My all-time Top Ten records could easily be comprised
entirely of Mountain Goats albums. This is no joke. No songwriter speaks to my
soul quite like John Darnielle, and were he to forge some sort of tent-revival
spiritual following cult-like group, I would follow him into the dark night.
Putting nothing but Mountain Goats records in my Top Ten is easy, but deciding
the order is hard. I know the top three would be Tallahassee, The Sunset Tree, and All Hail West Texas, but the order is variable. Depends on the
mood. Tonight, it’s All Hail West Texas, and
it’s a no doubter. It’s simultaneously the last of JD’s boombox recordings and
also the first album that feels like an actual Album rather than a collection
of songs. It’s a great leap forward and the songwriting here is at another
level, which is astounding considering the level Darnielle was already writing
at.
The night I asked Jenny out on our first date, I played a
solo show at the Eighth Street Taproom in Lawrence. My band the Kite Tails were
scheduled to open but my bandmates couldn’t make the gig and, for some insane
reason, I decided to soldier on. I used it as an opportunity to cover some of
my favorite songs. I’d just spent a year going through a rough breakup, and
finally cut it off for good with my ex about a month before. I was still in an
ugly place, and I put a lot of sad breakup songs on that setlist. “Source
Decay” was right there in the middle, and despite practicing it fifty times in
the lead-up to the show, I forgot one of the verses late in the song.
Fortunately, someone in the crowd (I think it was this guy Cal, who.
Ironically, I ended up playing in another band with a year or so down the line)
knew the song and sang out the start of the verse and I finished with as much
aplomb as I could. I was nervous, but I got lost in that song. I still get lost
in that song every time I hear it. That night I was exorcising demons I’d been
living with for too long, and I feel like yelling those lyrics into a
microphone to 20 people in a basement in a college town finally got me to move
along. I drank my free beer, saw Jenny for the first time in months, and was
riding high enough on the emotional buoy of the show to break character and for
once in my life act with confidence.
That was almost 7 years ago, we’ve been together ever since,
and the Mountain Goats is one of our collective favorite bands. This is what we
listen to when we listen to music. This is what I listen to when I listen to
music, and I can’t talk about the Mountain Goats without getting evangelical
and emotional. I can only surmise that this is what people who love the Bible
feel like. They wanna share the good news, they want you to feel as amazing as
they feel when they interface with something deeply spiritual. For me,
listening to a Mountain Goats record is as close as I get to going to church. Especially
this one, which was finally reissued on vinyl last year, thank god.
This is a very weird promo 7”, but hey, who does promo 7”s
any more? I’ll take it. It’ll do. What you get here is an acoustic version of
“The Underdog” (which, of all of Spoons incredible singles, seems to be the one
most championed by bro-dudes everywhere please kill me) and an experimental
b-side entitled "It Took Me a Rumor to Wonder, Now I’m Convinced I’m Going
Under.” “The Underdog” demo is fine because it shows that Britt Daniel knows
what the fuck he is doing. He knows any great pop song can hold its own in the
sparest of arrangements, and while some of Spoon’s weirder cuts aren’t built
for dude-and-guitar arrangements, Daniel could release an album of the Spoon
singles in this fashion and I’d give it so many spins. The thing about Spoon is
that they’re basically a classic rock band in the making. Classic rock for
2035. And when we look back at Spoon 20 years from now, we will see a trail of
absolutely devastating singles. You could argue about which is their best
album, but the fact that you’d argue means they’re all just goddamn great. GaGaGaGaGa is their high watermark in my
book. The three singles—“The Underdog,” “You Got Yr Cherry Bomb,” and “Don’t
You Evah”—could be the finest hour for three separate one-hit wonders. The
lead-off track “Don’t Make Me a Target” is as gripping a track one as you’d
expect from a group that can probably attribute 25% of their fanbase to
gripping track ones. “The Ghost of You Lingers” is one of those aforementioned
experimental leaning tracks that sounds exactly like its title. The one-two
punch at the end with “Finer Feelings” and “Black Like Me” practically forces
you to become born again in the church of rock n’ roll. “Black Like Me”
especially. That’s one I’d like to hear on that dream, Britt Daniel – Spoon, Acoustic record. That’s the
closer. That’s another single for a one-hit wonder and it’s not even a damn
single! But yeah, this is a weird 7”, but Spoon is a pretty weird band. I mean,
sure they’re violently accessible, but these guys get up to weird shit all the
time and it’s the juxtaposition of that envelope pushing and the fist-to-the-face
rock n’ roll that makes them so compelling.
Jenny and I used to joke about my record collection being our
“Cancer Fund.” So when I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and the bills
started piling up, I started listing records on Discogs. I didn’t go crazy, I
just pulled out the ones I knew I didn’t really need. Unfortunately, since this
straddled both 2014 and 2015, I had two deductibles and out-of-pocket maximum’s
to meet, which weighted in at $4,000. I got the hospital to knock off a big
chunk of what I owed them because we don’t even make enough money to pay rent
anywhere, so that was cool, but the bills were still a headache. I did pretty
good! But of course, I’m useless and for some bizarre reason I created a
wantlist on discogs so I could counter all of my good hard work. I only bought
three records, and only when the prices were just too good to refuse. And I
bought them under the guise of “LIFE IS SHORT ENJOY YOURSELF.” Of course this
was one of the records I bought, which is weird because I don’t think I had
even listened to this album all the way through before it showed up on my
doorstep.
While I hadn’t listened to Here’s Where the Strings Come In, I bought it without thinking
because it contains one of my favorite Superchunk songs: “Detroit Has a
Skyline.” Jesus Christ, just put that song on in the car, roll the windows down
and try not to get in a wreck as you scream along at the top of your lungs and
bash the dash with improvised faux-drum fills. If I found a karaoke bar that
had that track on tap I’d never leave. It’s one of the great rock songs of our
era and I dare you not to let this song grab you by the throat and drag you
across the ground for three minutes.
Unsurprisingly Here’s
Where the Strings Come In is as solid as every other Superchunk record. I
can’t think of a band with a more stable discography. After the first couple of
primordial records from about On the
Mouth on the level of quality has never ever dipped (and you could probably
even make it from No Pocky for Kitty on
depending on how sentimental you are). There really isn’t a point where the
wave crests; it just keeps rolling along, perfectly surfable. Strings might be the point where
Superchunk showed no signs of letting up on the sweet-spot indie rock. It was
cancer money well spent. Now if only I can get Indoor Living for a sweetheart deal…
Mikal Cronin is writing the
best Carl Newman songs since 2004. That isn’t a slight to either artist. Newman
and the New Pornographers have matured since their power-pop heyday, and Cronin
is there to carry the torch and deliver the hookiest, most satisfying alt-pop
since “Sing Me Spanish Techno.” I was late to Cronin’s coming out party with
his brainmeltingly blissful 2013 sophomore effort MCII, and mostly I’m just glad I caught the boat at all. I just
read an article that says you stop discovering new music at 33! And that it is
accelerated for parents! And I TOTALLY AGREE WITH THAT ARTICLE. I lack the
drive to comprehend the new and the interesting.
Fortunately, Cronin’s tunes
are so within my wheelhouse it’s no effort at all to enjoy his music. His third
album (and second on Merge, which is the best home these songs could have)
incorporates big, orchestral flourishes and you can practically feel the
ambition radiating off this thing. The whole back-half is a five-song suite
that breaks from the good-time pop mold and features Cronin laying it all on
the line. It’s a huge, diversely arranged song cycle that has the feel and flow
(and occasionally orchestrated) of a Neutral Milk Hotel record. It’s beautiful
and heartfelt departure that has my pop-loser soul yearning for more Mikal
Cronin. "Turn Around"
The day after I was
diagnosed with thyroid cancer, John Darnielle announced the new
Mountain Goats record. I took it as a silver lining and immediately
ordered the deluxe edition, no questions asked. I remember something
about the color of the vinyl: one gold, the color of the championship
belt. One green, the color of the money made. Holding the records now
and having spent significant time with this beautiful record, it's
bittersweet. There's the glory mixed with the fact that pro wrestling
is a job done by hired professionals to sell it as reality.
