the mountain goats

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.

 

091. Alabama Nova

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

“Alabama Nova” isn’t the live show staple that it used to be, but it’s still one of the catchiest songs from the early catalog.

Track: “Alabama Nova”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

“We used to play this one every night!” – John Darnielle, 10-18-2004 at The Earl in Atlanta

Mountain Goats fans tape everything, much like Grateful Dead fans before them. I can’t speak for Deadheads, but it seems like Goats fans do it just as much to catch moments like this one as they do to catch good renditions of each song. If you listen to the recording in 2004, you’ll hear a fan yell for “Alabama Nova” and then Darnielle sound shocked as he delivers the above line. He sounds just as surprised that he’s playing it now as he is with the fact that he ever stopped.

Nothing for Juice is an excellent album. It’s also an album with Rachel Ware, though, so a lot of it doesn’t make the rotation these days. After the song in Atlanta Darnielle says that the last time he played it was nearly a decade ago in Germany. “Singin’ a song about Alabama to the Germans!” He sounds wistful, in a way, and it’s cool to hear the reverence that he has for his own old stuff.

The song itself is a stripped down, sub-two-minutes discussion between two characters. It’s difficult to dissect because it’s so sparse. In many ways it feels like just a simple song where the guitar and the bass play off each other well and the harmony really works. It’s not going to bring the house down and it doesn’t have any lines you’re going to tattoo into your soul, but it’s catchy enough that a non-Goats fan can enjoy the bass and a Goats fan can speculate about deeper problems this couple isn’t talking about as they talk on that front porch.

090. Solomon Revisited

Alex Russell Taboo VI: The Homecoming , , , , , ,

 

John Darnielle mentions actual mountain goats for the first and last time in “Solomon Revisited.”

Track: “Solomon Revisited”
Album: Taboo VI: The Homecoming (1992)

John Darnielle has been consistent when he’s talked about his first album. He knows that people are fascinated by what they can’t find and the origin point of their favorite artists, but he still hopes you won’t look too hard for Taboo VI: The Homecoming.

Many of the early Mountain Goats albums are grating, but mostly in a way that serves their harsh content. The lo-fi recording reads as on purpose in a DIY sense and it gives the music a certain sound. The first album is too much in a lot of places, but Darnielle would tell you that he warned you. He’s said that he does stand by a few songs (“Going to Alaska” is the standout and he typically says so) and it’s still worth examining the album as a piece of Goats history.

The title of “Solomon Revisited” is a curious biblical reference, but the content is much more interesting. Darnielle’s narrator insists “I’ve got a radio” over and over to the point that Darnielle has said that what the song “lacks in subtlety it makes up for in radio.” This narrator introduces the listener to a type of speaker that shows up over and over again: an insistent person who doesn’t want help from outside sources. What they’re furious about is left up to debate, but they’re really set in their ways.

Nearly 30 years later, “Solomon Revisited” is not strictly required listening. It does serve as a bit of trivia as the only song in the catalog to mention actual mountain goats. The narrator says in response to a discussion of dangerous rocks “how long has it been since you’ve seen my feet?” because mountain goat feet are designed specifically for steep rocks. Educational!

089. Sendero Luminoso Verdadero

Alex Russell Beautiful Rat Sunset , , , , , ,

 

After a perfect intro, “Sendero Luminoso Verdadero” tells the story of a displaced person and the associated emotions.

Track: “Sendero Luminoso Verdadero”
Album: Beautiful Rat Sunset (1994)

“Sendero Luminoso” translates to “Shining Path,” which is the name of a radical organization that seeks to transform Peru into the “true democracy” of Communism by seeking the “shining path.” Verdadero means “true” or “correct,” so the title translates vaguely as “the true shining path.”

The narrator says “I remember Lima // I remember the good life” which you can take to mean the time before the true shining path folks got involved or the revolution itself, depending on your interpretation of the narrator. The group is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, and while not every narrator in a Mountain Goats song is a good person it’s a safe bet that this one isn’t a Peruvian radical. But then again, given the gallery of rogues John Darnielle writes about, they very well could be.

Whichever way you take the narrator, the song is fascinating. It opens with a bit of a recording that asks the listener to “invade his space by standing a little closer than normal” as a means of dealing with an older man afraid of his fading virility. It’s powerfully evocative and it’s one of the best odd clips in the catalog. Lots of songs use odd sounds or out-of-place recordings to set the mood, but “Sendero Luminoso Verdadero” revisits it at the end with fading ocean sounds after the narrator reflects on their situation in California. Whether this is a frustrated, displaced person or a dormant revolutionary is up to you, but the song is unique and beautiful either way. The strumming is fierce and John Darnielle sneers the verses with a longing that translates whichever way you way it to affect you.

088. Masher

Alex Russell Full Force Galesburg , , , , , , ,

 

The narrator in “Masher” forgets words (and a lot more) as they confront a mysterious person in a tree.

Track: “Masher”
Album: Full Force Galesburg (1997)

Full Force Galesburg really is a confounding album. “Twin Human Highway Flares” is a love song and John Darnielle is on the record numerous times about the couple: himself and his now-wife. You hear that song and think you understand where he was at in 1997, but then you wonder where “Ontario” and “Snow Owl” fit with that. Then you come across a beautiful song like “Masher” and listen to it hundreds of times and still can’t break apart the chorus from the verses.

The chorus of “I am losing control of the language again” is evocative. You remember a time when you were so in love or so flustered or so angry or so confused that you forgot something as ingrained as language. That alone wouldn’t sustain a song, though the droning repetition of the line does sell the problem effectively.

