering that’s how he felt in 1997, it’s amazing it stayed in the rotation for as long as it did.

On that night in New York in 1997, John Darnielle’s voice cracked several times. The best moment is during the “You’re mean to me // why must you be mean to me?” moment in “Cold Milk Bottle” because it feels very real. Most of the characters on Sweden are difficult, challenging people, and “Cold Milk Bottle” ends the album for a reason. One character sends “another goddamned message” to another and neither of them is happy about it. This relationship is over, hopefully, and the animosity is all that remains.

“I feel all right” is a powerful refrain. “Well, despite your best efforts, I feel all right” is even more powerful. When we listen to “Cold Milk Bottle,” we feel for the speaker. We know what it feels like to be haunted by someone else and the strength it takes to shout back into the void about how fine we are. This character leaves Sweden demanding that they’re okay and that they don’t care who knows it. There are more powerful, more insistent messages among the more recent Goats songs, but it’s nice to know that even an early narrator made it out alive.

175. I Know You’ve Come to Take My Toys Away

Alex Russell Nine Black Poppies , , , , , , ,

 

One character responds to bad news with childish language in “I Know You’ve Come to Take My Toys Away.”

Track: “I Know You’ve Come to Take My Toys Away”
Album: Nine Black Poppies (1995)

After the quietly bitter “Pure Money” but before the furious “Nine Black Poppies” lies “I Know You’ve Come to Take My Toys Away” on Nine Black Poppies. It’s an angry album, and most of the tracks describe some sort of argument or fury. “I Know You’ve Come to Take My Toys Away” bridges two songs about different versions of the same emotion and has much more fun than either other song.

“I Know You’ve Come to Take My Toys Away” is not a happy song, but it’s very bouncy. You can’t help but snap along with the beat. You find yourself humming or singing along with John Darnielle’s repetitions as Rachel Ware provides backing vocals. The ending “and when it drops // you’re gonna feel it // oh, oh, yeah!” is almost triumphant. It would be fun if it weren’t so ominous.

No one is on the record about “I Know You’ve Come to Take My Toys Away” as far as I can tell. The only live performance in the usual sources comes from a show in Belgium in 1996 where they played the song as it is on the album and offered no additional context. Given the rest of Nine Black Poppies and the opening verse’s mention of “your terrible confession,” we can assume this day did not go well for either character. The sun sets and the argument continues, with the narrator insisting the other character has come for dark purposes.

“Toys” is an odd word choice for the title, though it does successfully make the narrator seem childish. This may be a relationship’s end or it may be other bad news, but we’re left to imbue our own meaning. We just know someone feels slighted and they have a particular way of expressing it.

174. Going to Reykjavik

Alex Russell Nothing for Juice , , , , , ,

One character considers their options and pines for a missing love during some introspection.

Track: “Going to Reykjavik”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

The power of a good song is often the same as our ability to relate to it. Most love songs remain as general as possible and talk about feelings, since we can all relate to “that one night” or “loving you so much.” No one has mailed most of us coffee from Thailand and most of us don’t have oil lamps and wind chimes, which makes “Going to Reykjavik” a bit of a risk in that department.

John Darnielle writes relatable music, but the details are often so specific that they couldn’t describe your life. In “Going to Reykjavik” the narrator drinks Thai coffee and boils milk as they think about someone absent. These scenes give way to a general “I am coming to you” repetition of a chorus. There is a longing here that you may recognize in yourself, even if the setting doesn’t feel familiar.

“Going to Reykjavik” directly follows “Waving at You” on Nothing for Juice. “Waving at You” is a furious song about divorce. It’s quiet and angry and best sung through clenched teeth. “Going to Reykjavik” feels like it could be about the same couple, but in a very different time. The guitar feels solemn and there is pain in John Darnielle’s voice. These two may still be in love and only separated by distance, but one then has to wonder why the narrator describes themselves as “broken and tired” directly after supposedly remaking themselves.

173. Short Song About the 10 Freeway

Alex Russell Bitter Melon Farm, Songs for Peter Hughes , , , , , , , ,

 

“Short Song About the 10 Freeway” is just that, but it’s also a look into the distant past.

Track: “Short Song About the 10 Freeway”
Album: Songs for Peter Hughes (1995) and Bitter Melon Farm (1999)

In September of 2016, John Darnielle played a show in Columbus, Ohio and played “Short Song About the 10 Freeway.” He said it was the first song he ever played outside of California. He followed it up with two of the other songs from Songs for Peter Hughes. It seems like it was a cool show.

