the mountain goats

145. Pure Heat

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

 

“Pure Heat” reminds us that even in the most beautiful moments, it’s possible to fear the end of so many things at once.

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

The “pure” songs are all intense. They’re not designed to be connected, but you can trace some patterns through them. Beyond intensity, they often share a vagueness. “Pure Heat” is one scene with one person seeing another one. There are so many Mountain Goats songs that fit that description that it is important to remember how rare that is. Generally songs are active or describe long spans of time. John Darnielle wants to tell you a story about one moment between two people and he wants you to see it vividly. Everything else you bring is your own deal.

Alone, this might be a song about two happy people in one happy slice of a happy life. Knowledge of the Mountain Goats greater catalog means that is unlikely to be true. These two people may be in love, but they’re more likely in the final stages of something they once thought was love. They are in a beautiful place, to be sure, and “Pure Heat” is a clear reminder that the California native son John Darnielle also loves Iowa and North Carolina. Their time in the fields with kerosene lamps and cool breezes may be picturesque, but it is tenuous.

“Pure Heat” is also the only other Mountain Goats song on Why You All So Thief? with “Going to Tennessee.” John Darnielle says they are both about “cheating death.” We’re forced to connect the two further. They could both describe the same couple, using sex and beautiful moments to avoid the greater realities of their situation. Many Mountain Goats songs would mean a breakup or a toxic relationship as a “situation” but the fear these two are staving off may go even deeper than that.

144. Pure Money

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

 

Much like the characters in “Pure Money,” you may require a few listens to get everything out of this song.

Track: “Pure Money”
Album: Nine Black Poppies (1995)

Almost all the songs on Nine Black Poppies feature two characters. Most of the tracks see one person talking to another about a turning point in their lives together. As one of the shortest songs on the album, you could miss “Pure Money” as more of an interstitial between the furious “Chanson du Bon Chose” and the lively “I Know You’ve Come to Take My Toys Away.”

The beat is extra-mechanical on purpose here, similar to “Going to Malibu” and a few other early songs. John Darnielle delivers the lyrics in a near whisper. It’s tough to tell from the surface what “Pure Money” wants us to feel. It could be described as haunting, given the fading out chorus of “I used to know you” over and over, but it isn’t quite as eerie as some other songs the Mountain Goats imbue with terror. It feels more like one narrator’s thought, delivered and then left to percolate with no more detail than necessary.

In 2007 the band played “Pure Money” live and John Darnielle said he thought it was the only live performance ever. I can only find mention of two others, both in 1997, and only at that 2007 show did he offer any context. Darnielle describes the song as a hateful message encoded so well that the person who hears it won’t understand it for some time. While on the topic of encoding, the opening sample is from a Dutch interview where the band said that they don’t consider themselves “lofi” but rather “bifi” which is apparently a joke because it’s a European brand of sausage snack. Both the sample and the song are brief looks into situations we don’t fully understand, but as is so often the case with the early Goats, that’s not the immediate point.

143. Please Come Home to Hamngatan

Alex Russell Ghana , , , , , , , ,

 

One lover relies on the power of specific geography and memory as they invite a lost love back to a broken relationship.

Track: “Please Come Home to Hamngatan”
Album: Ghana (1999)

Hamngatan is a road in Stockholm, Sweden. The name means “Port Street.” I’ve never been to Sweden, but based on the map it seems to be a department store neighborhood near the water in the center of town. Pictures make it look nice and inviting. There’s a TGI Fridays.

It’s a testament to the importance of specificity that the narrator in “Please Come Home to Hamngatan” wants their beloved to come back to this specific street in Sweden. It’s not a neighborhood that could be tied up in cultural consciousness, likely even if you live in Stockholm. It seems like another situation where John Darnielle wants us to realize this is one specific person talking to one other specific person, but doesn’t need us to know what Hamngatan means to them so much as that they are very real to each other and were real in that exact location.