What JD does so well
here is drive home the fact that while the outcomes may be scripted,
wrestling isn't fake. It's an industry populated by real people
making the most of their chosen profession. These are tales from a
time when heels might still get the shit beat out of them in the
parking lot. Years before the nod and the wink of the WWE and
wrestling's acceptance as a sort of people's theater.
I'm sure every
review of Beat the Champ has
featured the writer's own personal history with professional
wrestling, because I'm sure most of us have one. If you were a child,
there was no doubt a phase where you and your brother practice frog
spashes and suplexes on oversized stuffed animals (and each other) on
your parents bed when they were at work. We
made gimmicks modeled after our heroes: Stone Cold Steve Austin, the
Undertaker, Edge, and all three faces of Mick Foley who might as well
have represented the Holy Trinity in those days: Mankind, Dude Love,
and Cactus Jack. The father, the son, and the hardcore holy ghost.
The gods of the Attitude Era. We fiercely despised Ted Turner's WCW
and tuned in diligently every week to Monday Night Raw even though
our tuning in didn't influence the ratings of the Monday Night Wars.
This will all sound like white noise to those who suffered through
more highbrow childhoods reading books while being raised by parents
who took them to museums on weekends, but for me, there were a solid
three years where I lived and died by wrestling.
I'm
writing this from my childhood bedroom in the basement of my parents
house where I am staying in isolation due to the radioactive iodine
therapy that will allegedly wipe out the rest of the thyroid cells in
my body. There's a notebook buried down here that contains the
complete kayfabe history and lineage of the matches, feuds, and title
changes amongst the giant tub of WWF wrestling figures now sitting in
the laundry room. I printed images of belts off the internet and
superglued them to pieces of felt affixed with tiny pieces of velcro.
I hand painted the Jakks Pacific figures when their gimmicks changed.
I was SERIOUS about this shit. At 12 years old, I thoughtfully booked
my own federation in the Hrabe Basement Territory. I told stories,
crafted drama, and had insane matches. I made my dad take me to the
hardware store to buy chicken wire so I could build a Hell in a Cell
(complete with a trap door in the roof to recreate Mankind getting
choke slammed through the damn cage and onto the mat below). I cut
the hell out of myself building it and every time I played with it,
but every major “Pay Per View” in my lineage had to have a hell
in the cell match. My Luna action figure featured “real” hair,
which ended up getting singed off in a no holds barred no
disqualification match for the women's title. Other wrestlers were
blown up with firecrackers. Thrown off the deck. Nearly cooked alive
in a “Grill Match.” It was an insane fantasy playground, and it's
the main reason I fell in love with storytelling. It's why I love
books and movies and why I write. It facilitated a creative awakening
and though I no longer follow “sports entertainment,” as it is
called these days, I take offense anytime someone throws shade on
wrestling.
John
Darnielle understands this, and it's why these amazing character
studies are some of his best work in a body that has consisted of
solidly great work consistently since 1999. There
are a lot of ballads to pair up with a lot of heartbreak, and the
quietest moments—as on the showstopping “Unmasked” or the heart
wrenching closer “Hair Match”--leave you breathless. Then there
are the big, rollicking tributes to Chavo Guerrero Sr and Bull Ramos
that really capture the larger-than-life legacies of these regular
dudes who meant so much to so many people. Especially Darnielle, who
in “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero” notes in regard to his abusive
stepfather: “You let me down but Chavo never once did/ You called
him names to try to get beneath my skin/ Now your ashes are scattered
on the wind.” Fuckin' A.
Some
of the songs get violent, like the surprisingly joyous “Foreign
Object” which is about stabbing someone in the eye with the titular
object, and the brief, fist pumping “Choked Out” where the
subject absolutely glamorizes his hardcore style and issues
no-bullshit statements like “Everybody's got their limits/Nobody's
found mine.” And then like the genius he is, Darnielle twists that
line on the next track (and the album's finest song) “Heel Turn 2.”