There’s more to know, here. In 1994, John Darnielle played at a venue in Columbus named Stache’s. You can hear a tape of the 24-minute performance, where John Darnielle sounds very young and closes with the 51-word “Short Song About the 10 Freeway.” Stache’s is closed now and is remembered by some heartfelt blog posts and a brief comment at that 2016 show where John Darnielle says he knows the tape is out there but he hasn’t listened to it.

I tell you all this to make you consider what memory means. The title tells you this is a short song, indeed there are barely 50 words in it. As you listen to 500+ songs on your journey through the world of the Mountain Goats, you will spend very little of it with this one. You’ll never go to Stache’s again and you’ll never hear the Mountain Goats in 1994 again. You will, however, briefly picture a sunset and a person in a car in California and you will experience the odd peace that this image grants you. Rachel Ware’s backing vocals and the deliberate strumming will help you. You will picture this and you will move on, but consider for a moment what John Darnielle saw in this image in 1994 in a bar named after the owner’s mustache. The devil really is in the details.

172. Prana Ferox

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , ,

“Prana Ferox” is about a tub of whiskey that’s both a metaphor and a catalyst for bad things to come.

Album: Sweden (1995)
Track: “Prana Ferox”

It could be a drinking song, but most of them could be drinking songs. John Darnielle says “Prana Ferox” is “about alcohol,” and it certainly follows a narrator checking on a home distilling project. While they peer into a vat of whiskey, their lover is upstairs “with [your] head against the sink // trying to cool down // trying to cool down.” The song dissolves into chaotic guitar as the narrator ponders the disparity between the “new life” in the vat of sour mash and their own situation.

Is it a drinking song? Not really, at least not in the way most bands would write one. No one drinks anything and the alcohol itself hasn’t even arrived yet. That doesn’t mean the alcohol doesn’t explain something about the relationship. There’s nothing inherently troubling about a couple making whiskey in their basement, but you can hear in John Darnielle’s wailing final verse that these two are anxious for this project to complete.

“Prana” means “life force” and “ferox” means “savage,” very roughly. “Prana Ferox” drops us in the middle of another troubled relationship, but also opens with an inspirational sample from what sounds like a meditation tape. The sample promises us we’ll be okay today. It’s especially relevant for these two, since they probably will be okay today. The narrator delivers “I know you don’t believe me, but I could hear you breathing” with a mixture of hope and trepidation. Alcohol serves as a temporary solution for many doomed Mountain Goats couples, but rarely is it this direct. We know as an audience that it is all for naught, but you do get the sense that there are still desperate last-ditch attempts to come in the drunken nights that tub will enable.

171. Golden Jackal Song

Alex Russell New Asian Cinema , , , , , , ,

“Golden Jackal Song” describes a scene where two old lovers meet up again, to ambiguous ends.

Track: “Golden Jackal Song”
Album: New Asian Cinema (1998)

So many Mountain Goats songs are about the interactions between two people. “Golden Jackal Song” accompanies “Korean Bird Paintings” on New Asian Cinema and fits right in as a comparative love song about the challenges two people face. In “Korean Bird Paintings” we only see the narrator as we watch them fill a room with meaningless gifts to create a grand gesture. In “Golden Jackal Song” we get to see more.

The “plot” of “Golden Jackal Song” follows one character who comes into town and feels “wicked impulses” about calling an old friend but “couldn’t let them die.” The power of the Mountain Goats is in both the vastness of the catalog and the specificity of the language. You might never have had the exact experience in this song, but as these two characters move into the kitchen you are very likely to remember something. “When I saw your kitchen // glistening like the old country // all your cups and glasses // lined up in front of me” is just scene setting. It isn’t meant to make you feel anything, but it is meant to make you remember.

Golden jackals will eat dead animals. Our character refers to themselves as eating carrion as they revisit the home of these old memories. The characters kiss at the end of the song, but they do so during a description of eating “rich, raw carrion, until I couldn’t think right.” Depending on how you feel about the memory that revisiting an old space, going to a kitchen, and seeing an old friend conjures up for you, maybe carrion is nourishing or maybe it’s disgusting. The guitar and the light tone John Darnielle uses doesn’t tilt it one way or the other, which means this can be a song just for you.

170. Genesis 3:23

Alex Russell The Life of the World to Come , , , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle considers his old homes and what going back to Eden feels like in “Genesis 3:23.”

