i am the worst at talking about songs
yellowcars replied to your photo: i have no regrets
ooh i’ve never listened to them, do you have a recommendation for any songs to listen to first or something?IF YOU MEAN THE MOUNTAIN GOATS omg my heart just, like, swelled.
obviously, a great place to start out is this post because it’s a really good introduction to them as a band, with their two pretty distinct sounds (low-fi and what they have now). BUT. I SHALL GIVE YOU MY OWN PERSONAL FAVOURITES.
(brief band members-introduction: john darnielle is this band’s constant. he’s the vocalist, the lyricist, etc. until tallahassee it was pretty much just him and his amateur guitar skills, just rocking out, but then peter hughes came on board to play bass & other things, and there’s been a rotation of drummers/other instrumentalists since then.)
from tg&y: this is a live version of the song, just fyi. and it’s quickly become one of my favourites of all time? it makes me so brilliantly sad and nostalgic and weepy and just. the repetition of “hang on to your dreams until” and the variation at the end of the phrase? gets me every time. which is to say: this song is absolutely stunning, and i’m not doing it justice at all. just listen to it.
love love love: this is the first tmg song i ever fell in love with, fittingly enough. i think john green used it in one of his videos, and then ALL WAS LOST. each time i listen to it, it feels new — because of the lyrics, because of the beautiful piano, because of his voice, no sé.
no children (and the magnificent acapella version): this is the first song of theirs that i fell in love with that wasn’t that quiet, melancholy kind of style that i tend to drift towards (see: from tg&y, love love love, ezekiel, never quite free, etc). it’s a really angry song and remarkably fun to sing along to, but it’s still lyrically gorgeous. this entire album (tallahassee — a personal favourite, the first tmg i listened to in full) is about a couple (known as the alpha couple) constantly on the edge of divorce, and this is like the explosion of their relationship, the moment every part of the anger and resentment comes out, and it’s brutal, absolutely brutal, but so so stunning.
ezekiel 7 and the permanent efficacy of grace: this is the last track on tmg’s bible concept album “the life of the world to come” (which is an absolutely flaw-free record. it was incredibly difficult not to just recommend every song off of it, in all honesty), and it’s just. breathtakingly gorgeous. i can’t even put into words why i love it and how brilliant it is, but. absolutely amazing.
this year: another song that’s perfect for singing along to. it’s up-beat and tailor-made for blasting during exam week because YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE IT THROUGH THIS YEAR IF IT KILLS YOU!!!!!!
dance music: very much the compatriot of ‘this year’ in its tempo, theme of abuse, etc. jd’s phrasing in it is absolutely astounding to me (the start of the second verse — “ok look / i’m seventeen years old / and you’re the last best thing i’ve got going” — is my personal favourite example). he’s said in interviews that he tries so hard to make his songs seem like something someone could have said, with all of the inflection and intonation that involves, and i think he really nails it here.
game shows touch our lives: “people say friends don’t destroy one another / what do they know about friends” is one of my favourite lines of all time, and it comes from this song. what more needs to be said? (that it’s melancholy and melodic, poignant and lyrically complex, that it’s about that same alpha couple as in ‘no children’ but reflects an entirely different facet of the relationship, “maybe everything that falls down / eventually rises”, etc.) ugh, i love.
damn these vampires: this is the opening track on their latest album (“all eternals deck”, which is quite good? but not my favourite tmg album by any stretch of the imagination). it makes me feel so many feelings, but i can’t quite put my finger on what feelings, exactly, and why? it’s a great song; not my favourite, but really, really good.
never quite free: also from “all eternals deck”. it’s oddly hopeful, for a tmg track? idk, i really like it, but i don’t have all that much to say about stuff from aed. definitely worth listening to, though.
the best ever death-metal band in denton: omg so low-fi. but, like. endearingly so. HOW COULD YOU NOT LOVE A SONG THAT INCLUDES “HAIL SATAN” AS A LYRIC, THAT’S WHAT I WANT TO KNOW. idk, this could be an acquired taste? like, i never used to love this song as much as i do now, but “when you punish a person for dreaming his dreams / don’t expect him to thank or forgive you” is now in my pantheon of favourite lyrics, so.
genesis 30:3: OH GOD, THIS SONG. john green quoted it when henry was born, and. like. it’s just so quiet and small and beautiful. “i will do / what you ask me to do / because of how i feel about you” runs through my brain when i try to sleep, sometimes, and it’s just. this tangible devotion is threaded through each lyric and it’s an emotion that isn’t represented in culture enough, i feel? so this song, it just. it gets me in interesting and ineffable ways.
1 john 4:16: another freakishly beautiful, touching, quiet song. (i think i have a type.) the way the music swells at “but i won’t be afraid of anything ever again” and then drifts back into the slow piano alsdfsfdkjsdf i’ve talked so much about lyrical content in this post, but the actual instrumentals are stunning as well, in most of these songs. but especially this one. the slow procession of the piano and the strings and the sparse, simple vocals are just. breathtaking.
up the wolves: NOW FOR A CHANGE OF PACE!!!!! this was probably the second tmg i ever fell in love with, and 80% of that is because of what happens after the first verse ends. “our mother has been absent ever since we founded rome” starts one of my favourite sequences of lines of all time, climaxing in “it’s going to take you people years to recover from all the damage”. i think john himself says it best, so i’m just going to copy/paste from some random site:
“I’m always trying to figure out what to say about this god *&@# song. Part of me wants to say look it’s about revenge, but as soon as I say that… no, that’s not quite it. Part of me wants to say it’s about the satisfaction of not needing revenge… and i say no, that some new age stuff. I think it’s a song about the moment in your quest for revenge when you learn to embrace the futility of it. The moment where you know the thing you want is ridiculous and pompous and a terrible thing to want anyway. The direction in which you’re headed is not the direction you want to go, yet you’re going to head that way a while longer cause that’s just the kind of person you are.”
yeah. just. yeah. ♥
hast thou considered the tetrapod: continuation of the abusive step-father theme, aka the one that kills me every time because johnnnnn :(. the lyrics of this one always get me, and “one of these days i’m going to wriggle up on dry land” is so bizarrely hopeful that it makes me teary.
[zip here]
………
i have a lot of feelings about the mountain goats. sorry. D:


