On Objects without Subjects (or John Darnielle as "a way more emo Robbe-Grillet")

In an interview during the promotional cycle for The Life of the World to Come, John Darnielle is asked about the literary influences on his writing. He's reluctant to find any direct resemblances between himself and any of the totemic figures he cites elsewhere – Joan Didion, Faulkner, Aeschylus – but makes one telling comparison. He likens his work to 'a way more emo Robbe-Grillet.'

Alain Robbe-Grillet was a French novelist and film-maker who came to prominence in the nouveau roman movement of the 1950s and 60s. One of the most notable features of his novels is a singularly flat style that privileges objects over plot and character psychology. In place of examination of people's motives or their subjective emotional responses to the world, Robbe-Grillet's texts present us with objects in their essence – their geometric dimensions, their hard edges, their irreducible thereness, indifferent to human life.

He's also known for his repetitive, cyclical narratives – scenes are replayed endlessly, from multiple angles, on multiple levels of reality, until there's no way of recapturing what really happened in what order; until such questions are entirely meaningless. It's a world of mechanical patterns broken only by startling violence: The Voyeur follows a watch-salesman on his circular trip around an isolated island. He works out methodically how long it will take him to get from house to house on his bicycle. How long it will take to make each sale. He sets up a suitcase on a table to display the models on offer. And he thinks about the body of a young girl, sexually assaulted and thrown to her death from the top of a cliff. This is a typical passage from Richard Howard's translation:

'At low tide the remains of these crabs strewed the naked mud in front of the quay. Among the flat stones with their manes of rotting seaweed, on the barely slanting blackish surface, in which sparkled here and there a tin can that still had not rusted, a bit of crockery painted with little flowers, a blue enamel skimmer almost intact, their arched, spiny shells could be distinguished next to the longer, smoother shells of ordinary crabs.'

These objects are placed before our eyes without commentary, without inherent emotional resonance – their existence is a kind of challenge; they possess what Darnielle in 'Baboon' refers to as 'pure power, stripped of meaning'. And the songs of the Mountain Goats are full of such descriptive passages; of objects that stack up, surrounding Darnielle's characters, without asking their permission, or ours. Take the opening lines of 'Broom People', for example:

‘36 Hudson in the garage
All sorts of junk in the unattached spare room
Dishes in the kitchen sink
Used straw for the old broom'

Or these, from 'Letter From Belgium':

'Susan and her notebook
Freehand drawings of Lon Chaney
Blueprints for geodesic domes
Recipes for cake'

Or these, from 'All Rooms Cable A/C Free Coffee', on the Extra Glenns' 'Martial Arts Weekend':

'Thunder, lightning, hot rain
Sweet smell of rotten grain
Holy basil, wolf's bane
Crows tapping on the windowpane'

I'm not suggesting that all, or even most Mountain Goats songs are made in this mould, but it's a common enough feature to bear some scrutiny. What's striking about these lists of noun phrases in each case is how disconnected they are – they're free of articles, definite or indefinite, or deictic pronouns to mark them as 'the', or 'a', or 'some', or 'these', or 'those'. Part of what gives Darnielle's songs their feeling of concision is this elision – the intense, distilled quality any attentive listener will be familiar with is generated by what the lyrics don't express, even on the fundamental level of grammar. A common, banal thought experiment will serve to illustrate what the Mountain Goats don't do:

'Susan and her notebook
[In which there were]
Freehand drawings of Lon Chaney
[Along with]
Blueprints for geodesic domes
[And]
Recipes for cake'

Which isn't to say that John Darnielle doesn't encourage you to join the dots, to make the connections. That's the whole game of narrative, after all – a fact of which Darnielle, who in another interview declares himself the author of 'not one, but two theses' on the human need for narrative in every aspect of life is only too aware.

This is one big point of divergence from Robbe-Grillet – without going into specifics, a large part of what the French author's writing does is obfuscate the details to the point of obliterating the idea of chronological narrative development; everything's happens at once, like a cubist painting (not my own description, it must be said), and it's the reader’s task to process the work on hand as it creates itself, rather than to search for a pre-existing narrative structure that we can recreate like detectives. Indeed, to do so is a disservice to the text before us.

For John Darnielle, however, it's impossible to stop investing the things around us with meaning, even as they possess none in and of themselves, and it's impossible to separate the events that life, or writing, presents us with without engaging in the furious search for narrative order. Or in other words, 'there's a monkey in the basement – how did the monkey get there?'

