the mountain goats

074. Dance Music

Alex Russell The Sunset Tree , , , , , , ,

The crowd-favorite “Dance Music” uses two different sad stories to make the same point: you must endure.

Track: “Dance Music”
Album: The Sunset Tree (2005)

The Sunset Tree is the true story of John Darnielle’s upbringing and the abuse he suffered from his stepfather. The album is filled with rage and sadness, but Darnielle has said consistently that the message he wants to convey is that everyone can survive. The liner notes on the album are uncharacteristically short and conclude with three lines: “you are going to make it out of there alive // you will live to tell your story // never lose hope.”

“Lion’s Teeth” is a revenge story and there are moments on The Sunset Tree (and elsewhere) where Darnielle is justifiably furious at his now-dead stepfather. In “Dance Music” he’s still in the moment. He’s just a child in the first verse when violence drives him upstairs to drown out his unhappy home with music. Darnielle has said his mother doesn’t remember the story the way he tells it, but the specifics aren’t as important as the world he describes.

Much has been said of that first verse and how clear the image is, but “Dance Music” has always been about the second verse for me. In live performances he names the woman who is “the last best thing I’ve got going” with the “special secret sickness.” He’s seventeen now and he can’t help Jackie. Both verses are stories of helplessness, but the first one is an external force (his stepfather) and the second is an internal one (addiction). They’re both high and sad and he knows this is a problem, but he doesn’t know how to fix it. The saddest element is the selfishness. What he’s really worried about isn’t solving her problems, it’s that he doesn’t want to die alone. The John of this story still has to get worse before he’s going to get better.

 

073. Whole Wide World

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , , ,

“Whole Wide World” is a simple look at a child in a tree and some contemplative respite on a really brutal album.

Track: “Whole Wide World”
Album: Sweden (1995)

At a show in Brooklyn in 2008, John Darnielle opened with “Whole Wide World.” It’s not a particularly rare or surprising song — the name of the “Everything Else” section of the band’s forums is named after it — but it’s a very odd opener. The Goats usually open with a ton of noise or an album-starter that has a natural lead in. “Whole Wide World” is a very quiet song from Sweden. It’s very beautiful and slow, with just one child in a tree and their thoughts as they deal with the cold wind and the snow. It’s very open-ended and tougher to break down than most of the character studies on other albums.

Sweden is a thinker. “Tollund Man” and “Going to Bolivia” have specific characters and their last real moments. “The Recognition Scene” and “California Song” are all-time greats that look backwards at love and life when things were either better or just different and it’s hard to say which. There’s a lot of pain in the “love songs” like “Downtown Seoul,” and songs like “Whole Wide World” can come off as just connective tissue between the more heartrending stuff. It can seem like just a sweet picture of a child alone in the wilderness, but Darnielle’s voice — almost a whisper, in contrast to the screaming pain of the end of the album — elevates it. At that show he played it in response to a scream for “Golden Boy.” It’s a big faux pas to yell for “Golden Boy,” and Darnielle plays its exact opposite. “C’mon, yell for “Golden Boy” again just so I can say no again,” Darnielle says. It’s not abuse, it’s a reminder that the Goats have wide range and that you’ve got to appreciate the peace just as much as the fury.

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.

 

071. Weekend in Western Illinois

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

 

The lovers in “Weekend in Western Illinois” admire happy dogs as they experience sweeping events all around them.

Track: “Weekend in Western Illinois”
Album: Full Force Galesburg (1997)

You may be the sort of person who likes the quiet of “Masher” or “Ontario” or you may be the sort of person who likes to speculate about the characters in “Minnesota” or “Evening in Stalingrad.” Full Force Galesburg is varied and excellent and it will support you, no matter what you’re looking for in a Mountain Goats record. Sometimes you’re just looking for a song for a windows-down drive. “Weekend in Western Illinois” is about as “rocking” as John Darnielle and company were capable of being in the days before the drums. If you can listen to it without tapping your foot or snapping along, I would question if your blood is indeed red.

Like the best version of “Going to Kansas,” the song’s instrumentation really evokes the apocalypse. The strumming is intense, but it’s the organ that really brings the house down. All of the lyrics also describe huge, sweeping events. Take your pick from “the sky’s opening up like an old wound,” “the ground underneath us shakes in the cracking thunder,” and “we are watching the sky unwinding.” The dogs out there in Galesburg even “howl as though the world were ending,” as if you couldn’t feel that in every tense second.

While the world’s figuratively (or literally, given the narrator’s insistence) ending around them, the characters go through their own turmoil. “We are burning up all of our choices” is a nice summation of the couple that’s falling apart across the album, and Darnielle mentions blood twice, which is high even for a Goats song. There’s much more to unpack, but you can find everything you need to know about these lovers in the way John belts out “some of our promises were binding up here where our dreams take form” over the final tense strums.

