Prologue
The last five albums in my collection
of records by The Mountain Goats brings
me to the end of the letter M and a little
past the half way point of my entire store
of vinyl LPs, but it brings me also to a place
of turntable crisis. Everything sounds like
shit. I can’t get that stylus clean and even
using a magnifying glass I can’t see any
more debris. It is possible, for as many
records as I have spun since replacing my
stylus maybe seven months ago, I have
already worn that little bastard out.
It is also possible that the problem is
elsewhere, in the electronics of the
turntable, perhaps, or in tracking issues
caused by the table’s unconventional
vertical position. So here I am in this
listening challenge dilemma: to proceed
or not to proceed. Here is what I have
decided. I will finish out my vinyl
collection of albums by The Mountain
Goats in a digital fashion. The Merge
label was pretty great at including
download cards inside their records,
until recently, I think. So I have the
first four of these albums uploaded
to my iTunes library, and the last one
I can stream from TIDAL. Maybe, for
giggles, I will continue to place the
record on the turntable, even going
through the motions of flipping over
the record at the end of a side. While
that seems like nutty behavior, there’s
something right about it, or corrective.
At any rate, when I am finished with
these Mountain Goats, I will take a
break from the great A to Z listening
project until I can get my turntable
shit together.
Getting Into Knives
First, I must say, what a great title
for an album. It’s like a thing I can
imagine saying in response to the
question, so, what have you been up
to these days? “I’m getting into knives.”
Well, okay then, good for you.
My ears have been in between
my new Bose Ultra bluetooth headphones
the whole time I’ve been listening this
morning to this record. It’s a lovely collection
of songs. Again, another chill record for
The Mountain Goats, but these songs seem
more sophisticated than the tunes from
the last album, albeit stripped down
instrumentally. All strong songs. Great
playing. I love the piano work. I love
the understated, tasteful drumming, much
of which is played with brushes or
rods, although there are a few rockers.
Standouts: “Get Famous” is a fun, upbeat
one, ironic and snarky, hooky as all get out.
And if you aren’t moved emotionally by
“The Last Place I Saw You Alive,” you have
some kind of problem.
Except in a few cases where the song
is instantly recognizable as a tune
I loved when I first got this record six
years ago, I don’t remember a lot of this
album. And that is not to say it’s not
a good album. Records by The Mountain
Goats have been consistently good or better.
It’s just that, for whatever reason, there
are some I have listened to more
frequently. There’s a kind of sadness
around this and also a gratitude. While
it’s kind of a bummer to realize you’ve
got great records in your collection
that didn’t get the attention they deserved,
it’s also a great pleasure to know you’ve
got new old music to rediscover.
The penultimate song on this album,
“Harbor Me,” is an incredibly moving little
gem, and the concluding tune, the title
track, “Getting Into Knives,” in the point
of view of an individual who, after long
searching for wisdom and the perfect
path, is, you guessed it, getting into knives.
Dark In Here
This feels almost like a continuation
of Getting Into Knives, only a little bit
more rocking. Sonically, it’s similar,
and like its predecessor, it doesn’t
seem to be conceptually organized
or written. It is simply a collection of
good songs. I’m okay with that. I love
me some conceptual artistry in a record
album, but I am also mostly in favor
of good songs, and Dark In Here, not
surprisingly, delivers. The title does
indicate a general theme, however,
that the record does seem to explore,
that is, various states of darkness.
“I wear my lizard suit to the party.
It’s so hard to get noticed in this town.”
What a great lyric, and a great, wild,
kind of jazzy, jungly, piano-driven,
background-vocal-intensive tune
that ends with a kind of off-the-rails
improvised jam. And I love this tune,
“The Slow Parts on Death Metal Albums.”
It’s a swinging, half-time groove with
a cool lead vocal, full, soulful female
background vocals. A terrific tune
and a perfect example of one of the
aspects of Darnielle’s genius: that
almost casual way he has of dropping
a seemingly mundane but intriguing
detail around a deep, often psychological
study of a persona dealing with a lot
of significant shit. Man, it’s almost like
Darnielle could be a pretty great
fiction writer!
Bleed Out
Cover art made to look like the poster
for a detective murder mystery noir film,
cartoon graphics depicting a gruesome
scene in which a woman appears to be
identifying one of several bodies
sprawled out on a concrete road
while the detective looks on standing
in front of his car, Bleed Out,
starring The Mountain Goats, is a return
to the conceptual. “Training Montage”
rocks pretty hard right out of the gate
and the rock continues throughout.