Maybe this is where the 'way more emo' part comes in. It's hard to think of Darnielle as a cold-eyed photographer of objects, because his songs are also full of humans – tense, broken people, with their lust and their obsessions and their fury. A Mountain Goats song can never simply be about 'Carpenter ants in the dresser/Flies in the screen', because there's always someone at the middle of it, afraid it will be 'too late by the time we learn/What these cryptic symbols mean' ('Palmcorder Yajna'). Ants and flies don't mean anything, of course, other than that your house isn't particularly clean; though it's interesting to note that Robbe-Grillet returns obsessively to insects and crustaceans, small insignificant creatures who hover on the edges of human scenes until a boot stamps down. But what's more important is the doomed and inescapable desire for sense-making, a speaking person's need to situate events and objects in their proper order.

Which isn't to say that Darnielle creates detailed characters, either. Character, as well as plot, is suppressed in Robbe-Grillet's work, and here Darnielle also uses the technique of elision. Yes, his songs are full of 'I's and 'you's – but look at the verbs. Time and again, Darnielle conjugates his verbs without a subject. We assume, in most cases rightly, that the person singing is the one performing the action, but take this verse from 'How to Embrace A Swamp Creature':

'Meet up with you in the kitchen
Where the air is hot and dry
Open up all the faucets
Be fruitful and multiply'

The first line is obviously the narrator's action – [I, or I will] meet up with you in the kitchen. But does he also, alone, 'open up all the faucets'? Or do they do it together – 'we open up all the faucets'? Or is it an imperative, from the speaker to his addressee, that segues into the next line of Biblical command? And who's that addressed to – her, himself, or us all?

A verse from 'Genesis 3:23' seems simpler in its grammar, but its literary function is similar:

'Touch nothing move nothing stand still
Keep my ears open for cars
See how the people here live now
Hope they’re better at it than I was'

The first line has that same inclusive, imperative presence – it puts us in the room with the dispossessed narrator, facing us with the same decision he has to make about his actions. The rest simply elides the subject, foregrounding not who is speaking, but what he is speaking about and doing – his actions. Actions come first, and narrative comes later; as well as keeping the song snappy and familiar, the lack of the first person pronoun creates a kind of universality, or to be pessimistic, perhaps an even greater dispossession. Like the elision of articles elsewhere, it gives us the actions in their raw form. But for the listener, this absence plunges us directly inside them, making the pull-back of the chorus even sharper – 'I used to live here'. We are so close to the verbs, we might be forgiven for briefly thinking that they only applied to us.

The above are just observations, and the can of worms they open up is hard to contain within a brief essay; but if we want to find literary forebears for John Darnielle, he himself gives us the clue to start the search in an unexpected place. When Darnielle declares 'this song is for the stick pins and the cottons/I left in the top drawer', it might be an avant-garde French novelist of the 1950s who we should be thanking for the dedication. After all, someone's got to keep your pretty things from danger.

By Richard O'Brien. Mr. O'Brien is 21 and comes from some damned English city. He almost has a degree in English and French and writes reviews at http://www.therecognitionscene.com./

On Sweden and its Orphans

“So there you are in your room and you’re not by yourself, though you feel as though you are. And the same thing is going on in your intended’s mind, but nobody’s saying anything about it. Because a lot of people, including the people in this song, think, ‘Y’know, if I just don’t say anything then magic will happen and everything will change.’

Nothing will change. Only thing that’s gonna happen is they’re gonna fall back into an old behavior pattern and for somewhere between 20 minutes and three hours, depending on how much they’ve had to drink, it’s going to feel really, really intense, but then afterwards it’s a bad situation. This is called ‘I’ve Got the Sex.’”

-John Darnielle

“It stoned me to my soul, stoned me just like Jelly Roll.”

-Van Morrison

There was a time when Sweden was my favorite album. I remember declaring it the only album anyone would ever need. Not since discovering The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan at 16 had my young ears heard an album that inspired such evangelizing. Sweden even had the advantage of being obscure to the general population which lent my mission a previously unknown sense of necessity.

Where I had simply been the latest in a long line of mop-headed, bookworm Dylan disciples, the Mountain Goats remained a non-factor in most versions of the pop canon. Even 15 years after its release, when The Sunset Tree and Tallahassee have brought the world an unexpected appreciation for John Darnielle’s literary bleat, Sweden remains a cold, dense, mystery rarely suggested as an entry point or highlight of the discography.

I discovered the album at an age when bitter romance and heartbreak held greater appeal than happiness; at an age when music was not meant for the background. I listened to it closely and often. I studied its lyrics and its liner notes, even the stories John told about the songs before playing them live. Sweden rewarded me with the comfort and companionship that only a cold, dense, mystery of an album can give. Each listen reopened time-sutured memories and revealed new angles from which to interpret the seemingly simple songs and impossibly complex lyrics.

By the time I discovered the cult of Mountain Goats fans and got to discussing the album’s merits with those who knew it best, my mind was hungry for the theories of time travel, Gods, violence and true-to-life confessions that fellow devotees would throw at me. Alone together, we listened, discussed and drank. These days it’s hard for me to listen all the way through Sweden, but not because of an emotional toll or unwanted remembrances. I don’t shiver when the first chords of “The Recognition Scene” ring out. I don’t hurt alongside the narrator of “Snow Crush Killing Song” and I don’t yearn for the returning past in “Downtown Seoul” (though I’ll never stop smiling at the gentle scolding that opens “Some Swedish Trees”). The album is old to my ears.

It is far from crossing into the territory of embarrassing former obsessions, but it has fallen from the front of the list of albums I throw at every passing stranger. I’m a happier person these days. I live a life of my own choosing. I admire people who are looking to improve the world rather than those attempting to destroy themselves and their surroundings. It’s easier to fall asleep and it doesn’t hurt when I wake up. On especially good days I can admit my own ambitions to myself. When Sweden made sense to me, ambition didn’t.

According to Darnielle, there were two songs left off Sweden. “I’ve Got the Sex” was the album’s original opener. The tape was left at home when he went to the studio to master the album. As a self-identified Mountain Goats fanatic, this story always bugged me. It does not come close to explaining why the song was actually left out. Leaving a tape at home is far from an insurmountable problem, but I’ve yet to hear a more detailed or alternate explanation. Needless to say, this perceived misdirection only fueled speculation that the song was somehow more important than any committed to wax.

“I’ve Got the Sex” seems to be a thesis along the lines of “The Recognition Scene,” though one performed with more intensity than the album for which it was written. It’s a furious storm before the agonizingly slow descent into destruction that follows. Despite the song’s power, it would have, perhaps, been repetitive on the album and, perhaps, slightly out of place with the rest of its mood. Relatively rare live performances maintain its impact and help fuel the band’s devoted fans.

“Duke Ellington,” the other song left off Sweden, is the one that will truly never lose its place in my heart. It doesn’t have a back story and is performed live even less than “I’ve Got the Sex.” The plot is almost non-existent: Our narrator watches a musical performance and is affected by it. That’s it. There are brief mentions of Sweden and an undefined “you,” but nothing even as coherent as the unspoken center of “Neon Orange Glimmer Song” and certainly nowhere near the detailed storytelling found in late-era Mountain Goats songs.

This song is, thus, a relic of an older time in Mountain Goats history. We’re given fragmented thoughts and images without context and left to piece together the mess ourselves. Here, the narrator seems to be going through the same process himself (it’s a man singing and there are no other clues, so, for the purposes of this paragraph, “him” it is). The performance breaks him up, it causes him to reevaluate the memories he’s accumulated. His conclusion -- “I’d had just about enough of losing things” -- represents a reversal of “The Recognition Scene’s” acceptance, and even romanticizing of loss (“I’m gonna miss you when you’re gone”). The pain may not be over, but its resolution is finally, at least, a goal.

And then John pressed the STOP button and sent the tape to a different label for a compilation.

By JOTS.

On "Emerging" (or the entirety of Moon Colony Bloodbath)

The doctor walks into the room, and sits down into the chair. Glances are exchanged. We size each other up without trying to make it obvious. But it is. Very obvious. He is thinking, "What is this one's angle? Where are we going to go to today?" while I think, "Can I trust him?"

"Can I smoke?"

I am sitting in an armchair. Much to my surprise, there isn't a cliché leather couch in which to recline.

"Unfortunately, I can't let you smoke in here, given the State's laws about smoking indoors."

I let my eyes glide to the man's desk, with an ashtray in plain view. I focus on it, squint to make it clear.

"I'd be a lot more comfortable. This would work a lot better if. . ."

He nods, slowly; gestures towards a window. I stand, pull out a pack of Winston Lights from my suit pocket.

Out of the corner of my mouth, while lighting a cigarette, I ask if he knows who I am.

He fidgets, momentarily, as if thinking of how to answer that question. I find that strange; a man of his position not being ready for anything, let alone a simple question like that.

"I've heard your name. I've heard where you've been."

I guess confidentiality can only go so far. We can only hide so much from the general public, let alone someone with connections. My pulse is already thumping like a kettle drum, and it's resonating against every wall in the office. I start to sweat.

"What do you know?"

It comes out much harsher than I had anticipated. Baited. Waiting. I feel like I've already blown my cover. I glance at him, he seems nonplussed, but I know there is no way that tone goes unpunished.

"Well. . . you've been to space. You've conquered a level of freedom that not many people get to experience. You've been to the great beyond."
It takes every fabric of my being not to lunge. I have to physically brace myself not to lean into his face and call his bluff.

He notices.

This isn't going to work.

Why isn't this easier? He hasn't seen what I've seen. He doesn't know what I know.

He hasn't done what I've done.

AND HE CAN'T PROVE A GODDAMN THING.

"There are many people out there who would kill to go where you have . . .,” emphasizing the word kill.

Before he can finish the sentence, I find myself leaping across the room like a wolfhound. I'm leaning into his face, my breath nearly scalding his face as I cry, "You have no fucking idea what I've done!"

All of my predispositions about this are now over. My grandiose dreams of hemming and hawing over "patient/doctor confidentiality" and thinking that this man was trust-worthy; thinking that I would get out of this alive. I was stupid to come here, and now I feel like a caged animal, baited into a trap.

This will end badly.

I don't feel as though I'm insane, but my ramblings weave between "mildly unnerved" to "completely unhinged" as I break down and give the entire story. At first, I'm screaming, as I'm trying to prove a point, but with each gory detail, I know I lose him more and more. I let loose with all of it, start to finish, as I pace back and forth. The smoke stagnates in the office, to the point where he begins to cough constantly. Each sentence, each word makes the doctor more and more uncomfortable. He cringes, and his eyes open wider and wider as I tell my story. One pupil gives an aura of confused sympathy while the other only poses fear and a wild requirement of self-defense. His nails are digging deep into his chair as I relay exactly where I have been for the past six months.

They told me therapy would make me feel better, and at some point it did. Nearly an hour into my grisly tirade, I start to feel more at home in my own body. More than I have in years. I continue my reiteration of my days, and the doctor does not cease to be any less intimidated or visibly afraid of me, but with each word out of my mouth, I start to feel calmer and calmer. Is this therapy? Is there a way out of this? I collect myself enough to sit back down in the chair and look him straight in the eye as I tell him that I, in blunt terminology, am a cannibal. Now he is the one who is sweating. Profusely. If he had a panic button, as bank tellers do, I have no question in my mind that he would be stamping on it with both hands and feet and demanding someone come save him from this brutal . . .

murderer?

I'm feeling better but the weight of that word plummets my train of thought into the bottom of my stomach well he can't tell anyone i mean that's illegal he needs to not leave the room with the knowledge of what i've done and then give it off send it around to anyone who will listen i keep talking but for some reason i'm feeling calmer and calmer despite the rage that i feel i'm NOT i'm NOT A MURDERER but i'm still feeling calm and the doctor's eyes start to glaze over I'M NOT A MURDERER i want to scream it into his face and grip it and jam it into that stupid mouth of his punch him in his face to get rid of that empty gaze why is he reacting so calmly now why can't i fucking move
.. ..

A gloved hand slams against a paneled wall, followed by a head, slumped against it.

"We could never trust him, could we?"

The captain merely shakes his head and stares at the floor.

"We can't let them out. We can't let them . . . there's no way for them to be free again, is there?"

He shakes his head again.

"In this line of work, you have to accept that those in the frontline are going to take the most damage. Those willing to take the risk are, more than likely, going to get burned. Every experiment requires losses for each of its accomplishments. Unfortunately, we've identified that those who go up there . . .”
The Captain looks upwards.

“. . . might not make it back down. Shut it down."

The Lieutenant looks around, nervously.

"Captain?"

"I said: Shut. It. Down."

