the mountain goats

004. Until I Am Whole

Alex Russell Transcendental Youth , , , , , , ,

In “Until I Am Whole,” the Mountain Goats look at the first moments of depression and how we struggle to even want to feel better.

Track: “Until I Am Whole”
Album: Transcendental Youth (2012)

Until Beat the Champ comes out this year, Transcendental Youth will remain the most recent studio release by the Mountain Goats. It’s difficult to get perspective immediately on an album, and even though it’s been a few years, the tracks all still feel very recent. There’s always going to be a lot of thrashing on a Goats album, but the last few also have a lot of low-key, introspective songs about sad subsets of the populace. Transcendental Youth is the culmination of that journey.

2004’s We Shall All Be Healed is famously about John Darnielle’s time hanging out with speed freaks and other lost people in the Pacific Northwest, but the album is very specifically about drugs. From the hospital in “Mole” to the liquor store in “Against Pollution” to the quiet, terrifying interiors of “All Up the Seething Coast,” the settings on the album are all different places that drugs take the characters. We’re back in the same setting (specifically Snohomish, Washington, home of Blues Traveler’s John Popper and “the Antique Capital of the Northwest”) on Transcendental Youth, but now we’re looking at a wider scope of people.

The Mountain Goats love the unloved, and the outcasts of this album are some of the most tragic of them all. “Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1” is John’s most recent ballad for people in temporary tough spots and “Harlem Roulette” finds a singer overdosing after a big payday. “Until I Am Whole” isn’t the saddest song on the album, but “hold my hopes underwater // stand there and watch them drown” is not the kind of message you find in a song about hope. The character doesn’t know if they can make it through this, and they’re on the precipice where they haven’t decided if they’re going to try or not.

003. Raid on Entebbe

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

The title of the song tells you where you are, but it’s all about the general intensity for “Raid on Entebbe”

Track: “Raid on Entebbe”
Album: Jack and Faye (Unreleased, recorded 1995 or 1996)

The title is clear: Raid on Entebbe is a 1977 television movie about a real-life raid on a Ugandan airport in Entebbe. You can get caught up in the life of Idi Amin and what the title means, but let’s look closer.

There’s Rachel Ware, but she’s in the background now. She doesn’t even sing most of the first verse, it’s all John until the last two lines. It’s frenetic, but controlled. Everything about “Raid on Entebbe” contributes to the idea that the speaker is intense and hurried, but they’re definitely comfortable with the way they interact with the world. “They always do this when I come home” comes off as almost bothered, even though they’re talking about regime change. It would be too much for us, but our song’s hero is too busy to care.

“Incredibly, impossibly dry air” is a very John line. Everything is more powerful when it’s more specific, and even without the location in the title you can feel that air. You can imagine yourself standing outside, tucking your shirt in and hoping that the world doesn’t end around you. The lyrics take a backseat, though, which is rare in a Goats song. It’s one of the shortest songs in the catalog, but it’s even shorter lyrically. There are 65 seconds of lyrics and roughly 160 words in the whole song. That’s essentially unheard of for the man that fit “I threw a rock at a crow who was playing in the mulch of some rosebushes by the motel office” in one line in “Distant Stations,” but “Raid on Entebbe” is all about feeling. It’s not about what actually happens, but it’s about the Goats making you feel anxious. Every listen will make you reach for a watch that you don’t wear.

 

002. Going to Queens

Alex Russell Sweden , , , , , , ,

 

As two people consider the sounds of children in New York through a window, they realize they may not know each other 

Track: “Going to Queens”
Album: Sweden (1995)

“Going to Queens” fits into a number of categories for Goats songs. Most notably, it’s part of the “Going to…” series. Depending on which title you use for some of the unofficially named deep-cut, live-only songs, there are somewhere around 40 or 50 songs that feature “Going to” in their title. Fans think about the series in different ways, but they all recognize the importance of location in John Darnielle’s world. It’s partially about being specific — “Queens” is mentioned in the song before “New York City,” and it tells you so much more about where they are — but it’s also about the beauty of the mundane. In “Going to Queens,” the couple isn’t on one particularly beautiful street corner or in one awesome bedroom, they’re just in the same place that lots of other people are. They aren’t special, everything is special.

Sweden is the second studio album, and “Going to Queens” is a standout track. Despite seeming slight at first listen when compared to the later material, it actually conveys a lot with a little. It features the original female vocalist, bassist, and only-other-Goats-member Rachel Ware, and she lends a haunting quality to the track. She’s actually louder than John in the song, and John comes off almost uncertain in his delivery. It suggests that the characters are talking to each other in an intimate moment when their bodies are “heavy on” each other, and that they don’t really have enough of a connection to keep going. It’s a common sentiment, and “Going to Queens” benefits from being adaptable to multiple situations. Everyone understands saying “You were all I ever wanted // you were all I’d ever need” and hoping that this time, saying it out loud will make it become true.

001. Up the Wolves

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

 

John Darnielle says it’s about “the moment in your quest for revenge when you learn to embrace the futility of it.”

Track: “Up the Wolves”
Album: The Sunset Tree (2005)

The Sunset Tree is emotionally raw. It dives deep into John’s childhood and isn’t uncomfortable holding the camera too long on a shot of abuse. In other songs he’s being directly attacked or broken down, but the meaning of “Up the Wolves” is more abstract. With stand-ins of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome who, according to myth, were raised by a wolf, John offers an anthem to people in tough situations. Those two waited, anxiously, secure in the knowledge that the wolf was coming home. John wants his troubled listener to know that some kind of wolf is coming home for them, too.

Every comment section about “Up the Wolves” is overrun with fans of The Walking Dead, since the song was used in an emotional moment during a recent season of the show. It’s a fitting scene, filled with catharsis and literal fire, and once you see two beloved characters give in to a foolish impulse just to keep morale high during a dark time, you understand that no other song would fit.

You may take issue with the amount of “hope” in “Up the Wolves.” It’s entirely possible that the wolf doesn’t come back. That isn’t all that important, though. Like so many songs by the Mountain Goats, it’s not about the result. It’s about the importance of recognizing that troubles may be temporary. Much like the opening lines to a more recent Goats song (“Do every stupid thing // that makes you feel alive”), the lyrics of “Up the Wolves” plead with the listener to wait for a proverbial wolf. Get yourself in “fighting trim” and “bribe the officials” when you have to, but beyond all else, don’t lose hope.