Ian Rennie

@theangelremiel.bsky.social

Higher than weather balloons, empty hearts on fire. https://miscellany.pckt.blog/ isn't really anything

4368 followers151 following124 stories

Longform Stories

May 20 - Linda Blair Was Born Innocent

We've hit another pre-existing favourite. The opening line of this has been following me around online for like fifteen years now. And when the strings come in at the line hungry for love, ready to dr…

13h ago·1 min read·146 words

May 19 - All up The Seething Coast

This is the sound of the high, the sound of contented paranoia. This whole album is about the things people go through during addiction, and this is about the worst part: the pleasure. From the dronin…

1d ago·2 min read·223 words

May 18 - Slow West Vultures

My god, this song is huge. The soundscape is vast, the lyrics cryptic and visionary, everything about it is the overture for a statement of strangeness and desperation and hope. This is a sing by a sl…

2d ago·2 min read·236 words

May 16 - Beat The Devil

So we're in the heyday of songs about smuggling, then. This is tense and lyrical, an ode to the emotions of doing something unwise and uncertain because you have to and you want to and it's the only w…

4d ago·2 min read·211 words

March 15 - Duane Allman Slept Here

This song is smoky and slow and tired. The lyrics in this, the live version, possibly the only version, are tired and strange and doubt themselves. And it's amazing It is what it sounds like. A song a…

5d ago·1 min read·138 words

May 14 - Snakeheads

If you've never heard a picaresque song about people smugglers heading across country in a u-haul... well, now you have. Like the best Mountain Goats songs, this one is a cheerful knife to the heart, …

6d ago·1 min read·179 words

May 13 - Deserters

It's amazing how dark and directionless this song sounds. The vocal is purposefully listless, the guitar work dissonant and uneven, and all of it adds to the effect of someone who is unconnected from …

May 13·1 min read·92 words

May 12 - Cut Off Their Thumbs

So, no song yesterday, or rather no song with a recording yesterday. This is a small delight and a curiosity, a song recorded just after Tallahassee but not released until it was posted on the Mountai…

May 12·1 min read·102 words

May 10 - No Children

It's tough now to think of how this song made me feel the first time I heard it. it's become an old friend who has been there for me in all sorts of times, good and bad. The way the backing vocals bur…

May 10·1 min read·108 words

May 9 - Alpha Rats Nest

Sometimes things creep up on you. They become true over a course of enough time that by the time you realise it you're realising what has happened not what is happening. So it is with this song and th…

May 9·1 min read·96 words

May 8 - See America Right

Your love is like a cyclone in a swamp is one of the lines of all time. This is an intense song of chaos, in the intense part of a relationship going bad. John's alpha couple have many twists and turn…

May 8·1 min read·104 words

May 7 - Oceanographer's Choice

A driving bop, full of energy. Starts with stabbing Superman with a broadsword and goes up from there. This is full of energy, admittedly dark energy, and is a packed fantasia of fraught things happen…

May 7·1 min read·97 words

May 6 - The House That Dripped Blood

There is something delightfully sleazy about the instrumentation of this song. I'm getting a strong dose of PJ Harvey. More than that, this is a song with swagger in a way that feels new to Mountain G…

May 6·1 min read·101 words

May 5th - Southwood Plantation Road

A secret small love of mine: songs where someone sings la la la la We're wandering still further into Tallahassee, reaching what might be thought of as an upswing in the dysfunctional relationship tha…

May 5·1 min read·99 words

May 4 - First Few Desperate hours

It continues to interest me how much more complete Tallahassee feels as a sound for a band than the previous Mountain Goats albums, and band is the word here. There are at maximum three instruments pl…

May 4·1 min read·100 words

May 3 - Tallahassee

In retrospect this song is a thumping great mission statement. It's the first track on one of the two most pivotal Mountain Goats albums, with All Hail West Texas being the perfection of the Guitar an…

May 3·1 min read·91 words

May 2 - Old College Try

All right folks, it's taken us four months but we've reached Tallahassee. And we're starting off with one of the most genuinely wonderful songs on this album. An ode to exhausted but still kicking lov…