“Wage War Get Rich Die Handsome”
is almost punk in its breakneck tempo
and chugging guitars. It’s all crime and
punishment up in here, not a single slow
tempo or ballad-like thing on the whole
album. Maybe my least favorite of the
recent records from TMG. Some great
lyric lines: “We may run out of bullets,
but we’re never gonna run out of hostages.”
But overall the tunes are not as
memorable, the music is not especially
singular, and there’s a lack of variety in feel or
vibe from song to song that makes the
experience kind of monochromatic.
Is it a bad record? Hell no.
So far in my accumulated albums
by The Mountain Goats, I’ve not heard
one I’d be willing to toss.
Jenny From Thebes
Another concept record,
this one, apparently, a kind of sequel
to a much earlier album,
one that I don’t have, one from John
Darnielle’s lo-fi exploration era
of the early 21st century,
All Hail West Texas.
While the title suggests a kind
of mythological connection to Jenny,
or at least an Egyptian one,
upon closer inspection, this song sequence
just seems to circle around Jenny
as a central character in contemporary
America. I wish I could tell you more about
her, but that would require a close lyric study
that I don’t think I have time for.
At one point in the cycle, it appears
that our narrator has taken Jenny in from
what seems like desperate straights.
He speaks directly to her in most of.
these lyrics, warns her that she’ll have
to be out by the time the cleaning crew
arrives, and he tells her to look him up
if she’s ever in Portland.*
The music? Oh yeah. Uptempo opener
with pianos, horns, and a full rock band,
“Clean Slate” is an epic beginning to an album
full of catchy, memorable, sometimes rocking,
sometimes sensitive songs, and Darnielle’s
astounding storytelling. I don’t know if this
is a good thing or not, but I just get so swept up
by the individual songs, even as the lyrics are nearly
always comprehensible and engaging in their
own right, that the larger picture, the wider view,
the grander narrative often eludes me.
No matter. Another great, rich album from TMG.
*This is a complete misunderstanding of
the lyric, as I learn from reading the liner
notes, or the mini essay inside the gatefold,
that this point of view narrator IS Jenny–
SHE is the one letting people crash at
her place, sometimes complete strangers
or people down on their luck–apparently,
at one point in his life, John Darnielle was
one of these.
Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan
Darnielle’s story is that this title came to him
fully formed in a dream. All he knew after was
that he needed to use it as the title of his
next album, and so he’d have to figure out
what it meant; he’d have to uncover or discover
the title’s story. Here is another concept album,
this time one for which the narrative is crystal
clear, absolutely comprehensible. It is the story
of three survivors of a fishing boat shipwreck
in which all other 13 men on the boat drown.
The three survivors, the narrator, a guy named
Adam, and the titular Peter Balkan, end up
on a deserted island and must survive there
until a rescue boat arrives. The problem is
that the rescue boat never arrives and
Peter Balkan, from the get-go, is severely
injured. Knowing the first thing at least
about surviving on a deserted island, the
three men build and then maintain a fire.
Most of the narrative of this song sequence
takes place around that fire, as the narrator
must first take care as best he can of Peter,
and then, later in the sequence, Adam.
Let me just say quickly that all the things
I love about what (to me) are the best albums
by The Mountain Goats are qualities of this
one. Horns, strings, cool background vocals,
excellent drumming especially, but all around
great musicianship, great melodies, a variety
of feels and vibes, and great storytelling.
If I was on a desert island and could only
have TWO albums with me by The Mountain
Goats, it would be Through This Fire Across
From Peter Balkan and Goths. And if I could
choose a third it would be Beat the Champ.
There you have it. After listening to eleven
albums over a three day period by TMG,
it feels appropriate to choose my favorites.
Epilogue
I’m not going anywhere, but I will need to
(or rather, I want to) take a break from my
record collection listening challenge until
I can remedy my shitty sounding turntable.
I mean, I could carry on indefinitely listening
to digital versions of everything in
the vinyl collection that comes
after the letter M, and in some ways, that
would be sort of liberating. Two of these
Mountain Goats records I listened to while
on a walk, I can move about the house,
I can sit on the porch! But I don’t want to
get too far away for too long from the
physical act of playing a record, the tactile
nature of it, the patience of it, the need
to stay close in order to turn the record
over, reading the liner notes–all of that.
In the meantime, I will find something
new to write about for awhile, and that
will be a different, refreshing kind of
challenge.
Notes on the vinyl editions:
- Getting Into Knives, Merge Records, 2020, double gold colored vinyl.
- Dark In Here, Merge Records, 2021, double blue swirl vinyl.
- Bleed Out, Merge Records, 2022, double opaque yellow vinyl.
- Jenny of Thebes, Merge Records, 2023, split half opaque lemon yellow and black vinyl.
- Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan, Merge Records, 2025, double opaque blue vinyl.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 