“Please Come Home to Hamngatan” was released in 1996 on a compilation with 23 other songs. On Ghana three years later, John Darnielle describes his characters as “sick” and says “I wish I could do something to help them.” Maybe they’re the Alpha Couple and maybe they’re just two people forcing a broken relationship onwards, but either way they are familiar. They care about each other and about their specific place they lived one day, but given the subject matter of jewel thieves, snake oil salesmen, and adulterers, we can be sure their testimony is unreliable.

What’s most compelling is the street in Stockholm. Imagine a place that you know but couldn’t describe in a way that would explain it to someone else. That’s Hamngatan and that’s this relationship. The narrator wants a lover back despite knowing that going home again either literally or figuratively may not be fulfilling.

 

 

142. Answering the Phone

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

 

 

The outtake “Answering the Phone” deserves a spot among the best concert singalong songs of the Mountain Goats.

Track: “Answering the Phone”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2013 reissue)

Arguably the best of the new tracks on the 2013 reissue of All Hail West Texas, “Answering the Phone” demands your attention. All the new tracks work, but you can understand why the others missed the original cut. They’re mostly complex and require multiple listens to sink into your brain.

This is decidedly untrue for “Answering the Phone.” The entire thing is surface level, right down to the title that John Darnielle says comes from being interrupted by phone calls during previous takes. Being surface level isn’t a bad thing. You immediately, from the first listen, will latch on to phrases like “you came here for comfort, you came to the wrong place” and the chorus of “I think something’s wrong with me.”

John Darnielle’s best narrators are missing small-to-large pieces of themselves. Depending on the album, they show varied levels of understanding towards their predicaments. This one knows where they stand in the world and uses three verses to guess as to the reasoning behind their state of mind. Maybe it’s their childhood of undernourishment or bad upbringing or maybe it’s their teenage years of angry music or maybe it’s their current state of drunkenness and repeated mistakes. It’s about the journey, as they say, and this narrator retraces their steps to no avail.

You can almost hear people in some dark bar that’s church-like in its reverence for bands like this as they scream “I think something’s wrong with me!” while John Darnielle shakes his fist from the stage. It never happened, or at least we don’t know about it, because this song didn’t make the original All Hail West Texas and never lived in the live rotation. The sneer over the third verse here is all-time good and it’s a real shame this remained an outtake.

141. Indonesia

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

 

Two people barrel through seasons and hope for the best that they know isn’t going to happen in “Indonesia.”

Track: “Indonesia”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2013 reissue)

According to the liner notes of the 2013 reissue of All Hail West Texas, John Darnielle wrote “Indonesia” in one night. He says it didn’t make the album because it isn’t doesn’t fit with the rest of the story. All Hail is about “seven people, two houses, a motorcycle, and a locked treatment facility for adolescent boys” per its cover, so this is about anyone else in the world that doesn’t occupy that space.

John sings much of “Indonesia” in a low, steady tone, which gives the sense that he’s relaying facts rather than editorializing. Lines like “the summer came in carrying spring in its mouth” seem plucked out of poetry even with that delivery, but they exist here just to carry time forward. The first verse sets up that summer is typically a time of great turmoil for these two characters. John Darnielle says that this song fits more with his writing style for Tallahassee. The Alpha Couple would recognize “this is the time when all our plans and schemes melt down into listless anarchy” all too well.

The second-and-final verse explores some familiar territory for the Mountain Goats. John Darnielle talks about plants as a metaphor for loneliness, weather as an omen, and hunger as a representation for something evil. These are common lyrical elements across the catalog, and it makes one wonder why this song doesn’t hold higher regard.

The chorus is simply “Indonesia // Indonesia.” In such a powerfully wrought song full of lyrics, it’s interesting that John Darnielle left the chorus at one word. It allows you to fill the space of those two words with whatever emotions you’d like. So many Mountain Goats songs are about the belief that changing your location could change your life, but these two are just holding onto dreams.

140. Twelve Hands High

Alex Russell Martial Arts Weekend , , , , , , , , , ,

 

A horse crashes through a wall in “Twelve Hands High” to force a conversation between the Alpha Couple.