May 2·1 min read·90 words

May 1 - Twelve Hands High

Technically this isn't a Mountain Goats song. It's instead a song by The Extra Glenns, a band consisting of John Darnielle and Franklin Bruno. But what it actually is is a lovely bop with some honky t…

May 1·1 min read·94 words

April 29 - Insurance Fraud #2

My Don't commit insurance fraud, it's not worth it song has people asking a lot of questions already answered by the song. In all seriousness, this is a delightful, ominous song about love burning dow…

Apr 29·1 min read·71 words

April 28 - Indonesia

The summer came in carrying spring in its mouth is an incredible first line, and the rest of the song follows as poetic metaphor that starts from love but soars into something elemental. There's an in…

Apr 28·1 min read·89 words

April 27 - Absolute Lithops Effect

I don't know, man. I think I'm tired. A long stretch of days, some good, some bad, with today as a good one that wore me out. It's meant when I came to my Mountain Goats song at the end of today it pl…

Apr 27·1 min read·84 words

April 26 - Yoga

Hearing full or even partial band Mountain Goats from this period (this is another Devil in the Shortwave track) is a really interesting experience, because it feels like watching something emerge. Th…

Apr 26·1 min read·86 words

April 25th - Jeff Davis County Blues

There's something especially American about the aimless road trip, the small towns flitted through when you're going not towards but away, places that must have their own life but which you only exper…

Apr 25·1 min read·96 words

April 24 - Store

I'm not sure if this is the happiest song about getting a bloody injury, but the only competition I can think is Me And You Against The World by Space, and that's far less of a rousing folk ballad. Th…

Apr 24·1 min read·79 words

April 23 - Color In Your Cheeks

God, I needed this today. One of my favourite Mountain Goats songs for years. The best happy songs are the ones that don't bullshit you. They don't pretend that everything's good, or that evil doesn't…

Apr 23·1 min read·97 words

April 22 - World Cylinder

This is a goodbye. The last song on an EP about last songs. It's someone not saying what's happening, but not saying it more blatantly than just saying it. One of the most common sentiments of my life…

Apr 22·1 min read·100 words

April 21 - Burned My Tongue

An honest to goodness blues song beginning with the words woke up this morning. This has a wonderful smoky uneasy tone to it of someone fundamentally uncomfortable in the world. Trying to live like th…

Apr 21·1 min read·67 words

April 20 - Hotel Road

I take back any smack I have talked about previous loud tape recorders. And with that momentary swipe I will sit and just listen to this absolutely lovely relaxing beach song. Simple pastoral lyrics o…

Apr 20·1 min read·94 words

April 19 - Jenny

This is the musical equivalent of the moment in a sitcom where someone walks in and everyone applauds. Jenny is a huge figure in the shared fiction that is Mountain Goats songs, a figure of wildness a…

Apr 19·1 min read·96 words

April 18 - Trans-Jordanian Blues

There's something about a rowdy, revolutionary church song that reaches even to those who were never part of the congregation. I never had a faith to lose, I hnever had a church to find to be rotten, …

Apr 18·1 min read·98 words

April 17 - Riches and Wonders

You're taking a nap in the middle of the day with the person you love. The two of you snuggled. Maybe cats but not necessarily cats. And you're warm and you're content and you've perhaps been apart bu…

Apr 17·1 min read·102 words

April 16 - Fault Lines

This is one of the purest folk songs from this period of the Mountain Goats. It's an ode to useless material worth and poisoned love: two people who depend on each other to the point where it's making…

Apr 16·1 min read·95 words

April 15 - Straight Six

The blurred space between song and poem and fiction sketch is the place where the Mountain Goats live best, and this song is a wonderful example of this, acting as a crack we can look through to see t…

Apr 16·1 min read·103 words

April 14 - Balance

Simple but very strong chord progression on this one, which puts me in mind (in feel and lyrical content) of Dilaudid from The Sunset Tree, which feels like a song that will come from this at some poi…

Apr 14·1 min read·92 words

April 13 - Fall of the Star High School Running Back

This is an interesting song because it sneaks up on you in a way. The story of a high school sport's star's fall from grace is fertile and oft visited territory, and I felt like I could hear the line …

