More evidence of John Darnielle's awesome-ocity
Three of my newly ordered Mountain Goats CDs arrived yesterday: Tallahassee, The Sunset Tree, and Get Lonely. I have not had a chance to fully absorb them yet, but I can say that both Tallahassee and The Sunset Tree are great full albums, thematically coherent but with songs that are capable of standing alone.
One of my new favorites from The Sunset Tree is Lion's Teeth. The whole album is about child abuse and this song nicely captures the anger of the abused, the desire for retribution, and, given the impossibility of retribution and the inequality of the power relationship between a boy and his stepfather, the frustration of being trapped in such a relationship.
The other thing that proves Darnielle's coolness is to be found in the liner notes for Tallahassee. In the acknowledgments, he writes, after a few lines of thanks for musicians and producers, that thanks are to be given to
"anybody who ever made a record that got described as 'ambient dub,' anywhere, ever; anyone who reviewed said album(s) favorably so long as they didn't get all flowery about it; independent record stores who stock said ambient dub albums and keep the dust from gathering on their anti-theft packaging; clerks at chain stores who attempt to order such records, only to be rebuffed by the senior buyer when caught, and lectured rather sternly and rudely besides; and the dashing Swedish tenor Jussi Bjorling. The Mountain Goats do not themselves play ambient dub, or if they do, do so with such total lack of attention to the most basic elements of the genre that their efforts can only be described as falling so wide of the mark as to have missed it entirely. Jussi Bjorling, should he rise from the grave, will in fact put his tenor to entirely novel use by assisting us in honing the focus of our efforts in the ambient dub field. We look forward to this project with almost painfully sharp hunger and hope that you share our admittedly puzzling enthusiasm for it."
Actually, I do share their puzzling enthusiasm for this project.
One of my new favorites from The Sunset Tree is Lion's Teeth. The whole album is about child abuse and this song nicely captures the anger of the abused, the desire for retribution, and, given the impossibility of retribution and the inequality of the power relationship between a boy and his stepfather, the frustration of being trapped in such a relationship.
The other thing that proves Darnielle's coolness is to be found in the liner notes for Tallahassee. In the acknowledgments, he writes, after a few lines of thanks for musicians and producers, that thanks are to be given to
"anybody who ever made a record that got described as 'ambient dub,' anywhere, ever; anyone who reviewed said album(s) favorably so long as they didn't get all flowery about it; independent record stores who stock said ambient dub albums and keep the dust from gathering on their anti-theft packaging; clerks at chain stores who attempt to order such records, only to be rebuffed by the senior buyer when caught, and lectured rather sternly and rudely besides; and the dashing Swedish tenor Jussi Bjorling. The Mountain Goats do not themselves play ambient dub, or if they do, do so with such total lack of attention to the most basic elements of the genre that their efforts can only be described as falling so wide of the mark as to have missed it entirely. Jussi Bjorling, should he rise from the grave, will in fact put his tenor to entirely novel use by assisting us in honing the focus of our efforts in the ambient dub field. We look forward to this project with almost painfully sharp hunger and hope that you share our admittedly puzzling enthusiasm for it."
Actually, I do share their puzzling enthusiasm for this project.