By Chris Jamieson. Mr. Jamieson lives in New Jersey, and spends the wide majority of his time surrounded by machines. His music can be found here: http://chrisjamieson.bandcamp.com/

On "Sir Arne's Treasure"

Keith Richards once said, every night there's a different world's greatest band in a different greatest venue. I agree. I don't know about tonight at the Fillmore, or next week at Webster Hall, or some night next month at the Whiskey. But on Tuesday night, that band was the Mountain Goats. On Tuesday night, the venue was the Castro Theatre.

** **

The night was special from the start, a showing of the 1919 Swedish silent movie Sir Arne's Theater, with the Mountain Goats providing the soundtrack. The San Francisco Film Society does this thing every year. One year it was Black Francis. Last year, it was Stephen Merritt from Magnetic Fields. I went to that one. It was interesting, I guess. A good anecdote. Tuesday night with the Mountain Goats, though. Tuesday night is historical.

Being the Castro and all, the show starts with the sounds of an ancient organ. A Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ. We might as well be in 1958, the rolling, strolling melodic organ music filling the aged hall. A few minutes after eight, some guy from the San Francisco Film Society stands up front and speaks a few words about the series, and the film. Best print in the world. Sub-titles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm here for the main event. I am here for the music.

Soon enough, the lights lower and the show starts quietly. John Darnielle sneaks into the pit and behind the piano, barely moving, slipping through the shadows. The film starts to roll and Mr. Darnielle watches with us, waiting for a cue. His fingers touch the ivory and a quiet tune begins, slowly, almost silently. Mr. Darnielle begins to sing, slowly, almost silently. The night begins. The set then moves between solo piano and solo guitar, between songs from the seminal Mountain Goats album, Sweden, and the great, infamous, never released Hail & Farewell Gothenburg. Some of the words sound familiar, some of the melodies do, too. And somehow they are completely new to me. Songs I've heard one hundred times are completely new to me.

The movie is a good one, I suppose, some romp through the Scottish countryside. Trees and snow. A betrayed woman. A cranky old lady. The print is crystal clear. The landscapes are rolling and wonderful. It means almost nothing to me, though. I am here for the music. And the music is good. The music is special.

Maybe half way through, the shadows of three men slither into the front row. Another minute passes and the three shadows creep into the pit, and gather up their instruments. An electric guitar. An upright bass. A small drum kit. The solo performance morphs into a quartet. The music starts quietly, slowly begins to grow. The name of the song is The Recognition Scene, a classic from the Sweden album. It rocks in a way I have never heard a band rock. It grows bigger and bigger, louder and louder. It is bigger than the venue. It is bigger than the whole goddamn city. I'd continue down this line, but I don't want to start getting into hyperbole.

The guys on the stage are having a great time, maybe a better time than me. John Vanderslice with his axe slung over his shoulder, churning out chords and notes, grinding them out. The skins are covered by Jason Slota, he is hitting them hard when the clouds are dumping rain on the screen; he barely scratches them as our heroine cries, slowly dies. The beat is kept, too, by Jamie Riotto, on stand-up bass. He is furious and subtle, pounding and poetic. The venue is buzzing. The night will last forever. The night is over in fifteen minutes. It is over before it began.

Truth be told, the set lasts about an hour twenty. It might as well have been five minutes. It was that seamless. There is no encore, but there are no encores in movie theaters. I walk out into the cold San Francisco air. The lights of the sign above me are bright, Castro above me. I feel the cold air on my skin. I look east. I look west. I collect my thoughts. I know what I have just seen, but it has not quite registered.

** **

People will surely look back years from now, listening to digitized versions of the show, dissecting and dicing every word, every note, trying in vain to touch the evening. I already found a copy on the web. It is going to be one of those recordings. The myth will become bigger than the music. The legend will grow larger than the night. Still, looking back just twenty-four hours later, I don't see how it could be. That's why, for last night at least, the Mountain Goats had their night, at the Castro Theatre, as the "world's greatest band." Keith sure knows what he is talking about.

By P. William Grimm. Mr. Grimm makes his home in San Francisco’s Mission District. A collection of his short stories, Valencia Street, available at http://www.grayskypress.com/, was published in 2011. His novel The Seventh was published in 2009, and his writings have been published in multiple on-line literary journals such as Annalemma Magazine and Eclectica.

Photograph, Corey Denis © 2010.