Apr 13·1 min read·103 words

April 12 - The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton

OK, so we've started to hit the songs that I can hear without listening to them. There's something simple and wonderful about this song, which is a simple yarn about rebellion and friendship and passi…

Apr 12·1 min read·98 words

April 11 - The Coroner's Gambit

And our trilogy of death continues from a different point of view. This is a tremendously lively song for what it represents, with a beat that put me in mind of the best of early Billy Bragg, and the …

Apr 11·1 min read·94 words

April 10 - Shadow Song

This is clearly a season of partings, of people going ahead, leaving, whether they mean to or not. When you go (voluntarily or involuntarily) you take parts of people with you. Those parts don't alway…

Apr 10·1 min read·98 words

April 9 - Bluejays and Cardinals

This is a song aimed at the heavens, under the joyfully lamenting hope that that's where its intended audience is. There's something hard to process about songs for people who aren't necessarily in a …

Apr 9·1 min read·93 words

April 8 - There Will Be No Divorce

Well, the world continued. And so did we. And this is a simple song about small moments of love. If you've ever been awake late at night past the time when the person you love is awake, and you've loo…

Apr 8·1 min read·103 words

April 7 - We Were Patriots

I don't know if I have anything to say about this song today. I'm in a place of horror. I hope that at some point I look back and see what a silly thing this was to be horrified by, but right now the …

Apr 7·1 min read·76 words

April 5th - Onions

It's been spring already for either a month or about 2 weeks depending on where you start (I, a weirdo, think it's spring from March the first). Long enough for things to start waking up. My lilac tre…

Apr 6·1 min read·98 words

April 4 - Elijah

There's something fascinating as someone who grew up without any religion of seeing the shapes that belief makes when it is instilled but then carefully considered. There are aspects of imagery and la…

Apr 6·1 min read·95 words

April 3 - Island Garden Song

Tape hum, I have missed you. And the songs have moved on since you and I last broke bread. This is a small pastoral about disappearing. A simple idea that commits to its imagery rather than using it a…

Apr 6·1 min read·103 words

April 2 - Cool Hundred

This song doesn't exist. Neither does this blog post.

Apr 5·1 min read·14 words

March 31 - Horseradish Road

I'm going to say something odd about this one. Some background first. I'm a later Mountain Goats fan. Didn't listen to them until probably 2019. First album was The Sunset Tree. I think that sets the …

Apr 4·1 min read·94 words

March 30 - Sure Do Love You Baby But I Can't Do 60 No More

This is kind of a tough one. It's unreleased, the only recording seems to be a single recorder version of a performance where John was belting it out and his voice was suffering as a result. It touche…

Apr 3·1 min read·104 words

March 29 - Shower

It's October 2008. You're in a small sports bar next to a Best Western in a town in West Virginia whose name you genuinely do not remember. You drove half of the day and say in the passenger seat for …

Apr 2·1 min read·100 words

March 28 - Commandante

OK, so rhyming Brendan Behan and "Tripoli, and" puts me entirely on this song's side, and boy is that ever just the start. John is flying with this one, soaring through Americana like a pair of bottle…

Apr 1·1 min read·100 words

March 27 - Genesis 19:1-2

Hitting the rough edges of (deeply religious) punk here, as John looks at the parts of the bible most likely to get him in trouble with certain other people of faith. It's a funny thing, wickedness. O…

Mar 31·1 min read·98 words

March 26 - Crows

This song begins at the intersection of a variety of John's abilities hitting their full maturity. The guitar work, confidence of voice, and beauty of the lyrics all come together into a rather perfec…

Mar 30·1 min read·100 words

March 24 - Dutch Orchestra Blues

Not a blues, let's start there. Which is pedantic and silly about a song that's joyful and silly. And also sad. This is a sing about faith in the hidden things. About yearning for the reassurance that…

Mar 28·1 min read·97 words

March 23 - Cobscook Bay

I don't know if this is the first time I've heard an electric guitar in a Mountain Goats song, but it's certainly one of the earliest examples to leap out at me, an electric sound with vibrato buit no…

Mar 27·1 min read·94 words

March 22 - Golden Boy

What a delightful whimsical little song. Edges of Big Rock Candy Mountain, with the sort of sincerity of someone who with their entire heart and soul believe they are being a lil goof. Done with anyth…