“You found my breaking point, congratulations” proclaims the
beloved babyface actively turning the crowds cheers in to hissing
boos. It's full of quiet
desperation, sadness, and bittersweet satisfaction. Beat
the Champ is maybe the most
goddamn bittersweet album I've ever heard, based on the fact that
I've used that word like four times and that word runs through my
head every time I play the album.
I
only had a chance to listen the record on vinyl once before going
into isolation, but it was a wonderful experience. I was running
around the house, baby in arms, trying to get everything ready for my
extended leave from the household (read: getting my gaming consoles
packaged up for transport). Thyroid cancer is a highly beatable
cancer and Beat the Champ
has helped my attitude tremendously these last few months. Whenever I
started feeling uneasy about facing mortality, I just put on “The
Legend of Chavo Guerrero” or “The Ballad of Bull Ramos” or
“Werewolf Gimmick” and said fuck cancer. When the doctor brought
out the radioactive iodine in a lead container this afternoon, I
thought of it like a folding
chair or a foreign object. It
might not make it a fair fight, but when
you get ambushed all bets are off. I felt like Ric Flair talking
trash when I muttered, “Cancer, kiss my ass” before I threw back
the radioactive iodine pills, no doubt embarrassing myself in front
of the doctors but feeling goddamn great about having so much power
put in my hands after months of feeling powerless.
Beat the Champ isn't
Tallahassee or The
Sunset Tree and some of the
melodies feel cribbed from All Eternals Deck and
Transcendental Youth, but
it's probably the best songwriting you're going to find anywhere in
2015 and I love this album more than words can adequately express
because it was the album I needed.
Katie Crutchfield wasted no time capitalizing on the
breakout success of her sophomore effort as Waxahatchee—2013’s excellent Cerulean Salt. That album was full of
concentrated ramshackle indie-pop. Perfect hooks locked in sub-three-minute
shells that begged relistening the way a junkie begs you to let you have just
this next one free because they’ll get you the money in three days, they
promise. It was one of those albums where I AGONIZED over which track would
make my year end list, because half the songs on that album were show-stopping
standouts and the other half were these subtle, soulful gems that helped
Crutchfield crowbar the album under your skin.
Coming off an album that was effectively vulnerability
personified, leadoff track “Breathless” sounds like a flexing muscle. A beefy
drone of feedback carries through the track’s four minutes, which is
practically an epic by Crutchfield’s standards. It’s a slow burner, relying on
the underlying feedback tones to drag you into what is effectively everything
the follow up to a breakout success should be: confident, assured, and willing
to jump off the cliff.
Listening to Ivy Tripp
in the car, I could practically taste a 90s Merge Records vibe. I couldn’t
remember who put it out, but when I arrived at my destination and had a chance
to check it made perfect sense. Merge is like a time capsule, preserving bygone
traditions of indie rock. Ivy Tripp
is a fair bit more put together than its predecessor, and though it’s maybe
three tracks too long I still found myself putting it on when I didn’t know
what else to put on.
There are a few albums in my life that take me back to a
very specific time and place and sketch the scene with vivid detail. This is
one of those albums. The hype machine had been churning Funeral for a couple months before I heard it, but from the first few
chords I knew everything was about to change. I never thought the Arcade Fire
would get as big as they did, and while I knew they had a ton of ambition, I
didn’t know that their ambition was something that couldn’t be contained. For a
band that released such an intimate debut, the grandiose trajectory their
career has taken feels detached from Funeral.
In ten years Funeral hasn’t lost a
step. It still stirs up all the same feelings and really feels like the classic
I suspected it would become. Sometimes records don’t hold up. You listen to
them ten years later and there’s a sense of nostalgia. Funeral feels nostalgic, but it’s for a specific personal nostalgia
not one of the era the album defined. The era of grandiose and theatrical indie
rock that lived and died by its fierce emotional conviction. These days, I put
this album on the turntable without even thinking. I see that cover and I just
say yes. And there it is, and Win Butler singing about people digging tunnels
in the snow that has buried a town reminds me of those pictures from Buffalo
where people tunneled their way out of their snow-draped homes. On “Wake Up” I
immediately recall Butler jamming the mic stand through the drop ceiling at the
Jackpot and how that hole was there for years.
