we shall all be healed

600. We Shall All Be Healed

Alex Russell Unreleased , , , , , , ,

“We Shall All Be Healed” finds our songwriter going back home again, literally, and drawing a line from A to B.

Track: “We Shall All Be Healed”
Album: Unreleased

Also called “Rose Quarter Drifting,” the unreleased title track “We Shall All Be Healed” recalls the part of Portland John Darnielle lived in during the times described on that album. He lived in what are now the Paramount Apartments, where someone recently (as of this writing) left a review of the place that references “Beat the Devil” that the owner of the property did not get. The owner did reply with “In almost 30 years, things change for the better. Thank goodness there’s no more of that here,” however. I suppose it’s open to debate if that person is referencing the song or the source material John Darnielle actually lived through, but we digress.

This song describes physically going home and wondering what, if any, of you is in there. “You weren’t there, and neither was anybody else” is a helluva line for something so simple, because no one is there if you go home. Someone else could probably break down all the names we hear in this song but the point is neither who they are or where this specific place is. You can go there, if you want. I did, a decade or so ago, because I was in Portland and was curious. It’s just another place, for me. It’s more than that for the man who wrote this song and lived that life. You do not need to go to the Paramount Apartments. You can just listen to the stories that came from there and, if you need to or want to, go to where “it all flared out,” for you.

423. Your Belgian Things

Alex Russell We Shall All Be Healed , , , , , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCSpyMJRnNQ

“Your Belgian Things” pictures loss as something that someone can actually take away rather than the ghost of something else.

Track: “Your Belgian Things”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

I think it’s somewhat fair to say “Your Belgian Things” is the love song from We Shall All Be Healed. As with many other “love songs” that John Darnielle has written, that needs some explaining. The entire album is about doing drugs and the experiences that brings you, but “Your Belgian Things” focuses on the experiences it takes from you.

At a show in 2012, Darnielle said that the things being referenced are “opaque, unreadable symbols to everybody else.” What he means, as I take it, isn’t so much that the specific things like the actual trunks and suitcases of items are mysterious, but that the things you hold onto are your things alone. When you think of dark moments in your life there are probably unreadable symbols of your own. I still remember a specific red lighter and a specific tiny MP3 player from decades ago on a particular night where I’d have identified with this song directly, but also the loss of odds and ends that only upset me when I realized I couldn’t find them later from times I wanted to stay within.

These things being physical or not doesn’t really matter. I’m sure they’re not even intended to be, though I do like the summation of these feelings as something a moving company could come grab and take away. It does feel that way, sometimes. The love here is in the distance, way too far to even say it’s in the background, but there’s enough to know there’s a loss being experienced.

422. Linda Blair Was Born Innocent

Alex Russell We Shall All Be Healed , , , , , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyrQCY4rzDg

The title references a movie about how bad things happen to good people, but “Linda Blair Was Born Innocent” isn’t focused on morality.

Track: “Linda Blair Was Born Innocent”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

The title of “Linda Blair Was Born Innocent” refers to a TV movie from the 70s called Born Innocent where Linda Blair played an abused teen whose life was destroyed by said abuse and a system that was indifferent to her suffering. It’s somewhat famous for how unexpectedly extreme it was for viewers and for the aftermath of a copycat crime. I’d heard this song hundreds of times before I was ever curious about what it meant beyond a reference to Linda Blair and what I assumed was The Exorcist. I guess it still could be, but the more direct, obvious one is really the point.

It’s not hard to see how John Darnielle could relate to Born Innocent. Whether he saw himself in it or not, it fits the mold of young characters being impacted by forces they couldn’t control. I don’t want to analyze this too much more because the obvious connection is just that, but if you make assumptions beyond it I don’t think that’s really appropriate or the point. It’s just an interesting starting point.

This was one of the first songs written for We Shall All Be Healed, but more than that it’s become emblematic because of how it starts. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like every press video and interview for the album started with that bit. It’s memorable, as is the surprise rhyme that ends the chorus. Even after you’ve heard it a few times you’ll expect the rhyme with “drown” to be “we’re going down,” but there’s a much different, and potentially darker, meaning behind “we’re going downtown.” I think it means the start of another shopping trip.

421. Slow West Vultures

Alex Russell Palmcorder Yajna, We Shall All Be Healed , , , , , , ,

We Shall All Be Healed opens with “Slow West Vultures” and gets right to the point.

Track: “Slow West Vultures”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

There’s a lot happening in “Slow West Vultures.” Someone breaks a bottle in the background. There are at least two seemingly unrelated vocal samples, a device you hear on the early albums often but not so much anymore. The backing vocals are elevated, which isn’t totally unheard of but is rarely this notable. It signals that this album isn’t quite what you’ve heard before, which is fitting. This is post Tallahassee, so the band’s sound has already changed, but it’s pre The Sunset Tree, so the honesty is new.