Mar 26·1 min read·98 words

March 21 - Treetop Song

I can feel the landscape of this song. It's an early morning, some fog in the air, and there's a calm in the air. And somewhere within that a fantasy made of choppy guitar and harmonica. It's a small …

Mar 25·1 min read·82 words

March 20 - Narakaloka

Welcome back tape hum. John sets a table here, a beautiful domestic scene of a garden being planted, a kitchen being outfitted, a series of events that will survive the singer. This is a small gem, a …

Mar 25·1 min read·85 words

March 19 - Song for the Julian Calendar

A couple of songs into Full Force Galesberg and the first thing that is striking me about this record is how much fuller the sound is than what has come before. Not just that there are more instrument…

Mar 24·1 min read·95 words

March 18 - Original Air-Blue Gown

It's late. Not absurdly late, not so late it's actually early again. But, like 1:30. There's a party going on nearby, and you're not quite at it. You were at it, but the house has a porch and you didn…

Mar 24·1 min read·104 words

March 17 - Calcutta

It's not March 17, it's March 23rd, and I have the kind of cold and headache that mean I'm only vaguely tethered to reality. Perfect time to hear a Mountain Goats song from the fringes of existence. T…

Mar 23·1 min read·94 words

March 16 - Cutter

OK, so full disclosure: I've been on holiday and am currently sick for the second time since the last block update I did. This is why these are late and why this is incoherent. Makes sense therefore t…

Mar 22·1 min read·98 words

March 15 - Masher

Floating away on the guitar of this song, so much of a woodland pastoral, the sound of double the expected strings out under a canopy of trees. This is a song of solitude, which is a different thing f…

Mar 15·1 min read·93 words

March 14 - New Britain

Mountain Goats do folk horror. The discordant guitars are a particular delight here with the imaginative language of a strange inhabitant of a strange albion. This is a beautiful and strange land of o…

Mar 14·1 min read·95 words

March 13 - An Inscription at Salonae

The rhythm of this reminded me of Santa Monica by Everclear, although that's where the similarity ended. It's a wonderfully calm and matter of fact delivery for lyrical material that starts in the myt…

Mar 13·1 min read·90 words

March 12 - Raid on Entebbe

There's a strange moment at this start of this song where for just a moment I hear a very familiar guitar part, only... it's not familiar yet. It's inevitable for a songwriter who has written (as can …

Mar 12·1 min read·101 words

March 11 - Ghosts

The bouncing roll of the guitar in this is an early example of one of my favourite John tropes: the jolly, catchy song about how depressed the singer is and how much everything is terrible. Well, that…

Mar 11·1 min read·96 words

March 10 - Four New Trees

A delightful little folky number, four verses about four trees with different personalities and characteristics, with a delightful sting in the tail about the last one. This song is insubstantial, but…

Mar 10·1 min read·89 words

March 9 - Red Choral Diamond Spray

It's the quiet ones that get me. I love a bit of big jangly guitar, and as we get onto full band numbers there are going to be some amazing things going on, but something about soft picking and near w…

Mar 9·1 min read·101 words

March 8 - Stars Fell on Alabama

With this title it won't come as much surprise that this is a very country-inflected song in a good way. it's warm and dark with points of light and convivial voices singing about dark things. The maj…

Mar 8·1 min read·100 words

March 7 - Cheshire County

So we're very much into the era of Mountain Goats songs being delightful little bops. This is a magical pastoral number, with spells under the surface and a strong fundamental presence of nature. Actu…

Mar 7·1 min read·86 words

March 6 - Black Molly

It might be the very "live at a dive bar" recording, but there is something delightfully and atmospherically nineties about this song. It might also be that half of the chord sequence is Stars by Hum …

Mar 6·1 min read·95 words

March 5 - Going To Georgia

The first thing that strikes me about this mix of spoken word and soaring vocals is that this might be the strongest that John's voice has sounded so far. In this song of love and isolation and the co…

Mar 5·1 min read·98 words

March 4 - That Hippolytine Feeling

Ah, a bad recording in a very different way than other ones. This is a radio recording of a live show, complete with proper radio hiss, and is one of the only versions of this absolute ramp of a song.…