Every time I went to a show at the Jackpot I saw that hole and remembered that
Arcade Fire show fondly. That Arcade Fire was able to top this album is one of
modern music’s greatest triumphs. Black
Mirror was met with a bit of the chilliness that you’d expect coming off a
masterpiece but The Suburbs won a
goddamn Grammy. Which is nuts. Still, no matter how big this band gets, Funeral is always going to be the most
intimate record I’ve ever heard.
Australian group The Meanies cut an intriguing line between
indie rock and punk. This was their only release for Merge Records. It’s fun,
and a little strange (“Darkside on My Mind” features random sound effects of a
beer being opened and poured into a glass, a crying baby, and an A-Bomb
exploding), and a little more raucous than I was expecting. Although, I was expecting
ska, because I immediately associated this band with the Blue Meanies, natch. “Rhyming
Logic” is the Meanies’ best offering, or maybe I’m biased because it hits the
sweet spot in my heart that looks like a big, comic-booky button that reads
“COLLEGE ROCK: PUSH IF YOU WANT IAN TO EXPERIENCE PURE JOY.” The guitars just
sort of vibrate in a way that is immensely satisfying. Almost equally exciting
as these excellent jams is the insert detailing the happenings at Merge in
August ’93, when they were “releasing a new Lambchop (formerly known as
Posterchild) single.” Lambchop before they were Lambchop! THRILLING! It’s like
a time capsule! “Hopefully by this time, all you folks have heard/have/love the
3D’s ‘Beautiful Things’ single.” Yes! Great track (from a time when Merge was
apparently doing a lot of exporting from Oceania)!
This is a Record Store Day exclusive, no doubt purchased
because I got up early and didn’t want to leave Love Garden empty handed. Even
though I think $6 is a bit excessive for a 7”, I fucking love Let’s Wrestle.
And their contribution, “I’m So Lazy,” is an exemplary slice of the
slacker-tinged alt-rock the band worked to perfect over the course of their
early EPs and first album, In The Court
of Wrestling Let’s. The aforementioned first album was a little overstuffed
for my liking, and I don’t know if I ever made it all the way through, but
their single “I Won’t Lie To You” is one of those songs that pops up every now
and then and I’ll stop in my tracks to enjoy the pure, sloppy glory of that
number. The Love Language is a band I’m not familiar with, but their
contribution to this 7”, “Brittany’s Back,” is a damn good piece of middle of
the road indie rock thanks to the fact that it sounds like it was recorded
through a camcorder, which paints an intriguing film over the song.
On the surface, these songs feel like hushed acoustic
ballads plucked out by a solitary man recorded at some sanctuary a hundred
miles from the nearest living human. Buckner’s soft yet subtly gravely vocals
are what alt-country and modern Americana sound like when I think about the
platonic ideals of those genres. Mostly because Buckner’s songs “Blue and
Wonder,” “Surprise, AZ,” and “Lil Wallet Picture” opened my ears to the
twangier side of reality. And yet as lonely as Buckner’s music feels, my
favorite aspect of Surrounded is
Tucker Martine’s production, which deftly accentuates Buckner’s austere songs
in a way that feels organic and unobtrusive. Martine’s ability to make
everything he touches shine a little brighter without being is what makes
Buckner’s tenth album in his nearly twenty year his best. Like so many mournful-guy-and-a-guitar
albums, Surrounded is an album built
for driving down the highway late at night. Even though it’s not actually a
mournful-guy-and-a-guitar album. Though Buckner’s finger picked acoustic is the
primary supplement to his vocals, Surrounded’s
landscape is laced with a variety of keyboards, synthesizers, seamlessly
layered backing vocals, and a number of instruments that feel like favorites
from Martine’s work with the Decemberists. It sounds like a lot, but there is a
tremendous amount of restraint. Every song feels like it has its own flavor,
which for a singer-songwriter album is no mean feat. Surrounded displays two different kinds of excellent craftsmanship,
and I can only hope this is only the beginning of a beautiful friendship
between Buckner and Martine.
