Undercard

250. Ambivalent Landscape Z

Alex Russell Undercard , , , , , ,

In the cornfields of Iowa, clues begin to mount but may not help for the narrator in “Ambivalent Landscape Z.”

Track: “Ambivalent Landscape Z”
Album: Undercard (2010)

John Darnielle wrote a novel called “Universal Harvester” that’s worth your time, but you’ve probably already read it if you’re reading something like this. The phrase showed up in “Ambivalent Landscape Z” nearly a decade earlier as a narrator spoke of the “cold gaze of the Universal Harvester.” The book has overshadowed the company, as far as Google searches go, but Universal Harvester was a company that made farming equipment in Iowa that was acquired by another company that makes farming equipment in Iowa. The company that acquired them said they weren’t going to change anything. I don’t know if that turned out to be true or not.

Both the novel and “Ambivalent Landscape Z” take place in the fields of Iowa. This is the “sequel,” I suppose, to “Malevolent Cityscape X” and “Malevolent Seascape Y,” though I’m not sure there’s enough of a line to draw through all three that it matters. In this song, one character tries to track another one and fails to do so, both emotionally and physically. “You threw your car keys away,” they note, “you left a bunch of dummy footprints on the clay.” This is someone who definitely does not want to be followed, but that’s not going to stop some people.

All of this happens, but then we have the chorus. “I’ll never see you again // but until then” is the kind of contradiction that a John Darnielle narrator loves. This person is piecing together a faked crime scene and losing faith that it’s one they can solve, even with the information that it’s not real. Who among us hasn’t felt that way, to say nothing of needing a fallout shelter to “fall out in.” The delivery is stellar, and it’s really a standout in the Extra Glenns/Lens catalog.

118. Some Other Way

Alex Russell Undercard , , , , , ,

“Some Other Way” looks at grand gestures and doing dangerous things to “win back” someone who is long gone.

Track: “Some Other Way”
Album: Undercard (2010)

Undercard is the first album from The Extra Lens, which is John Darnielle and Franklin Bruno. They’re same two guys that make up The Extra Glenns. Franklin Bruno plays piano and several other instruments on a number of Mountain Goats releases. At some point, the difference between The Extra Lens/Glenns and the Goats themselves becomes academic.

Franklin Bruno wrote “Some Other Way” and it shows. The opening four lines see the narrator string a rope to hang themselves and fill a pot of tea with poison. Just as quickly, they decide those aren’t going to work and that they need “some other way” to earn the love of another person. Bruno also wrote the song “Houseguest” as a part of Nothing Painted Blue, which has been covered dozens of times by the Goats and features a similarly unhinged narrator trying to express themselves in dark ways.

By the next verse we’re back to the same scene. The windows are sealed and the gas is filling the room and then, just as suddenly, the window is smashed and the narrator is back to the drawing board. There are a lot of ways to read the motivations behind these actions, but the threat of suicide as an unhealthy means of earning love is desperate behavior. The song fades out with a repetition of “to make you love me” that’s haunting given what we know about the character, but the music is almost jaunty. It lends a pulse to the song and seems to suggest that while this person is definitely going about it wrong, they know that. “There are things a letter won’t explain,” after all, but you can’t make your case if you aren’t here to make it.