Track: “Twelve Hands High”
Album: Martial Arts Weekend (2002)

If you squint, most of the songs on Martial Arts Weekend could be love songs, but there really isn’t a theme that binds the whole thing together. It’s an Extra Glenns/Lens record, so it’s technically a side project that John Darnielle recorded with Franklin Bruno, but many of the songs have been played at Mountain Goats shows and I think that rounds it up to being part of the expanded Mountain Goats universe.

Saying there’s no uniting theme for Martial Arts Weekend isn’t an insult. It’s a fantastic album and is loud and bouncy compared to the other Glenns/Lens album Undercard. Both have standout tracks and belong in any fan’s top albums list, but they sit in stark stylistic contrast. Most of the cast on Undercard seems lost and lonely. The characters on Martial Arts Weekend aren’t happy, but they’re exuberant. They want to share their stories.

“Twelve Hands High” is also called “Fit Alpha Vi,” which is Latin for “alpha is violent,” roughly. John Darnielle says the idea behind it was originally a poem and predates his songwriting career. The version that made it to Martial Arts Weekend sees the Alpha Couple arguing about a horse. They’re angrier than they usually are and more direct, which is interesting. One tells the other that they feel “pressure bearing down” and the other has been sleeping on the lawn. John Darnielle raises his voice over “and there’s a different world waiting for me // when I lift my head up from your thick dark hair” and you can picture the scene. It took a horse crashing through a wall to make the Alpha Couple face their problems, but we know that this is only a moment of clarity before they’ll be back to drunken denial.

139. In the Hidden Places

Alex Russell Get Lonely , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle introduces a character with bigger problems than a breakup on “In the Hidden Places.”

Track: “In the Hidden Places”
Album: Get Lonely (2006)

Many Mountain Goats fans refer to Get Lonely as a breakup album because it’s reliable during those emotional moments. Songs like “Half Dead” and “Woke Up New” hammer home the idea of one person being gone and the destruction that you go through when you face different realities of that fact. The rest of the album complicates that narrative, songs like “In the Hidden Places” especially. The narrator here might be in love, but they seem to be in no state to realize it.

The broader theme of Get Lonely is “abandonment.” The characters all are, well, lonely, but they feel like they’ve been left that way after something else. We find them in different states of grief, but they are all most certainly near or at their lowest. It’s not unusual for a narrator in a Mountain Goats song to experience something difficult and sad, but most of them have company. Most of the characters John Darnielle talks about are alone only in their mind as they try to share their world with other people and have difficulty.

“In the Hidden Places” is haunting. John Darnielle sings as high as he can over strings that create tension. The combination makes you feel cold when you listen to it. You can imagine yourself being near this narrator as they wander a town they don’t recognize. By the time they see someone on a bus you may be worried about how the interaction will go. The narrator is crippled by fear at this would-be lover or would-be friend, and the distinction doesn’t matter. This person isn’t ready for any kind of interaction, romantic or otherwise, and that kind of solitude is the hardest kind to escape.

138. Waving at You

Alex Russell Nothing for Juice , , , , , , , ,

“Waving at You” is sung in a whisper, but it’s far more furious than most of the much louder songs.

Track: “Waving at You”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

The Mountain Goats have significant range, but most fans will tell you their favorite songs are the screaming, foot-stomping ones. They’re the ones that bring the house down at the first, second, and (sometimes) third encores and they’re the ones people belt out on New Year’s Eve to rage against the previous and future years. You can’t think of the Mountain Goats without thinking of that death metal band in Denton or the Alpha Couple’s furious love or the speak freaks on the west coast, but there are some songs that fall outside of the norm.

John Darnielle whispers “Waving at You,” relatively speaking. He sounds far away, tinged with longing and regret. The great majority of Mountain Goats narrators are sad, but most of them aren’t at the stage of life that the “Waving at You” person sings about. John Darnielle likes characters that are in the middle of their fury or misery. Those people are easy to understand because they narrate their feelings to try to understand them. He has an entire song (“The Recognition Scene”) about the moment you realize what your situation really is. The person in “Waving at You” is several years beyond those moments.

