November 10th, 2009 / 1:42 pm
Reviews
The Life of the Goats So Far
If there’s a musician out there today writing more literary lyrics than John Darnielle, the great dark Chekhovian pen, voice and guitar at the center of The Mountain Goats, I haven’t heard her or him. (And don’t come near me with that Decembrists shit.) To help mark the occasion of the release of a new Mountain Goats album (their 17th studio effort), The Life of the World to Come, I asked extreme Goats enthusiast Alec Niedenthal to write a piece about the band’s body of work. Click through and find yourself in the life of the world of Alec’s capable, busy hands.
Allmusic used to have a review of Zopilote Machine that’s since been removed. The review was a small, haphazard one, like, “This is a normal Mountain Goats album, etc.” But then it said, too, something about the song “Going to Georgia.” I’m not sure of the precise wording, but the gist was: “’Going to Georgia’ [...] one of the greatest songs ever written.”
“Going to Georgia” is a legend. It’s a myth, a winding and violent tall-tale. It’s a weep. “Going to Georgia” lives all-purposefully, rawly in my heart. I can rarely listen to “Going to Georgia.” It’s one of my least-listened to Mountain Goats songs because I never want this song to die or weaken, though it can never die or weaken, because if any work of art is alive, it’s “Going to Georgia.”
I want to live inside of “Going to Georgia,” sleep there, be raised by there, eat there, hunt there, fish there, shop there, masturbate there, graduate from there, work there.
But “Going to Georgia” wraps itself up barely beyond two minutes. “Going to Georgia” turns out to be massively finite, and ends, and then begins the next song on Zopilote Machine, which is kind of a throwaway.
Listening to “Going to Georgia,” for me, resembles the movement of reading a work of literature, where most music, for me, is not subsumable by literature. I try not to affirm borders between media, but literary and musical experiences tend to happen entirely outside of each other. I can listen to “Lust for Life” by Girls two thousand times per day, do other shit while listening, sing along a little, and each listen blurs into one collectively bored moment. But, “Going to Georgia”: in two minutes, there are worlds and there are whole histories on fire. One of my favorite stories, and one to which I consistently return, “Unrediscovered, Unrenameable” by Christine Schutt, feels like that--like I’m collaborating in someone’s suffering, and approaching, somehow, empathy. When I read, or hear, I guess, “I begged against his ear to breathe,” I am taken out of me. Similar experience when I hear--read, whatever--John Darnielle’s narrator sing: “And you smile as you ease the gun from my hand.”
There are reams of Mountain Goats songs which hurt me similarly, internally, in a “literary” way. Off of older records, there’s “Going to Queens” from Sweden--probably my favorite Goats record--which gets me all delicate and yearning. “Color in Your Cheeks” from All Hail West Texas. “Elijah” from The Coroner’s Gambit, especially any live version. “Night of the Mules” from Protein Source of the Future is a virile ride through some snowy Darniellian hell.
From the new, studio-polished records, “Marduk T-Shirt Men’s Room Incident” off of Heretic Pride kicks my broken bits all into gear--those strings! (Am I being masocritical here?) “In Corolla” from Get Lonely gets me truly lonely--is the narrator drowning himself, or swimming? “Lion’s Teeth” from The Sunset Tree articulates perfectly the vertigo of bothering your father (and the bewilderment of watching police arrive). There are, of course, standouts on smaller releases. The underappreciated Babylon Springs EP is magnificent.
Each Darnielle song is a short story: a tight vignette about someone’s struggle. As such, it’s easy to find yourself--your special hurt, the weird way you’re lost--scattered and tucked around this wide, wide discography. Recently, I’ve been finding the exploded chunks of me around The Goats’s new album, The Life of the World to Come.