My brain was way too wired for Majesty Shredding when I Hate
Music was released in August. Maybe it had something to do with the band
only taking three years to release this album opposed to nine with the last
one. Majesty Shredding also caught me
at this perfect little moment where I was falling deeply in love with
Superchunk and making up for all the time I kept them on the back burner. For
the longest time they were a band I knew I would love, absorbed in tiny doses,
but ultimately tried to keep up with modern music. And then I quit trying to
keep up with modern music, worked at a used CD store three twelve-hour shifts a
week and played Indoor Living roughly
60 times in store during my six-month tenure. When Majesty Shredding hit I felt something I’ve felt maybe ten times in
my life. The feeling of absolute FUCK YES. All caps. I had that same feeling
when I had the good fortune of seeing Guided by Voices play live. It’s a
feeling of realizing, via the will of the gods, you haven’t missed the boat and yes, you can still bask in the glory of
the good old days of indie rock royalty. Majesty
Shredding was as good as any Superchunk album I’d played to death and even
after getting neck deep into their complete discography and history over the
interim three years between albums, that shit holds its own against any of the
acknowledge high points (assuming Superchunk have such defined high watermarks
considering one of my favorite things about the band is their absolute steadiness). So I Hate Music was a let down at first because I didn’t immediately
love it as much an album I listened to once a day in the last three months of
2010. That is a dumb way to judge music, so I set it aside and let it chill.
Two months later and I’m fucking hooked. I started running
again, and the first album I loaded onto my ipod was I Hate Music. I hadn’t listened to it since August, but it’s tough
to find ultra spectacular workout jams. Superchunk makes me want to run through
a goddamn brick wall. First time back on the treadmill and I am in love with I Hate Music. Not just because it kicks
ass, but because it’s a more cohesive effort than Majesty Shredding. It’s insane for my brain to even process that,
but a quicker turnaround between records often leads to stuff that’s got more
spark than stuff you’ve been plucking away at for almost a decade. There’s new
life on I Hate Music. It feels
forbidden. Like Superchunk was supposed
to be kaput with Here’s to Shutting Up
and yet here they are, making every young indie rock band look like they’re
trying way too hard. It must be liberating when there is nothing on the line.
Everyone in this band could easily just settle down into their family lives
(Mac and Laura especially, considering the fortune Arcade Fire must be netting
them) and yet, here they are. Delivering everything from easy little
sing-a-long pop gems like “Me & You & Jackie Mitoo” and suckerpunch
heartwrenchers like “Low F.” You don’t even realize how good some of the songs
are until you catch yourself singing them in the car (the chorus on “Trees of
Barcelona,” the back half of “Your Theme”). I don’t know when the band has ever
sounded this versatile either (see: songs spanning from the 1:15 length punk
nugget “Staying Home” to the 6:10 length closer, the mollassesy slow-burn jam “What
Can We Do”). It’s not really that big a deal, but I never expect Superchunk to
be versatile. They could just do an album that was 12 “Breaking Downs” and I’d
be more than content and I guess it all comes down to the thing about new
Superchunk albums being like a gift for a holiday you didn’t know about. A
welcome surprise of outstanding quality that leaves you generally thankful to
be part of a world where great people make great things and are gracious enough
to share them with you.