On The Sunset Tree

Writing about The Sunset Tree, I realised almost as soon as I said I would do it, is fairly difficult to do well. It's an album that people, including me, care very much about, and I worry that whatever way I see it will not be the same as how it is seen by anyone else. But I think that's what makes The Sunset Tree special; it is personal. That it is semi-autobiographical could have meant it would just be personal to its writer, John Darnielle, and to everybody else it would be like reading a diary; full of emotion, but belonging to someone else.

But instead, there are many Mountain Goats fans out there who feel that they have their own personal connection to the album, from those who see a reflection of their own lives in it to those who have lived through completely different experiences and yet can relate totally to what Darnielle writes.

The first song on The Sunset Tree, You or Your Memory, introduces one of the important aspects of the album - memory. The narrator sits in a motel room looking back on his life and everything that has happened to him. The song acts as a frame for the rest of the album; the rest of the songs are recollections of his childhood, leading up to where he is now. He bargains with God for him to “make it through tonight”, and this theme of survival is a thread which passes through the entire album; even the same phrase, "make it through," is echoed later in This Year.

In Broom People we move from the present into the past, seeing those memories from the point of view of Darnielle as a teenager. This change of perspective is subtle, but the listener can tell that this is a teenager talking, particularly in the lines “I write down good reasons to freeze to death/ In my spiral ring notebook.” There is a feeling of loneliness and isolation; his family aren't even mentioned in the song, and his friends and teachers (well-meaning as they are) are outsiders that cannot do anything to help him. The song shows us a boy trapped in a house full of every kind of insignificant object - “all sorts of junk in the unattached spare room”- and it seems as if he considers himself to be just another one of those things. The only meaning in his life is the love of the person to whom he's singing. Love setting us free is hardly an original concept in songs, but this song is memorable for the images he uses- “I am a wild creature”, “I am a babbling brook.

”This Year is a perfect example of how the songs on The Sunset Tree (more so than any other Mountain Goats album, in my opinion) can have great personal significance to people. It has all the things you would expect from a song about adolescence - rebellion, drinking, a girl- but what stands out about this song is that one line; “I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.” It brilliantly captures the experience of being a young person, not wanting anything except to survive another twelve months in whatever personal hell you reside. It's a song about hope, but it is not blindly optimistic; that the song which starts out as a break for freedom ends up in “a cavalcade of anger and fear” is hardly a good omen for the future, and “if it kills me” reminds us that getting through this particular year is not going to be easy.

From the hope of This Year we move suddenly into the desperation of Dilaudid. The most interesting aspect of Mountain Goats songs tends to be the lyrics, and sometimes it can be easy to see them almost as poems rather than songs. With Dilaudid the music is undeniably significant; even if you were to take away all the words, it just sounds like someone losing their sanity. It is a suffocating feeling of panic. Personally I see this song as being slightly disconnected from the story of the album, not being related in any obvious way to Darnielle and his stepfather, but it still gives the impression of a vivid memory, and in the line “if we live to see the other side of this” it continues the theme of survival from You or Your Memory and This Year.

If Dilaudid is somewhat unrelated to John's life, the same could definitely not be said for Dance Music; it is one of the more noticeably autobiographical songs on the album, its first few lines locating it in a specific time and place, and having all the small details of a childhood memory (“I'm in the living room watching the Watergate hearings.”). The first verse is from the perspective of a scared child using music as a hiding-place while his parents fight. Just like “I am going to make it through this year”, the line “so this is what the volume knob's for” stays in the listener's mind because it is a thought to which many people can relate. The second verse is a different memory, of a young man in a bad situation and scared of dying alone, and once again finding solace in music as he did when he was a child.

Dinu Lipatti's Bones further explores the theme of trying to break free, to find, as in Dance Music, a place to hide. Even the quiet way in which it is sung suggests someone whispering, trying not to be heard by the person they're running from. It is similar to Broom People in that the person named only as “you” in the song is a symbol of love as a means of getting away from an unhappy life. However, the imagery of a house built with bones (especially the bones of someone who had died of cancer) suggests that the relationship that he was using as an escape was flawed. “It was money that you wanted” would also seem to imply the relationship was less than perfect, that perhaps he was being taken advantage of. Despite fairly frequent use of the word “we”, there is still an atmosphere of loneliness in the song; the listener gets the impression that it was the two of them against all the other people in their lives (“we kept our friends at bay all summer long”). Together, yet still isolated from the rest of the world.