070. Alpha Gelida

Alex Russell Ghana, Taking the Dative , , , , , , , ,

 

The Alpha Couple is in Nevada during “Alpha Gelida,” scaring each other before the really scary part to come.

Track: “Alpha Gelida”
Album: Taking the Dative (1994), Ghana (1999)

There is continuity in the catalog of 500+ Mountain Goats songs, but John Darnielle has often said that he doesn’t consider it possible to find one true version of it. It’s a journey, not a destination, and whatever threads you find seem to be generally okay with him. That makes a process like this more like storytelling and less like history, but even so there are primary documents. In an introduction for “Alpha Gelida” in the summer of 2014, John described the song as “one of the songs that looked towards Tallahassee.” He said of the Alpha Couple that “they’re from California, but they go to Nevada, and that’s where they get married.”

The specific details of the horrible/wonderful couple at the heart of most of “the Alpha series” of songs aren’t important, but the specificity of their journey is part of what makes it more than a story. These aren’t real people, but they’re every single bad relationship everyone has ever had. They’re the horrible darkness in all of us that we’re afraid, sometimes, is all there really is.

That’s why the details matter. In “Alpha Gelida” they’re drinking in Nevada and, like John, they’re avoiding Tallahassee. It’s a horror story, filled with biblical versions of destruction (“let the young lions come out // let me break their jaws” is from Psalms) and smells of popcorn and cheap coffee. You can smell the room as one of them focuses on the fridge. They are drawn to it, as all characters in horror stories are always eventually drawn to something with evil overtones. John has said at shows that he doesn’t know what’s behind the fridge here, but you can hear in the quiet, intense delivery that even if it isn’t specific, we’re supposed to understand how they feel.

069. Lab Rat Blues

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

While it opens up with a truly sweet set of two lines, “Lab Rat Blues” largely tells the sad tale of the title rat.

Track: “Lab Rat Blues”
Album: The Hound Chronicles (1992)

“I apologize for the “early” i.e. first 5 years’ worth of hair/there rhymes but as I remember it there was a lot of hair there” – John Darnielle

John Darnielle’s Twitter is routinely outstanding reading, but there is a special joy in little pieces of ephemera like that. Darnielle said the above in response to a tweet from the Canadian punk band Propagandhi when they said they were “studying Mountain Goats lyrics.” The man The New Yorker called “America’s best non-hip-hop lyricist” has always been sheepish about his early work, but he’s rarely been as specific as he was in that tweet.

“Lab Rat Blues” opens with “I saw you // I saw your hair // I could spend the rest of my life in there” and it’s the best part of the song. The song seems to be an extended comparison of the titular lab rat and a lover who feels jilted. Both are beyond in love with their creator/lover and both express it through descriptions of power and beauty. The comparison is sad, but one we can appreciate in the memory of times we felt we were at the mercy of someone else, likely in an emotional balance of power.

The difference is that lovers perceive a disparate amount of power where lab rats are literally right about their powerlessness. “I saw you, but you saw me first” from the lab rat’s view reveals the terrifying reality of speaking to an actual creator that knows even the moments of your life that you’ll never know. There are a lot of emotions tied up in this comparison, but it’s also worth viewing at face value. “Trapped like a rat” is thrown around a lot as a phrase, but Darnielle asks us to consider the actual rat.

068. Going to Chino

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

John Darnielle speaks of his home and his mentality as he wails about the selling points of both in “Going to Chino.”

Track: “Going to Chino”
Album: The Hound Chronicles (1992)

“Going to Spain” is one of the saddest songs in the two decades of Mountain Goats history, but the entire album The Hound Chronicles really has a sad feel to it. On “Going to Chino” you can hear John Darnielle’s voice crack over and over. Some listeners will find it too rough to enjoy, but that’s really the point. Early songs like “Going to Alaska” use the roughness of the recording to amplify their snarls and screams, but “Going to Chino” stands alone. John is wailing by the time he belts out “a unified school system // the likes of which you won’t find elsewhere” and the delivery is the entire point of the song.

It’s lyrically unimpressive by design. He’s singing about droll subjects because the actual setting of Chino isn’t the point. When John says he wants to “say hello to all our friends from Chino” he’s speaking to the entire cast of characters he’s created. Those characters didn’t exist to the public in 1992, but the meth addicts and alcoholic brides and scorned lovers of the Mountain Goats were real to him already and they were all from Chino.

There are good things about the area like “convenient access to the 60 freeway” and “accredited medical care down at Chino Valley Hospital,” but the Chino of the mind is a tougher place to live. You were born there and you will die there, so in this brief moment a very forlorn John Darnielle would like to extend a greeting to people who need one. After all, in his own way, he’s from Chino, too.