There are other reflective Mountain Goats songs, but John Darnielle says this is one of the best of the early ones. He’s said in interviews that this one feels more real to him and that you can read his quiet delivery as the story consuming him. There’s a lot to love about yelling and screaming, but the bubbling tension in “Waving at You” that explodes only through frantic strumming comes across like catharsis denied. Our character can’t shake this habit and “Waving at You” reminds us that not every moment ends, even years later.

137. Resonant Bell World

Alex Russell Beautiful Rat Sunset , , , , , , ,

 

A narrator confronts someone about their animal tendencies in “Resonant Bell World.”

Track: “Resonant Bell World”
Album: Beautiful Rat Sunset (1994)

The liner notes for Beautiful Rat Sunset contain a story about Agamemnon, multiple odes to coffee, and a surprisingly straightforward description of the cover. The songs weave through the days of the Aztecs, ancient Italy, modern Peru, and Maryland. It’s tough to pin down a connection, despite a vague sense of discomfort around location that characters seem to keep experiencing. The whole thing closes with “Resonant Bell World,” which doesn’t mention location at all.

The narrator in “Resonant Bell World” describes the animals someone else embodies. They call them a starling, which is a gentle creature, but then a kite (presumably the bird of prey and not the toy) and a hyena. “You’re a stray dog at night” could mean many things, but it’s assuredly negative.

The animal comparisons make up most of the song, but John Darnielle closes with multiple repetitions of “in the starlight.” It’s hypnotic and might not mean anything. It does allow for time to imagine this scene. The narrator is frustrated, or angry, or sad, or disappointed, and in a song like this there’s enough room for them to be all four. Some Mountain Goats songs are so short that you have to fill in the gaps in story yourself. “Resonant Bell World” suggests a narrator with narrowed eyes and a slight buzz. They’re tired of someone else and they want to finally say what’s on their mind. Your vision may be slightly different, but the “you made your special lunge for my throat // and between you and me // it was really exciting” verse will shift accordingly. Maybe that’s funny to you and maybe it’s dire. John Darnielle stops playing as he sings it, which is rare, and you will be forced to feel whatever emotion you connect with the narrator in that moment.

136. First Few Desperate Hours

Alex Russell Tallahassee , , , , , ,

The nervous Alpha Couple pretends it will be okay for the last time in “First Few Desperate Hours.”

Track: “First Few Desperate Hours”
Album: Tallahassee (2002)

Tallahassee is the story of the final days of The Alpha Couple, the recently married, miserable, excited, drunken disaster couple that weaves through the Mountain Goats catalog like connective tissue. They are in dozens of songs, but Tallahassee tells of their marriage and attempt to solidify it by moving from Nevada to a run-down house in Florida. It won’t save them. We know that and they know that, but it’s more about the attempt than the possibility of success.

When John Darnielle introduces songs from Tallahassee he talks about how this was never going to work. The couple even knows that, which makes the nervous energy in “First Few Desperate Hours” less hopeful and more cringe-inducing. The Alphas move their things into their new home and they exude fake hope. Their spirits “sag like withering flowers” and “there’s a stomach-churning shift in the way the land lies.” The couple is only two songs into their album and they’ve already totally given up. There will be other attempts in “Game Shows Touch Our Lives” and “Old College Try” but this is the final time that they can pretend it isn’t all tinged with dread.

The emotions here are clear, but the geography is murky. The “bad luck comes in from Tampa” lines throw a wrench in the story that the couple drove from Vegas to their new home, but you shouldn’t think about it too hard. The Tallahassee in this album is an anti-Shangri-La where everything is terrible and should not be confused for the real capital city of Florida. Tampa is far south of Tallahassee, though it’s entirely possible to imagine that the couple wandered deep into Florida and had to double back to their final resting place. That adds an even sadder element to their cross country drive.