Can we just sit down for a second and talk about The Mountain Goats and John Darnielle? Alicson introduced me to them about a year and a half ago. This is a smaller part of a post I’m currently working on that reviews the latest album, Heretic Pride, and their penultimate album, Get Lonely. The song below (sorry, but the ad sucks and is loud and I can’t get rid of it, and it’s also set to autostart), Sign of the Crow, is a good example of Darnielle’s music and his style of songwriting.
The songs are, in all respects, epic. They lead to a tapestry of characters and motivations and sensations, discussing richly detailed momentous and revolutionary occasions. One can almost see the torn clothing, the foam on the ocean, the smell of fear and excitement, and the electricity in the air. And while these songs are certainly about these historical moments, Darnielle is really telling the story of his life and using these epic stories for history as wonderful representations of epic stories for his history. In Get Lonely the meeting of the mutual friends post-breakup turns into villagers storming the castle. In the beautiful new album, Heretic Pride, we are confronted with a revolutionary moment in Sax Rohmer #1 where “every moment points to the aftermath,” where something great and terrible is coming, but that the only thing that matters is that “I am coming home to you, with my own blood in my mouth…if it’s the last thing that I do.” It’s power. It’s love. It’s will and determination and terribleness. It’s the certainty that war is coming, but that the only thing that matters is that while some will fall, he will be standing in the aftermath. It’s raw and beautiful, and most importantly, it is honest.
While this seems to be the brunt of the longer post I was planning on writing, I guess I’ll just leave you with Sign of the Crow (which, doesn’t that make you think of a George R.R. Martin novel title?).
The Mountain Goats – Sign of the Crow
These roses are the pleasures of the flesh
And these ones here, they are the pleasures of the spirit
And tucked behind a pornographic picture in a frame,
The troops found the pierced heart and they all gathered near it.
And the dust clouds bloomed in the dark
And the dust clouds shown in the frame
Roomful of French troops in a Franciscan abbey
History does not recall their names
Of the several things that you have to do today
You’re gonna regret one.
This generation asks for a sign
It isn’t gonna get one.
Well, Bertha took the picture to the priest
And the priest fell on his face upon the floor
And the story lived on for a decade or two
But no one really knows it anymore
But the sacred heart is seen in the airbrush
And the sacred heart is beating on the wind
And the bodies of the faithful stacked by dozens by the roadsides
Stripped and scourged and skinned
Of the several things that you have to do today,
You’re gonna regret one.
This generation asks for a sign,
It’s never gonna get one.