Although much of The Sunset Tree focuses on John Darnielle's stepfather, Up the Wolves turns the spotlight on everyone else. For me the phrase that comes to mind in relation to this song is “all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Up the Wolves is a song about those who did nothing, above all Darnielle's mother who he saw as being “absent”, leaving her children to be “raised by wolves”. There is some hope at the beginning of the song, as he just waits and tries to believe that the future will be brighter some day, but soon realises that there is no way of knowing if and when that's going to happen. Having decided that he has to do something, he looks to the adults around him for help, and comes to the conclusion that even if they knew “what was going on”, they would do nothing more than “shake their heads and wag their bony fingers.” In the last verse he is left with nobody to rely on but himself. It is the thought of a child losing all faith in the people who should be protecting him is what makes this song so poignant.

Lion's Teeth is somewhat different from the rest of the album because it is not exactly a memory, at least not in the same sense as some of the other songs. It has been described as a “revenge fantasy”, and it does seem in some ways less like a real incident than other songs on the album, especially as the image of the lion used throughout the song makes it seem very much like a dream or a story. However, that doesn't make it any less emotional; it is one of the few songs that I would use the word “heartbreaking” to describe without feeling that it was an exaggeration. As Darnielle describes tears rolling down the face of his younger self it sounds like he himself is nearly crying.

The intensity of emotion that underlies Lion's Teeth carries on into Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod. The picture of the child hiding in his room listening to music that we saw in Dance Music is to be seen in this song too, but this time he is older, again the teenage narrator of Broom People and This Year. The importance of music is emphasised here; it allows him to “vanish into the dark and rise above [his] station”. But this escape doesn't last long, and the choice of words like “blaze” and “scream” highlight the anger and hatred that was in the house. Part of what makes this album so touching is that Darnielle lets us see exactly what he felt, for example in the lines “hoping you don't break my stereo/ Because it's the one thing that I couldn't live without.”

The idea of hope versus hopelessness is a major part of The Sunset Tree and while there is a glimmer of hope to be seen in This Year and at the end of Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod, the two next songs, Magpie and Song For Dennis Brown, are very much on the side of hopelessness.

Magpie is an interesting song, reminiscent of either a curse or some kind of biblical warning about the devil. As I said about Dilaudid, this song does not seem directly connected to the rest of the album or its story, but it certainly fits in with the theme of hopelessness, with its clear message that when something terrible is going to happen, there is nothing at all that we can do to avoid or prevent it.

In Song For Dennis Brown, this inevitable terrible thing is more specific; it is a song about a man who has realised that his death is not a question of whether or not he will die of an overdose, but when it will happen. Thinking of things that continued to happen when the singer Dennis Brown died- children singing in choirs, people stealing food from bins behind restaurants- is a reminder that tragic deaths for the most part slip by unnoticed, as the world carries on as it did before. The song doesn't end until a minute after John Darnielle stops singing, and for that whole minute we are left to think about how sadly true that is.

Love Love Love is one of the songs that's most important to me on the album. It turned me into a Mountain Goats fan. It had all the things that I would come to admire about tMG: references that I didn't understand without the help of Google, John's imperfect-yet-perfect voice, and well-written lyrics. It looks at love as a force that can make people do terrible things- murder for love, suicide for love- but it's not saying love is bad, either. To see it as a song against love would be too simple, and the entire point of the song is that love is not a simple black-or-white thing. Before I heard Love Love Love I had only heard one Mountain Goats song- No Children- and while my first reaction to that song had been “that was pretty good, maybe I should listen to this band some more”, my reaction to Love Love Love was the feeling of being overwhelmed by how beautiful it was.

Pale Green Things ends the album as it started; the adult John thinking back over his life. He is dealing with his stepfather's death and, like Love Love Love, he observes the lack of simplicity when it comes to love. He notes that one of the things he recalled on hearing that his stepfather had died was a childhood memory of the two of them going to a racetrack together, and he looks at the difficulty of reconciling good memories like that with other, painful memories. The image of little plants managing to grow in the cracks in the ground represents love, growing in strange circumstances where nobody would expect it to survive.

Despite what I said about The Sunset Tree being difficult to write about, I'm glad I chose it. It has a special place in the hearts of lots of Mountain Goats fans, and for good reason; it explores the difficult topic of trying to deal with abuse and it does so in a way that is both sad and beautiful.

By Carolina Cordero. Ms. Cordero is a student in Cork, Ireland.