Mar 4·1 min read·100 words

March 3 - Nine Black Poppies

A chaotic descent of a sing, frantic chords and a low low riff on loose strings. This is a jangly open chord burst of burning paranoia, all signifiers and urgency. There's a couple of versions of this…

Mar 3·1 min read·93 words

March 2 - Pure Money

Ich weiß nicht, warum dieses Lied mit einer Frau beginnt, die Deutsch spricht. This becomes a soothing soft keyboard song with the smallest hint of menace in it. An odd late night sound with a vocal t…

Mar 2·1 min read·103 words

March 1 - Cubs in Five

I don't know why, but listening to this I found myself thinking of Walt Whitman and Wallace Stevens. Something about the intersection of the universal and timeless and the immediate. This is a cynical…

Mar 1·1 min read·97 words

February 29 - Song for Roger Maris

Yes, this day doesn't exist this year, but this song does. Well, kind of. This is an unreleased song that exists largely in bootlegs. The particular version I heard was a 1999 bootleg from CBGBs, whic…

Mar 1·1 min read·98 words

February 28 - Cold Milk Bottle

A burst of jangly energy here, covering a song that functions as an inverse love song. That feeling of having your day darken simply by someone's existence making itself known. I'm always fascinated b…

Feb 28·1 min read·90 words

February 22 - Orange Ball Of Pain

And welcome back to folk territory. The guitar and vocals are soft and meditative storytelling, allowing the lyrics to perform a one-two punch of undermining and then reinforcing. Let's not beat aroun…

Feb 22·1 min read·96 words

February 21 - Full Flower

Folks, I don't want to freak you out, but I just heard an electric guitar. And multi-instrumentation. We're onto a new album here with new production standards. We are a long way from the rumble grumb…

Feb 21·1 min read·97 words

February 20 - Against Agamemnon

One of the profound joins of any era of the mountain Goats is the joyful song with the horrifying lyrics. On its surface, Against Agamemnon sounds like a joyful jangly pastoral, something with a count…

Feb 20·1 min read·90 words

February 19 - Duke Ellington

A mainstay of all eras of the Mountain Goats is the song as a sketch. A small set of details spelling out something very specific, with the potential for universality through the small details. Here, …

Feb 19·1 min read·91 words

February 18 - The Only Thing I Know

This is an interesting time for production on Mountain Goats songs, as they move between solo and multi-instrumental and between tape recorder and studio. Sometimes this works very well, as with Song …

Feb 18·1 min read·96 words

February 17 - Song for Dana Plato

A surprisingly full sound for this period, and a catching chorus at a point where John was quite chorus-averse. There's something nicely and deliberately unsettling in the bass progression that stops …

Feb 17·1 min read·92 words

February 16 - Noche Del Guajolote

There's always something pleasant about a recording that sounds like a party. One of the reasons why (and I'm sure we'll get to them eventually) the Jordan Lake Sessions are so beloved by Mountain Goa…

Feb 16·1 min read·91 words

February 15 - Hatha Hill

Exceptionally simple riff at the core of this one, but the sound is irresistible. Heavy on the bass and moving at a soft and drowzy pace with beautifully droning violins in the mix. There are basicall…

Feb 15·1 min read·102 words

February 14 - Going to Port Washington

OK, so the story behind this one is absolutely adorable. While ultimately this was available on the rarities album Ghana, this was initially released as part of The Wedding Record, a four track album …

Feb 14·1 min read·95 words

February 13 - Song for John Davis

Grumble of tape recorder, opening bright chord, historical lyrics, this is peak early Mountain Goats. John's love of history, especially of the small personal lives of people in remarkable historical …

Feb 13·1 min read·90 words

February 12 - Pure Gold

Another multi-instrumental track, which fills out the sound significantly. Having spent around six weeks in the world of early Mountain Goats there is something magical that I see happening when John …

Feb 13·1 min read·87 words

February 11 - Wrong!