Much has been made out of Life’s subject matter--each track is titled after a biblical verse--but really, religion is nothing new for Darnielle. He’s been doing religion the whole time. If you listen closely, from the start he’s been a little Bible-obsessed. His best stories are entirely normal encounters between absolute faith and absolute doubt. Darnielle’s Bible verses are of course only stories, but they are the stories our hearts whisper at our bones to keep us moving. Religious or not, Darnielle’s work has always seemed to articulate, even in an age of nihilism and broken discourse, how each vital moment is encoded with religion, with the trappings of faith. Life looks closer, sets a more studied eye against the place of faith in desolate lives. And desolate lives do indeed people this record. We’re tugged and shaken by doomed biblical loves, Darnielle’s own collapse in the face of his mother-in-law’s death, a murderer confronted with the heartbeats--metaphorical or not--of his victim. The album is quiet, but not like Get Lonely--if this makes sense, it’s spiritually loud. Spiritually, it crackles.
But, again, nothing new: the entire Mountain Goats oeuvre has much to do with the human spirit, what makes it go. In one of his “Creative Writing 101″ essays, Justin refers to the project of the arts as the disclosure of sameness through otherness, i.e. as exposing the deeply felt connective tissue running through “us,” both in spite of and through the radical difference between us. There are plenty of “singer-songwriters” (not that Darnielle would necessarily fit snugly here) who flop trying-- however sexy (Conor Oberst) and lyrically astute and earnest--and who, by valorizing their own suffering, deflate the sameness-through-otherness movement into a return to the same. Though Darnielle’s style might superficially resemble these guys and girls--acoustic guitars, mostly gentle and nasally voice, lyrically driven--the biology of his work, the organs, reflect a matchless depth, an opacity which allows for more deeply engaged storytelling. Darnielle treats his work as a gift, as a sharp, parlous, often prosaic brushing with the unknown, with the fringes of human experience. Even in his most self-concerned work, Get Lonely, the self-as-subject is a character, a small, removed voice. In this way, he is telling stories; his work is its own fractured Bible, a religion itself, and the reader may or may not pray along.
The Life of the World to Come closes, on the wonderful “Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace,” with the aforementioned killer telling himself--as if he could do anything else--to “keep moving.” There is no clear confidence that he can outstrip his end, only a drive, an essential inertia. These last two words give way to the rhythm of the heart which beats beneath all of Darnielle’s stories; it thumps away, and the album ends. It’s an odd gesture, certainly, but whose heart is it? The murderer’s or the murdered’s? Darnielle wants to ask, finally, and this questions shoots through his darkest, most violent work: does it matter?
Tags: Alec Niedenthal, The Mountain Goats
Live is amazing. He gets more energy out of an acousting guitar and a voice than anyone else I’ve seen.
reply
Sam Beam’s lyrics are as literary though more conventional.
Isaac Brock?
Conor Oberst?
Spencer Krug?
Literary or better? And literary in what regard? And in what school of literature?
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 2:10 pmdavidpeak—
i like the lyrics of dan bejar & destoyer
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 2:18 pmdavidpeak—
i meant destroyer
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 3:51 pmAmber—
I like destroyer, too. Conor Oberst, though–I mean, I like Bright Eyes, but he’s a whiny baby lyrically.
November 10th, 2009 / 2:19 pmBAC—
sufjan stevens has an mfa in fiction, i think? he wrote the intro for the best american non-required reading in 2007. his lyrics are literary as well.
so are lil wayne’s.
so are das racist:
‘i’m at the pizza hut/i’m at that taco bell/i’m at that combination pizza hut and taco bell’
that sums up our whole generation.
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 2:27 pmalec niedenthal—
did you see sufjan’s recent interview in pitchfork? dude’s gone bonkers.
November 11th, 2009 / 3:11 pmman—
My favorite Das Racist line is: “black cop, black cop, black cop, black cop, black cop, you don’t even get paid a whole lot, you don’t even get paid a whole lot.” Brilliant.
Also, that Sufjan shit is fantastic:
“I’m wondering, why do people make albums anymore when we just download? Why are songs like three or four minutes, and why are records 40 minutes long? They’re based on the record, vinyl, the CD, and these forms are antiquated now. So can’t an album be eternity, or can’t it be five minutes?” He pauses. “I no longer really have faith in the album anymore. I no longer have faith in the song.”