067. Going to Scotland

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

For now the two lovers in “Going to Scotland” tear their clothes off and ignore the signs of worse things to come.

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

What is a “love song” in the parlance of the Mountain Goats? Does Tallahassee have any love songs, given that the couple is disintegrating through alcohol and hate? Is “Fault Lines” a love song if the couple doesn’t want to be in love anymore? Does “love song” need to be restricted to songs like “02-75” and “There Will Be No Divorce” where John Darnielle has strictly described them as such?

I believe in a loose construction of “love song” and I believe that “Going to Scotland” is about as good as they come. In a lesser band’s hands, “and I loved you so much it was making me sick” would be a disgusting line, but coming from the foot-stomping, hard-strumming John Darnielle it is wonderful. The song is dense for a love song, but you will be rewarded if you listen closely. Lines like “new-found rich brown deep wet ground” take a few listens to parse.

Rachel Ware, the original bassist and backup vocalist of the Goats, adds a layer of complexity and a second character. This really is an “us” both in characters and in delivery. They both view their situation and their feelings the same way. The couple left Oklahoma for Scotland just as they left whatever their previous life was for a life together. Their eventual reward will be the darkness that the “pack of wild dogs” in the chorus is sure to bring, but for now they are rending garments and making furious love in the mud. They’re tossing luggage into the water and living in the moment as few do, and the song cherishes that moment where passionate lovers are able to ignore their fated end.

066. Malevolent Seascape Y

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

 

Two characters examine how they feel about a third leaving their lives in “Malevolent Seascape Y.”

Track: “Malevolent Seascape Y”
Album: Martial Arts Weekend (2002)

The Extra Glenns and The Extra Lens are the same band: John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats and Franklin Bruno of Nothing Painted Blue. The duo has released two 12-track albums and while songs like “Malevolent Seascape Y” are technically not Mountain Goats songs, the entire idea of “the Mountain Goats” is really just any band that either has John Darnielle in it or only John Darnielle in it. There are common themes and some Extra Glenns/Lens songs show up in Goats shows, so it really is a distinction without a difference. If you want to tell me “Adultery” isn’t a Mountain Goats song (and possibly the Mountain Goats song) then that’s your hill to die on.

“Malevolent Seascape Y” comes from Martial Arts Weekend, which feels like a lighter-but-still-abrasive Goats record. The closing track features a metaphor in which love is compared to a dying hospital patient, so we’re definitely in familiar territory. In this song, two people watch a ship disappear over the horizon. The ship contains a third character that is connected to the duo, but the meaning of “Seascape” is left vague. The characters are almost wistful about the situation, but we don’t really know what it all means for them.

The narrator thinks to themselves “I guess this makes it all easier // I guess it’s smooth sailing now” but they close with “I guess it never really mattered anyhow.” The only clue in the song comes up when one character gives the narrator a seashell and asks them to listen to it. The narrator hears nothing and says “I knew the three of us meant less than nothing.” Darnielle suggests that big moments don’t always come with explanations. Not all departures have lessons. Sometimes people just leave.

065. Liza Forever Minnelli

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

“Liza Forever Minnelli” sees the iconic Liza confronting her own survival in the wake of her mother’s legacy.

Track: “Liza Forever Minnelli”
Album: All Eternals Deck (2011)

A lot of the early Mountain Goats songs are about people who are flawed but expect the people in their life to be without flaws. It’s a common problem with human interaction wherein we expect the world to be better to us than we are to it. Most of the time it’s only evident later on, but Goats narrators often realize in the middle of the situation that they are doing damage to a relationship or a friendship. That said, they rarely correct their behavior and that is why they are worth discussing. There’s no story to “there was a problem with me and I fixed it and now I’m better.” We want to hear about the messes.

As he’s gotten older, John Darnielle has focused more on people who never had a chance to fix their issues. Amy Winehouse is the Amy in “Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1,” and the song is about how people survive in the face of great obstacles. Amy Winehouse of course didn’t do that, but Darnielle wants us to think about how much of that could actually be prevented. His heroin-addicted Frankie Lymon in “Harlem Roulette” isn’t just a drug addict, he’s a victim of his own chemicals rather than his choices.

Rehab saved Liza Minnelli, but “Liza Forever Minnelli” is more interested in the cause than the solution. We judge people based on what we know, but Darnielle wants us to think about everyone’s circumstances when we make those judgements.”The compasses I came into this world with // never really worked so good,” John/Liza sings, and despite the “memory of sweet things” we are forced to consider what really goes into being Liza Minnelli and the power of survival in spite of it.