John Darnielle has often been accused of being the narrator of his songs, which he says he understands but disavows when he can. In the early days of writing this series I was surprised to confront how often the gender identity of the narrator is even ambiguous, suggesting that it isn’t even a male speaker. The person in We Shall All Be Healed is not explicitly John Darnielle like it is in The Sunset Tree, but if not, it’s much closer than it usually is.

The lyrics are a relatively straightforward affair for We Shall All Be Healed. Everyone does drugs, everyone understands they’re going to do more drugs. There’s some nice wordplay here, but I’m always struck by “ready for the future” because it calls back to the album title and the joke within it. There’s likely not a future and likely nobody here is going to be healed.

392. Against Pollution

Alex Russell We Shall All Be Healed , , , , , , ,

“Against Pollution” is all about those opening lines, but after the shock it asks you to imagine your own reaction.

Track: “Against Pollution”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

“Against Pollution” is not a true story. A whole lot of We Shall All Be Healed is, but this one is just about how you might feel if you found yourself in this situation. A lot of Mountain Goats songs are about things that happen, remarkable or otherwise, in a store. This is, maybe, though I never want to make statements like this that I can’t prove, the only one where someone works behind the counter. It’s a shifted perspective away from the people shoplifting or going through episodes or otherwise having an unrelated experience, and it’s honestly one that’s pretty easy to explain. If someone comes in and tries to kill you, you may have to do what you have to do.

This is an easy statement to make unless you have to interrogate it. The narrator here doesn’t, really, going so far as to say this happened “a year or so ago.” You probably always have a pretty good grasp on exactly when you shot someone in the face, unless you’re the kind of person who didn’t really have to interrogate it. “Against Pollution” is a great song, especially live where the whole thing feels like rain and thunder, but the point I always focus on is how this person feels about what happened. They mention that “something just came over” them and that they went to the Catholic church. This feels disconnected in the song from the self-defense gunshot. Who is this person that would “do it again” and what are we to make of how they talk about this? It’s not fully a judgement, but it’s an interesting look into something you don’t want to imagine for yourself.

391. Cotton

Alex Russell We Shall All Be Healed , , , , , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umm6el4mitw

“Cotton” is about specific cotton for a specific purpose, but it’s also about the things you leave behind physically but not mentally.

Track: “Cotton”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

It’s kinda remarkable that a song like “Cotton” has been played hundreds of times live. It’s an outstanding song on an outstanding album, but it’s so personal. John Darnielle has said that it’s about imbuing objects with yourself such that when they go away you feel the pain. I relate to this deeply, and my personal totems aren’t as specific as John Darnielle’s, but the process of how they get there feels similar. John Darnielle’s father owned a desk that the younger Darnielle took to Portland. We Shall All Be Healed is about what happened in Portland. You don’t need me to tell you that it didn’t go all that well in Portland.

I’ve listened to “Cotton” countless times. It is one of those songs. It’s catchy, in the way that songs like this are catchy, but it also rewards deeper study. You’ll get most of the context the first time through, presuming you pick up on what “the stick pins and the cottons” in the drawer of that same desk are used for in this apartment in Portland. You don’t necessarily need to know that it was his father’s desk and that there are complex emotions as something goes from being a childhood memory into a place where you keep your drugs. The strength of We Shall All Be Healed and the best songs on it, like “Cotton,” is that you do not need to be exactly there to be close enough to count. Maybe you did not have a difficult time with specific drugs in specific Portland, but I would bet that there was something you once had that you no longer have. Now, you know.

352. Pigs That Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph Of

Alex Russell We Shall All Be Healed , , , , , , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4CfG7cKmfk

John Darnielle and Peter Hughes, don’t you forget it, belt it out in “Pigs That Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph Of.”

Track: “Pigs That Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph Of”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

I’m sure there are others, but there are not many songs beyond “Pigs That Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph Of” that have a “Comments by John Darnielle and Peter Hughes” section on the Mountain Goats Wiki. I’m on a tight word count, so I’ll have to call this “the song” for all other mentions, but let us just bask in that title. It’s even a joke, as though you were looking up a lot of other details about these pigs. The song, as it were, is about someone who comes from Chino and they now are going to jail. Well, they’re supposed to go to jail, but they have other ideas.

The section on the Wiki refers to a conversation that’s too long to quote here from, but has Peter Hughes and John Darnielle talking about people who commented on the song online. The commenter mentioned John but not Peter and Peter laughed about it in an introduction during a recent streamed concert the band did. It’s easy to do this, because John Darnielle by himself “is” the Mountain Goats, but the Mountain Goats are also everyone in the band with him. Just as you must be careful not to assume that every “I” in these songs is John Darnielle, the writing is also a group effort.