Merge, 2008
Acquired: Kief’s Downtown, New, 2008
Price: $0
This was from the very first Record Store Day when so much stuff was free. Back
before all the exclusive singles were like $7 a pop. The glory days, if you
will. The Destroyer track “Madame Butterflies” is awesome. Everything a b-side
should be. It’s very much Destroyer’s
Rubies cast off but since that album is pretty much perfect and because
I’ve listened to it a hundred times, I can see how this one might not fit. I
don’t know, it would probably fit, but that is a long record and “Madam
Butterflies” can stand on its own. It’s almost sounds like a better-recorded
version of the mega lo-fi stuff he was doing on his first cassettes. It’s
stripped, but it gets kind of wild towards the end. The guitars get wonky, and
Dan Bejar sounds more and more like he’s singing in a submarine. The melody is
pure, and by the end when his vocals devolve into dum-da-da-dum-da-da-dums it’s
pure bliss. And then it’s over. And then I listen to the song like five more
times every time because I don’t have an MP3 of this track. I never even
listened to the Wye Oak track until today. At the time, I’d heard Wye Oak’s
debut If Children and fallen asleep
during their set at the Merge showcase at SXSW. Since then I’ve become a pretty
big fan. There was a two-year stretch where they would open for some great band
twice a year in Lawrence and their live shows were fucking fantastic. The duo
have since taken advantage of pushing Jenn Wasner’s vocals and guitar into more
epic territory, but the track on this split—“Prodigy”—is fucking simple and
fucking gorgeous. I think I was just totally wrong about Wye Oak and that they
were always good and my head was just up my ass. It was up my ass through most
of 2008-2009 for a variety of reasons. I was tunnel-visioned to the things I
liked fiercely and everything else kind of became boring. Working through Wye
Oak’s discography is a real treat. It’s just so much fun to see a band grow and
figure themselves out. Their latest LP Civilian
is an absolutely towering piece of indie rock. But they started small, but even
when they were small they were still obviously talented enough to blow the
whole thing wide open. I still feel like I am atoning for the sins committed
during my mega music snob years. The dismissals I handed out after a half a
song. The opinions based on the idea that I didn’t like something. I’m on my
fifth spin of “Prodigy” and I’m just thinking how great it is to experience
real joy when listening to music.
Listen to "Madame Butterflies here. It also links to the Merge Records store where you can download the song for FREE. Absolutely worth the 3.5 megabytes or so it'll take up on your hard drive.
A year and a half after the release of the last Mountain
Goats album—the magnificent All Eternals
Deck—John Darnielle and company are back with a brand new one that is, as
you’d expect, pretty great. Granted, I’m biased. I mean, I GUESS you could call
it biased, but when it comes to the Mountain Goats my rabid fanship is less of
a bias and more of a way of life. In terms of the Mountain Goats discography,
there are no bad albums. There are average ones, like Get Lonely and maybe some of the earlier ones which are too
disorganized to work as albums (and really, I don’t think they’re trying to
work as albums anyway), but most of them range from great (The Life of the World to Come) to really great (Heretic Pride) to heartbreakingly good (We Shall All Be Healed) to the greatest
thing I’ve ever heard in my life (All
Hail West Texas) and the other greatest thing I’ve ever heard in my life (Tallahassee). I’m probably not the only
person who’s thought about writing a screenplay/opera/ballet based on Tallahassee. That’s how we roll, I
suppose.
So there’s a new Mountain Goats album, Transcendental
Youth, and I have accepted it with open arms. Like every new MTN GTS
release before it, this one took me a while to warm up to before I loved it. I
don’t know why that is. As if my expectations are being let down a little bit
and then song-by-song the whole thing comes together and it’s like YES! And
it’s business as usual here. A song-by-song breaking down of my heart. Where
Darnielle has been fixated upon survivor stories of late (notably “Never Quite Free” from All Eternals Deck and
pretty much the entirety of The Sunset
Tree, although there were some people who didn’t make it through on that
one) and they are here in spades. Fuck-ups, rejects, failures. The kind of
people who, in Darnielle’s words, “people who madly, stupidly, blessedly won’t
stop surviving, no matter who gives up on them.” It’s a messy, life-affirming
affair. But then again, what Mountain Goats album isn’t?