Track: “Genesis 3:23”
Album: The Life of the World to Come (2009)

Genesis 3:23, in the Bible, is about being cast out of Eden. Adam is banished and the Lord tells him to “cultivate the ground from which he was taken.” It’s short, but there’s a lot going on in that idea. Adam isn’t just forced to leave Eden, he’s given specific instructions about what to do elsewhere. The point is not purely punishment, it’s about gaining purpose from an unfamiliar set of tasks.

“Genesis 3:23,” the Mountain Goats song, is about John Darnielle returning to places in Oregon and California that brought him pain at the time. The character breaks into their old home to see how the current residents live. “Hope that they’re better at it than I was,” they say, in one of the best lines of the last few years of the Goats catalog.

Adam’s removal from Eden is fairly straightforward. In the Bible, it represents the fall of man from grace and the start of mankind’s time as simpler, less holy creatures. Genesis 3:23 specifically suggests something somewhat less total of a destruction by laying out a plan, but it’s still the loss of Eden. John Darnielle frames his own escapes from much worse places around this because there is complexity even in something you hated at the time.

Some people can leave their past entirely behind them and some people can’t. It’s not a secret which kind John Darnielle is, but the perspective he offers sets “Genesis 3:23” apart from nostalgia. It’s not purely bad (even when it was) and it’s not purely good (even when you want it to feel that way in your memory). For your Eden or your North Broadway apartment, John Darnielle offers you the chance to go home again and see how it makes you feel now.

169. Short Song for Justin Bieber and His Paparazzi

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle conveys a powerful message in what initially seems like a joke.

Track: “Short Song for Justin Bieber and His Paparazzi”
Album: Unreleased (Uploaded online by John Darnielle in 2013)

If you’re going to consider every song from the band that wrote “Dance Music,” “This Year,” and “No Children” then you have a lot of work to do. As you go, you may wonder if a short song released potentially as a joke should be on a list of “official songs.” I draw the distinction at anything John Darnielle has released or considers a release, which can be murky and if you disagree then I totally get it.

“Short Song for Justin Bieber and His Paparazzi” is a response to an incident where Justin Bieber got in a fight with some people who were following him around for a story. John Darnielle isn’t Justin Bieber, but you can imagine him seeing both sides and wanting to briefly explore the perspective of being dogged by people who want nothing more than a disaster.

“It’s hard to feel sorry for the very rich,” John Darnielle says, “but even a rich guy needs some space.” The song quickly gets to the point as he says “don’t be an asshole” and ultimately concludes with “try not to be an asshole.”

It’s just a silly song, or would be without the final message. “Are there bigger problems in the world, yes // abortion’s legal, but not everybody has access” is a powerful set of lines. John Darnielle’s public political views focus on equal rights, reproductive rights, and animal rights passionately, and it’s interesting that he’d use a joke song to remind us to think about what actually matters. But then, at the end, he ties it all back to the thesis: be it Bieber or something more important, just don’t be an asshole.

168. The Big Unit

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , , ,

The unreleased “The Big Unit” reinforces the idea of looking on the bright side, even when it’s someone else’s.

Track: “The Big Unit”
Album: Unreleased (Uploaded to the forums by John Darnielle in 2009)

Randy Johnson was one of the greatest pitchers in baseball. He was huge at 6’10” and when he ran into a teammate by accident the teammate called him a “big unit.” That’s not really how people talk, but you can see how it would stick. There are worse nicknames.

In 2009, John Darnielle uploaded “The Big Unit” to the Mountain Goats forums and asked people who listened to it to donate to p:ear, an organization in Portland that supports homeless youth. We Shall All Be Healed gives you all the context you need about why John Darnielle feels passionately about an organization like that, so after they reached out to him it’s easy to see why he wanted to offer up an old cassette outtake to spur his fans to donate.

The song doesn’t need to tie directly back to homeless youths, but it’s easy to see some connection. Our narrator expresses financial woes in grand terms like the bond market and Swiss gold, but these are likely stand-ins for other risks. As the character reflects on watching the “hypodermic needles come in with the tide” we get another glimpse into their Portland (or California, but let’s say Portland). They’re worried about loan sharks from Chicago, too, and you tend to wonder if they’ve made smaller, more short-term purchases than Swiss gold.

Either way, there’s a charming neutrality to “but Randy Johnson throws a baseball 97 miles an hour // and I’m gonna be all right.” These thoughts are disconnected, which makes the word choice of “and” rather than “so” deliberate. Randy Johnson’s baseball acumen isn’t going to save this person, but you cling to anyone’s success and hope it inspires your own when you’re down and out.