The song itself is phenomenal, but you don’t need me to tell you that. This is wishful thinking from someone who really needs it and it’s the best “woo” on any studio track. Scream it out when you need to steel yourself. There are other songs for harder times, but this is about a fists clenched, wolf-howl moment before bad news.

307. Letter from Belgium

Alex Russell Palmcorder Yajna, We Shall All Be Healed , , , , , , ,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU5Xv1LK4X0

“Letter from Belgium” is a song for lockdown that wasn’t intended to be that originally, but now can be your COVID-19 jam.

Track: “Letter from Belgium”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004) and Letter from Belgium (2004)

At the start of quarantine in 2020, John Darnielle tweeted that “Letter from Belgium” is the “quarantine deep cut” among Mountain Goats songs. I’d heard the song hundreds of times before that moment and never connected it to the experience of the moment. It’s impossible not to hear it, though, when you’re listening for it: “We’ve been past the point of help since early April.” Depending on where you live, COVID-19 became a reality in your world around then. A weird line, especially in a song about “waiting for the fever to break.”

“Letter from Belgium” is about a different cause for alarm, but the panic is similar. These characters are locked in rooms with other substances they need, to the point where they reject the world. They obsess over stage makeup and odd, disconnected artwork. They express fear of neighbors and outsiders. It’s very much in line with the We Shall All Be Healed character study.

It doesn’t matter if you read it through a modern lens or through the album’s. This is a song for when you can’t go outside, whether there’s an external reason for that or not. Sometimes you’re just in there because you have to be in there, John Darnielle tells us, and you’ll make do with what you have. The items are only connected if you get in the right headspace, which is hopefully not a place you find yourself for an extended period of time.

055. Palmcorder Yajna

Alex Russell Palmcorder Yajna, We Shall All Be Healed , , , , , , ,

“Palmcorder Yajna” may be the most plainly stated Mountain Goats song about the day-to-day of an addict.

Track: “Palmcorder Yajna”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

The term “single” is a strange one. For “the song of the Summer” and whatnot it still makes sense, but for a band like the Mountain Goats it mostly strikes me as an interesting bit of trivia. The people that are going to get consumed by an album of songs about tweakers in the Pacific Northwest aren’t going to do it because they heard the single. Sometimes it’s fascinating to find out what the “single” is from an album. That said for some albums, the single from the anti-meth-but-mostly-just-reflective-about-meth We Shall All Be Healed is “Palmcorder Yajna” and it couldn’t really be anything else.

“Letter from Belgium” rocks enough (and was the second single as a result) and “Pigs That Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph Of” is fun enough that it was recently played on Late Night with Seth Meyers, but the perfectly sneered vocals and infectious drums of “Palmcorder Yajna” leave no room for dispute. You might call it “fun” the first few times you hear it. The scream of “if anybody comes to see me // tell ’em they just missed me by a minute // if anybody comes into our room while we’re asleep // I hope they incinerate everybody in it” is peak yelling John Darnielle, and it makes this the kind of song even a casual fan can appreciate.

Under the surface, it’s terrifying. The opening lines describe Holt Boulevard, where a younger John Darnielle was told to tell the cops he bought his heroin if he ever got caught, because there were too many dealers for the cops to ever figure out which he meant. The Travelodge of “Palmcorder Yajna” is really the setting for all the terror on the album, and it may be the closest to perspective that Darnielle ever lets his addicts get.

046. All Up the Seething Coast

Alex Russell We Shall All Be Healed , , , , , , , , ,

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7lxXM-gVq0

The meth addict in “All Up the Seething Coast” doesn’t resist help, but wants you to know it’ll do no good.

Track: “All Up the Seething Coast”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

On an album like We Shall All Be Healed, where every song is about meth addiction, a song like “All Up the Seething Coast” is clearly necessary. You have your “Quito” and your “Pigs That Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph Of” that represent the glory of getting through it all and you have your “The Young Thousands” and your “Home Again Garden Grove” that challenge that idea and suggest that you might not get through it in the first place. If those are the two options, songs like “Mole” and “All Up the Seething Coast” follow the journey across the line from A to B. “Mole” is an ending (“Against Pollution” is another, from a different perspective) but “All Up the Seething Coast” is the album’s middle.

The addict in “All Up the Seething Coast” isn’t making a judgement about addiction, they’re just laying down the facts of their life. They say “and nothing you can say or do will stop me // and a thousand dead friends can’t stop me” not to ask this other person in his life to stop, but just to express the futility of it all. Spend your energy how it works for you, Samaritan, but understand that legions have died for the cause and I’m still here in this apartment with what I need.

It’s not the kind of song that gets played live and it’s fairly clear in its message, so it doesn’t get much dissection in the normal places. The most anyone ever comments on is the “sugar” metaphor. Meth apparently totally undoes your appetite, but you still crave sweetness. They may “show up for dinner when you tell me to” but they’re going to live by their rules: lots and lots of what they need and nothing else.