On listening to the mountain goats for the first time

A few years ago, I began a passing hobby that I haven't really kept up--I'd approach a friend who was in love with a band I didn't know or barely knew or only knew a few "popular songs" by, and ask them to dig in deep and make me a mix tape of that band. My friend Jill, for instance, made me an incredible, illuminating R.E.M. mix (not that R.E.M. was a band I was unfamiliar with but I, unlike most I think, really connect with later-period R.E.M., from Monster to Reveal I can assure you I've broken apart and pieced back together to all those songs) called, I think, "Mandolins and Metaphors". I have a pretty spectacular mix in which I chronicle my 13 favorite New Order songs from my least-favorite favorite ("Blue Monday") to my most favorite favorite ("Temptation"). 

Sophie's  fanaticism for the John Darnielle project The Mountain Goats used to stick in my craw. She's young, so I figure she's probably more tolerant of this insufferable "let's record things that sound like shit" aesthetic that the kids like these days. Sure it's cool, but even Zola Jesus is making better, more enlightening music now that she fucking sings into the goddamn microphone. Don't be difficult for difficult's sake, people. Anyhow, last week, after John Darnielle and I conversed about ambient music and my book-in-progress via twitter, and after hearing Sophie play "Palmcorder Yajna" on turntable.fm (remember that?), I decided to give this band a shot and asked her to do a 10-song mix for me, including the aforementioned song.

Listening to The Mountain Goats for the first time, or at least the first time I'm conscious of it, and it's pretty striking stuff. The first song on this mix, "This Year", definitely makes me think of crystal meth, promises and early mornings, like the similar song by Death Cab For Cutie, "The New Year". "The New Year" came out when Death Cab was still something worthwhile, when emotions were still ok things to have, when feeling was perfectly acceptable instead of something that would get you into a world of shit if you expressed it in any viable way. Death Cab's gone to shit and so has emotion, but so far there's nothing I'm getting from The Mountain Goats but emotion. I don't mean that in a shitty over-confessional way, but listen: in Darnielle's voice there's this fucking truth, and a sort of re-memory. It's how I felt when I heard Van Morrison for the first time--I'd never heard him before, but a memory in the back of my brain that wasn't real that was tied with something in my heart that likes the smell of fall said "yeah, yeah you have, you just can't recall". 

"No Children" is sort of anthemic, isn't it? All of this music is, actually, but this one

I hope that our few remaining friends 
Give up on trying to save us 
I hope we come up with a failsafe plot 
To piss off the dumb few that forgave us 
I hope the fences we mended 
Fall down beneath their own weight 
And I hope we hang on past the last exit 
I hope it's already too late 
And I hope the junkyard a few blocks from here 
Someday burns down 
And I hope the rising black smoke carries me far away 
And I never come back to this town 
Again in my life 
I hope I lie 
And tell everyone you were a good wife 
And I hope you die 
I hope we both die 

God, I haven't written in any serious way about what Dr. Z calls "white people with guitars" music in so long it feels so weird to be extolling the virtues of what's basically a white dude, a yelp and a guitar but...I don't know. "Our love has never had a leg to stand on" is a pretty serious, dark and painful point that Darnielle manages to make both hellish and hopeful, and for once I think maybe I'm just really feeling this stuff because I've been so immersed in aural darkness, sloggy woozy synths and the sound of death and really, really just wanting to hear one true thing.  

So good for you, Mountain Goats, for being one true thing. 

Sophie's Mountain Goats Mixtape. 

The Mountain Goats "This Year" from A Bruntel on Vimeo.