He’s having a crisis and it is beautiful. I’m excited to see what he does next. He did a mixed-medium performance based on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway! He’ll come out of his ‘dark night of the soul’ stronger than he was before.
November 10th, 2009 / 2:28 pmMike Meginnis—
Isaac Brock is a spectacular lyricist. He makes weird logic tangles and beautiful sadness.
I like Spencer Krug a lot but I’m there more for the music in that case.
reply
I just saw him in Chi last week when he came through. He did ‘Going to Georgia,’ but most of the songs were off the new album.
The first encore was ‘This Year’ AND ‘No Children.’ Someone start discussing why This Year and No Children are anthems. I’m going to go get lunch, and when I come back, there’ll be more interesting things to read.
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 2:37 pmRebekah—
By which I mean, this is a really nice bit, and I like all the same songs you like, so I like you. If A = B and B = C, A = C, you know.
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 3:06 pmalec niedenthal—
i’m actually kind of over this year, weirdly. i might have overplayed it. it used to have the same driving force as no children–no longer.
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 3:19 pmRebekah—
I think I try to do what you do with ‘Going to Georgia’ with both of those.
It was so strange/wonderful/surprising/weird to see all the young (young!) kids at the show shouting along with No Children/This Year. I think that going on Colbert has really changed his total audience – not core audience, probably. How did those kids even hear those songs?
November 10th, 2009 / 3:51 pmPhoebe—
No children has never killed me like it seems to kill other people. I think I might have no soul.
Going to Queens is wickedly awesome, though, and I’m glad it got a mention here.
John K. Samson anyone?
reply
What a brilliant piece by Alec. I’m seeing them play tomorrow in Portland; I’ll be thinking about this.
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 2:26 pmMichael Schaub—
I mean, I’m seeing the Mountain Goats play, not seeing Justin and Alec play. Though I’d pay good money for that, too.
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 2:27 pmalec niedenthal—
thank you, michael.
reply
November 11th, 2009 / 10:45 pmAndy—
Yes, they do have some good songs but what can you possibly see in a band that is this boring and loves death metal this much? Please explain why the mountain goats are a band that is worth talking about.
reply
This is a great piece of rock writing.
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 3:03 pmalec niedenthal—
thanks, adam.
reply
Inspiring piece, Alec. Makes me want to invest more time with MGs (I’ve thought him occasionally brilliant and often ridiculous, but I’d like now to take another look).
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 3:04 pmalec niedenthal—
yeah, i think the best “giving the MGs another chance” album is nine black poppies. really cohesive, short, and every song is punchy.
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 3:12 pmBlake Butler—
i agree, i never got em, but now i’mma try. thanks alec, this is awesome, as stated.
reply
I get so sick of literature blogs with videos…not enough music blogs around or what?
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 3:23 pmBlake Butler—
mather, i’m having a birthday party soon, you wanna come? we really couldnt do it without you.
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 3:44 pmMatthew Simmons—
He seems nice.
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 4:02 pmAdam Robinson—
Blake, when is your birthday?
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 4:05 pmBlake Butler—
jan 14
Justin
“If there’s a musician out there today writing more literary lyrics than John Darnielle, the great dark Chekhovian pen, voice and guitar at the center of The Mountain Goats, I haven’t heard her or him.”
Duh _ Katie Perry, man! Are you smoking crack or something:
i hope you hang yourself with your H&M scarf
While jacking off listening to mozart
You bitch and moan about LA
Wishing you were in the rain reading Hemingway
You don’t eat meat
And drive electrical cars
You’re so indie rock it’s almost an art
You need SPF 45 just to stay alive
If thats not “the great dark Chekhovian pen” then I don’t know what is.
reply
Get Lonely as a self-concerned work? It’s hard for me to see something so clearly fictional (particularly when compared to something like Sunset Tree) as the ultimately self-concerned work.
I saw him play twice, once right after Sunset Tree and once after Get Lonely. There was such a palpable difference in the performances (and the audiences–we were up front for both; at the first one, people made room for one another, danced together, but at the second concert these little . . . girls! shoved us out of the way) that I’ve been sort of reluctant to go see him play again. I love him so much that I don’t want to just become this totally bitter, jaded old hipster.