Hello keyboard my old friend... There's something lovely about the Mountain Goats songs that got made for little tapes or compilations or were otherwise sent off into the world to find their way. Albu…

Feb 11·1 min read·90 words

February 10 - Whole Wide World

Oh John, with your soft voice saying unsettling things. I'm being put to sleep and kept awake at the same time and by the same thing. This is a song whose sadness is quiet and contained and no less de…

Feb 10·1 min read·99 words

February 9 - Some Swedish Trees

God, I am such a sucker for band chat in songs. There's nothing like thinking of bands as collections of voices to make the sing feel natural and like it captures a moment. And on the chorus of this o…

Feb 10·1 min read·99 words

February 8 - Sept 19 Triple X Love!  Love!

So, dates. I'm writing this on February 10 about the song for February 8 which namechecks September 19 unless you're looking at the Youtube version which namechecks September 16. One of those dates is…

Feb 10·1 min read·69 words

February 7 - Snow Crush Killing Song

"I know you're changing, god damn you for that" Sometimes love hurts. Sometimes love causes us to hurt. This is a song under a snow drift about the passage of time and the fact that the only way to st…

Feb 10·1 min read·103 words

February 6 - Third Snow Song

not much to say about this one, which isn't the same as not liking it. It's a small punchy account from the singer's life, a story of being unprepared for the cold in a cold place, with cheerful and w…

Feb 9·1 min read·66 words

February 5 - The Recognition Scene

First appearance in this collection so far of the albun Sweden, which is not about Sweden. There's a small time jump here and it's clear in the confidence and assurance of how the lyrics work with the…

Feb 9·1 min read·96 words

February 4 - Going to Tennessee

The beauty of the Mountain Goats as a band, a project, whatever, is that they know no limits in terms of genre or experimentation. ThHis is especially true later in the band's progression, but even cl…

Feb 9·1 min read·98 words

February 3 - Pure Heat

There's something calypso-like about the instrumentation of this song, small and jaunty and with an odd sadness behind it. This sadness is enhanced through the lyrics, which much like much Mountain Go…

Feb 9·1 min read·90 words

February 2 - Going To Jamaica

This is a big open song with big open chords, giving an odd and apocalyptic vision of a fading world. Flowers in dry soil, the birds fleeing for another world, a sense of survivors in a place for the …

Feb 2·1 min read·99 words

You don't have to experience every horror

This isn't the right place for this. I don't have a right place for this, but I needed to say it. ICE murdered someone today in Minneapolis. Alex Pretti, a nurse who worked for the VA, was executed in…

Jan 24·1 min read·98 words

January 24 - Going to Kirby Sigston

The words that jump into my head when I hear this song for the first time are "jangly pastoral". It's upbeat, slightly spiky, and giving a view of a place of if not home then at least rest. Eating col…

Jan 24·1 min read·102 words

January 23 - Noctifer Birmingham

Something about this song feels like a dream. The sort of not quite asleep, not quite fully awake place where the mind creates things and latches them on to actual sensation. It's a place where Nick D…

Jan 23·1 min read·99 words

January 22 - Love Cuts The Strings

This song is a rolling stampede, and a mark of John's ever increasing assurance on all fronts of his musicality. It's urgent in tone, in tempo, and in subject, and like the best Mountain Goats songs i…

Jan 22·1 min read·94 words

January 21 - Chinese Rifle Song

There's an interesting strolling pace to this song that put me in mind of some banjo folk I've heard, which might be why this song felt like it was in a country-and-blues-adjacent space. The repeated …

Jan 21·1 min read·97 words

January 20 - Quetzacoatl Comes Through

So the first thing to observe about this song is that the thing uploaded to Youtube under its name isn't this song but rather a superbly 80s weird little synth keyboards things. It's quite nice in its…

Jan 20·1 min read·100 words

January 19 - Thanks For The Dress

Cheeky start there, John, burst of radio channels ending with "please keep feeding us". Very sound collage. Hot Garden Stomp continues to feel like one of the earlier places where John was saying "all…

Jan 19·1 min read·95 words

January 18 - Going To Japan

A frantic and uncertain start to a sing that grows into its confidence even as the whirlwind of ifs lyrics grows in speed. This is a sketch, but it's a sketch that feels like it covers ground that lat…

Jan 19·1 min read·93 words

January 17 - Billy The Kid's Dream of the Magic Shoes

There are many archetypes of a Mountain Goats song, but one of my favourite ones is a cheerful ditty about death. This is a short bouncy number with a lot of lyrical repetition, about a guy facing his…