The opening line is “Do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive,” for
fucks sake. I mean, seriously. And still, Darnielle & crew find ways to
diversify. The horn section courtesy of Matthew E. White adds something
fantastic and special and emotionally dissonant/triumphant to “Cry For Judas,”
“In Memory of Satan” and the title track. It’s a fun new side of the Mountain
Goats, but the most special collaboration is the one between Peter Hughes and
Jon Wurster who grow tighter as a unit each time around. One of my favorite
moments of any show ever was when some drunk ass girl talking way loud at the
very front of the stage at a Mountain Goats show at the Jackpot in Lawrence
years back almost got hit in the face by Peter Hughes bass and then immediately
after that (I think, in my head) was the part on “See America Right” where he
goes “Hey!” but in this version of the song he bellowed out “HEYYYYYYYY!” and
it was great. Though the Mountain Goats are John Darnielle’s thing—in the sense
that his lyrics are what draws people to this project moth/flame style—watching
them become a full-fledged band over the last five or so years has been so much
fun.
“The Diaz Brothers” is one of my favorite songs on the record, if only because
I spent like fifteen minutes trying to figure out the namesake of the titular
siblings (UFC fighters? I know how much JD loves fights, or is it just boxing?
Singers? Is it a metal thing?) until I realized pretty much every write-up out
there noted that the Diaz Brothers were basically the Rosencrantz &
Guildenstern of Scarface. And THEN I
fell in love with the song that much more. Darnielle always handles his
characters with a novelist’s grace. Even when they’re preexisting fictional and
non-fictional figures (Authors Sax Rohmer and HP Lovecraft, horror film villain
Michael Myers, and movie stars Charles Bronson and Liza Minelli have had their
own songs on the past handful of albums), drug addicts hold up in an apartment
waiting for “the guy with the angel dust” as in “Lakeside View ApartmentsSuite,” historical figures (like Billy the Kid on the psychotically great All Eternals Deck b-side “CatherineAtrim’s Kid”), and misfits. It’s Darnielle’s tributes to musicians that always
kill me. “Song for Dennis Brown” on The
Sunset Tree and “September 15 1983” from Heretic Pride (about the death of Prince Far I) are sad and
wonderful tributes to fallen reggae legends and here he pays tribute to tragic
doo-wop singer Frankie Lymon on the standout “Harlem Roulette.” Lymon’s death
by heroin overdose at the age of 25 is prime John Darnielle material. He
covered his own addictions on We Shall
All Be Healed and come to think of it, “Harlem Roulette,” “Song for DennisBrown,” and “September 15 1983” are all about singers who have died of
overdoes. If it haunts his songs, it must haunt him. I guess. Maybe that’s
where the joy comes from, because as depressing as any Mountain Goats song gets
there’s always a glimmer of hope lurking on the horizon.
Though Darnielle has openly stated that though he is a
recent father, this isn’t an album about being a father. It is however an album
about staying alive, and with a wife and kid in tow, you can tell that
Darnielle is just thankful to be around. “Every dream’s a good dream/ Even
awful dreams are good dreams/ If you’re doing it right,” he sings on “Harlem
Roulette.” There’s an appreciation of existence at work in his songs that
elevates them to a level of transcendence. And sure I’m biased, I’ve been a
huge fan of the Mountain Goats since the waning years of high school when I
heard Atom and His Package’s cover of “Going to Georgia” and followed that tip
down that long, tape-hiss laden rabbit hole and found a singer who made ever
little fiber of my soul vibrate with a sort of positivity I’d been lacking. And
I just don’t think Darnielle has ever let up. Every album is a treat and they’re
kind of beyond being assigned trivial ratings. And naturally, Transcendental Youth rules.
Annnd here's JD performing "Harlem Roulette" for Pitchfork. Absolute perfection. The way he looks like a possessed preacher, yeah, I'mma go ahead and be part of THIS religion.
Here's a heartbreakingly lovely solo-piano version of "In Memory of Satan."
And the spectacular opening track that I barely mentioned, "Amy aka Spent Gladiator 1"
Darnielle performed a number of songs from this record with the classical vocal quartet Anonymous 4 in New York months and months back, and here's what "Counterfeit Florida Plates" looked like. (Hint: If your math looked like "JD + Vocal Quartet = Lovely, kind of awkward but a fun twist on the Mountain Goats"then your math was correct).