Which undoubtedly I already am.
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 4:36 pmalec niedenthal—
i’m pretty sure he has claimed in interviews that get lonely is a semi-autobiographical work about a past relationship. the reason the sunset tree is so successful, i think, is because JD resists writing himself into it. he doesn’t do that so well on get lonely, i think–which doesn’t devalue the album at all for me.
reply
This piece made my afternoon. He’s one of the only musicians I’ve listened to since early college that I haven’t 1)grown out of or 2)seen slide downhill or disappear.
reply
Will Sheff from Okkervil River is pretty literary.
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 4:38 pmalec niedenthal—
yeah, will sheff is a great songwriter. emphasis on “song.” i made the mistake of reading some music review he wrote.
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 5:26 pmVaughan Simons—
Check out the lyrics (and music) of the spin-off band from Okkervil River, Shearwater, led by Jonathan Meiburg. Beautiful and haunting. (I don’t think Will Sheff is any longer a part of the act, though).
reply
Where was the review? Link to it?
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 6:56 pmalec niedenthal—
i found it on their site, which appears now to be down
reply
I have played the Mountain Goats’ ‘Dilaudid’ ’til I’m blue in the face. I do admire his lyrics a lot, but sometimes the musical accompaniments don’t match them for power, in my opinion. I like literary lyricists, but all too often they seem to think that literary doesn’t have to be matched with musicality.
Some others?
Nick Cave. Obviously. “Prolix, prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can’t fix!”
I would agree with Spencer Krug and Dan Bejar, too.
Luke Haines – used to lead The Auteurs. Don’t know if they made any impact over that side of the Atlantic, but as snarky, black-hearted lyricism goes, you can’t get much better.
Jarvis Cocker, too – but quite honestly, in retrospect, he’s a bit of a Luke Haines-lite.
I’d also argue for Daniel Johnston as a literary lyricist. Albeit in a *different* way.
Kristin Hersh … I’ll go now. I could be here all night.
reply
Dave Bazan tells a good story. Mostly in Pedro the Lion form, though Headphones and the ‘David Bazan’ stuff does as well. He spent a good fifteen minutes discussing the books he was reading while on tour a few years back a show.
reply
Oh, and can I just lower the tone by offering this?
John Darnielle does an Ace of Bass cover. Yes, really.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2wGvFa_gIA&feature=related
reply
i love the mountain goats.
dave berman of the silver jews lyrics are the best poetry in music.
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 6:46 pmChris—
And the best poet, on paper.
reply
November 11th, 2009 / 2:32 amdaniel bailey—
i wouldn’t go that far.
reply
November 10th, 2009 / 6:58 pmalec niedenthal—
well, though the distinctions here aren’t so distinct i’d say: whereas JD’s songs are short stories, dave’s are poems. yoni wolf of why? erases this border nicely.
reply
November 11th, 2009 / 2:32 amdaniel bailey—
i agree with your distinctions.
yoni wolf is the shit.
reply
November 11th, 2009 / 4:10 amMike Meginnis—
Oh Jesus yes to Why?.
Just discovered them and I’m completely hooked.
this post made me happy. john darnielle gives me reasons to live.
reply
November 11th, 2009 / 2:54 amMichael Schaub—
Word.
reply
Quote: Lyrics? Sam the Sham wrote great lyrics.
reply
My favorite songwriters in no particular order: Sole, Yoni Wolf (Why?), Doseone, Pedestrian, David Berman, Isaac Brock, Conor Oberst, Andre 3000, Jeff Magnum (Neutral Milk Hotel), Efrim Menuck (Silver Mt. Zion/Godspeed), Regina Spektor, Lil Wayne…
reply
November 13th, 2009 / 11:28 pmlorian—
yoni wolf blows my mind.
reply
John Darnielle = my favourite lyricist. Alec, this piece is fantastic.
reply
[...] go over there and check out Mark’s Goats Day. Also, you might want to refresh yourself on this Goats essay by Alec Niedenthal, published here last November. Tags: john darnielle, mark doten, Mountain [...]