Jan 17·1 min read·100 words

January 16 - Fresh Cherries In Trinidad

Castio-tastic start to this, but a delightful narrative vignette. A tiny sweet moment, as sweet as a fresh cherry. And that's almost it. Not every song has an important point or a poignant moral, some…

Jan 16·1 min read·95 words

January 15 - Song for Mark and Joel

This song is a series of fraying loops. A chaotic, rolling guitar rhythm, the fuzz of the cassette recorder mixing with the fuzz of the acoustic guitar mixing with the repeated lyrical refrains that p…

Jan 15·1 min read·99 words

January 14 - Going To Norwalk

This is a vignette with a ghost in it, a delightful and time honoured musical tradition. A slice from John's life from which he has removed himself and added another. Musically this is about as simple…

Jan 14·1 min read·95 words

January 13 - The Last Day Of Jimi Hendix's Life

A gentle song to start with, this begins in what the cruel might call banality but which I think of as melancholy comfort. The small moments in a majestic life before it knows it's over. Like (let's f…

Jan 14·1 min read·104 words

January 12 - Song For Cleomenes

oh, I love the riff for this, the slow descending chaotic catastrophic roll of guitar with spoken words over the top. And what words. Easy to listen to, steady in pace, but setting a scene of impendin…

Jan 14·1 min read·78 words

January 11 - New Star Song

There's something about John's simple, narrative, confessional songs that really strike home the most. The ones where the words are in a sense very straightforward and in another crackling with imager…

Jan 14·1 min read·95 words

January 10 - Seeing Daylight

...wow, this feels like a time jump. We're still with the rumbling of John's tape recorder, but everything from the vocals to the instrumentation to the lyrics feels almost infinitely more modern desp…

Jan 13·1 min read·93 words

January 9 - Solomon Revisited Revisited

Time for an odd thing to say: this is one of the most consciously "songy" of the songs so far. The repeated refrain of "I've got a radio" and the tight but coherent narrative break it away from the "s…

Jan 13·1 min read·101 words

January 8 - Ice Cream, Cobra Man

After two days of experimentation we return to something more foundational and closer to John's poetic and folk-inflected roots. The music here is a lyric transmission system and the recording is deli…

Jan 12·1 min read·98 words

January 7 - Pure Milk

Sometimes when you're listening to early material by an artist you can catch the moment that they "get it". Not when they become successful, but a point some distance before that where they first do s…

Jan 12·1 min read·90 words

January 6 - The Cow Song

In one sense, this was the song so far in this year (and in This Year) which sounded least like The Mountain Goats. Which made it the song that sounded the most like The Mountain Goats. Coming to the …

Jan 12·1 min read·101 words

January 5 - Going To Alaska

I remember a quiet joy when I was first learning to play the guitar, of working out things that I considered to be "cheats". I was never a good guitarist, but one reason guitar is such a popular instr…

Jan 10·1 min read·105 words

January 4 - One Winter At Point Alpha Privative

The early songs of John Darnielle are like brilliant notes on index cards. Actually, not index cards. Receipts, bank deposit slips, Chinese food menus. They're urgent thoughts that spit an idea out as…

Jan 10·1 min read·96 words

January 3 - Wild Palm City / Within You, Without You

So this is an interesting one. It comes from a compilation called "Back to the Egg, Asshole" which appears to be a multi artist mixtape where all the songs have the same names as Beatles songs, descri…

Jan 9·1 min read·95 words

January 2 - Running Away With What Freud Said

Wow, this is early. A song from the first Mountain Goats cassette. In fact, the first song from that first cassette. It couldn't be more simple in terms of the looping rhythm, and at one minute thirty…

Jan 9·1 min read·107 words

January 1 - Alphabetizing

One of the first things I notice about this song, and I'll confess it's not one I'd heard before now, is something very familiar. An old friend from countless other places: the soft musical drone of J…

Jan 9·1 min read·94 words

I worked out what I'm going to do with this

So I'm compulsive about signing up for new things and then not using them. Over the more than two decades that blogging has been a thing I've probably made more than twenty and not used them because t…

Jan 9·1 min read·100 words