It’s the verses. Our narrator is talking to a loved one, like most of the narrators on Full Force Galesburg. They list certainties (brine boiling, air containing the smell) before revealing that they’ve been incarcerated in some way, which they seem to view as a third unavoidable reality. It might be a metaphor, but by the second verse they are losing their memory to a greater degree. They’re either unstable or being destabilized by the person they see in a tree. How you take that part depends on how you take the title, given a “masher” is primarily a tool for mashing potatoes, but can also be British slang for a creepy guy. The delivery is sweet, but the couple on Full Force Galesburg is generally not a happy one. With only one perspective, we’re left to wonder about the other view of their relationship.

087. Going to Norwalk

Alex Russell Hot Garden Stomp , , , , , ,

 

The very early recording of “Going to Norwalk” can be grating to some listeners, but lyrically it provides something for everyone.

Track: “Going to Norwalk”
Album: Hot Garden Stomp (1993)

“It sounded so harsh it was hard to listen to… but I did anyway.” – John Darnielle, 5/27/15, on “Going to Norwalk”

We’ve talked before about John Darnielle’s breakdown of which Hot Garden Stomp songs might be played live again, and that list and the above quote make up the full list of primary sources for “Going to Norwalk.” In the post, John says he is “fond of” the song but that the appeal is in the way the song was recorded originally rather than a reproduction of it. As far as I can tell he mostly stuck to his word and only played it at that one show in Salt Lake City. The quote echoes his feelings, but it also doubles as a nice summary of the early works of the Mountain Goats.

It’s Norwalk, California, and it’s almost a love song. The narrator watches two raccoons run into a gutter and is struck by a thought of someone as the pair stares back. They wander around Norwalk and watch silhouettes behind sheets in old buildings. They’re again reminded of someone’s they’ve lost touch with and “can’t stand it.”

You have the chance to imbue this kind of song with whatever meaning you need it to contain. If you’re reeling and want to reconnect with someone, you can view it as a song about seeing things that seem like reminders and opportunities but aren’t. If you’re hiding and don’t want to reconnect with someone, you can view it as a song about how the natural world plays tricks on us and seems to care when it doesn’t. For my money, the most interesting line is “your California sky” which implies that these characters are still close geographically, so you’re left just considering what non-literal distance separates them.

086. Bad Priestess

Alex Russell Zopilote Machine , , , , , , ,

“Bad Priestess” is told in first person, but don’t mistake the hateful narrator for John Darnielle himself.

Track: “Bad Priestess”
Album: Zopilote Machine (1994)

At first glance, Zopilote Machine might seem to be the quintessential Mountain Goats album. It has (at least) three Alpha Couple songs, two Orange Ball songs, and three “Going to…” songs. With that many representations of “series” songs, it might serve as a crucial primary text in understanding the catalog.

The complication is that it features songs like “Going to Georgia” and “Bad Priestess,” songs that are by no means bad or not fun to listen to, but thematically dissimilar than the current Goats output. It’s difficult to have 500 songs that are largely told in first person because people will ascribe the narrator’s traits to you, but John Darnielle doesn’t identify with many of his early narrators. “Going to Georgia” is a fan favorite, but the narrator threatens someone they love with a gun. That’s not the kind of person you want to be.

The narrator in “Bad Priestess” may not be as violent, but they share a mindset with the person in Georgia with a gun. The titular “Bad Priestess” is a woman that is tempting someone, but they’re putting all of those qualities on her. She never speaks, she only lives in the way she is described. She is called a “fraud” for her “place among the poor” and that the sun across her face has had “the same effect on a thousand other guys.” There is a type of person that feels this way about the fairer sex, and it’s not a good type of person. It can still be a fun song even if the narrator is gross — Darnielle of the present calls him “insane” — but be sure you consider the context.

085. There Will Always Be an Ireland

Alex Russell Jack and Faye, Unreleased , , , , , , , ,

“There Will Always Be an Ireland” has multiple interpretations, but it’s always about a quiet moment between two people.

Track: “There Will Always Be an Ireland”
Album: Jack and Faye (Unreleased, recorded 1995 or 1996)

Jack and Faye was never released, but it was released online and can still be downloaded. The album consists of four songs with John Darnielle on guitar and Rachel Ware on bass. The album is also the last full release with Rachel on bass before Peter Hughes took over full time, so it acts as a turning point in the band’s history. John and Rachel have said that “time has given [the songs] a somewhat melancholy air,” and you can take from that what you will.

The bulk of the song is a repetition of the song’s title and given the different inflections it sounds alternatively sweet and insistent. You can take it to be a revolutionary ballad referencing the struggle against foreign rule or you can depoliticize it and view it as a love song; the fervor works either way. The first verse sets up two young lovers either way, the second verse contrasts a “silent hour” with “worthless words,” and the third verse blankly lays out “what we did” and “the things we said.” All three work for both interpretations, but both interpretations leave you wanting to know more.

“There Will Always Be an Ireland” is right at home on Jack and Faye because it is more about the feeling it instills than the meaning behind it. The band has become more polished — you can hear Rachel talking quietly during the second verse before the chorus comes in — but that doesn’t always mean that they’re “better” now. People will debate until the end of time if the lo-fi Goats were better and I don’t think that’s answerable, but I do think they were undeniably raw in an interesting way. Whatever you take from this song, you’ll definitely feel something unique.