Thoughts and Feelings on everyone's favorite singing ungulates. This is a submissions-based blog open to any and all. You can talk about tMG in general, an album, a song, a single line. The only requirement is that you have a lot of Feelings.
Posts tagged Tallahassee
Alpha Rats Nest by The Mountain Goats
It’d be pretty hard to pick my favorite song when it comes to tMG’s lyrics, considering how vast the discography is, but this would probably be in the top ten.
Also, this is an excellent way to end an album as heavy and emotionally-charged as Tallahassee.
(via punkzappa)
I find myself dancing desperately to this song every time I hear it because to me it is a song of desperation and it is also my absolute favorite Mountain Goats song. Is it demented how much I love this song? Maybe, and I do mean sick not in the weird sick means cool way I mean in the twisted way. Yet I can’t get enough of it. Maybe I’m just twisted, oh well.
3. No Children – The Mountain Goats
So how weird is it if I say that this song makes me laugh? Because by listening to it, it really is kind of an unhappy song. It’s about a dead-end marriage for pete’s sake. But the first time I heard it, and he said ‘I hope you die’ I fully burst out laughing. It just seemed so totally blunt. And I loved it. When I walk around my house singing that line (as that always does seem to be the part that gets stuck in my head) my sister thinks I’ve gone totally crazy, singing about my hopes that people will die.
But the obvious bitterness and pessimism of the singer is just so unique. How many songs do you know that are so honestly blunt? And you know, there’s kind of a weird comradeship in their dud of a marriage. Like even though the marriage kind of really sucks, they still need each other.
‘You are coming down with me/ hand in unlovable hand’
“We came into town under cover of night, because we were pretty sure people here were going to hate us once they really got to know us. It was summer, it’s always summer with us. In our lives together, which are sweet in the way of rotting things, it is somehow permanently summer.
The moon rose above the trees, older than time, greener than money. You hung your head out the window of our dusty lemon-yellow El Camino and howled, and I turned up the radio, because the sound of your voice was already beginning to get to me. The speakers crackled and the music came through: Frankie Vallie and the Four Seasons. Pretty as a midsummer’s morn, they call her Dawn. let the love of God come and get us if it wants us so bad. We know where we are going when all of this is done.
Some people might say that buying a house that you’ve never seen close-up is a bad idea, but what does anybody know about our needs anyhow? For us it was perfect. The peeling paint. The old cellar. The garden in the back. The porch out front. The still air of the living room. The attic. Everywhere entirely unfurnished and doomed to remain largely so, save for our own meager offerings: a cheap sofa, an old mattress, a couple of chairs and some ashtrays. Maybe a table salvaged from some diner gone into bankruptcy, I don’t remember. Neither do you. We drank store-brand gin with fresh lime juice out of plastic cups or straight from the bottle and we spread ourselves out face-up on the wooden floors. An aerial view of us might have suggested we’d been knocked down, but what we were doing was staking our claim. Establishing our territories. Making good. Not on the vows we’d made but on the ones we’d really meant. You produced a wallet-sized transistor radio out of nowhere and you found a sympathetic station: somebody was playing Howling’ Wolf. Smokestack lightning. O yes, I loved you once. O yes, you loved me more. We entered our new house like a virus entering its host. You following me, me following you. However you like. The windows were high and the walls were thick and sturdy. It was hot as blazes. The Guts of summer. Always down in the sugar-deep barrel-bottom belly of summer itself. Always. In our shared walk down to the bottom, which bottom we will surely find if only our hearts are have and our love true enough, we have found that it is somehow invariably and quite permanently summer.”
One thing that makes me happy are happy songs with depressing lyrics.
This song has so much for me. One of my best friends and I road tripped down to Dallas one Spring Break, got blazed the entire week, and just listened to this song over and over again.
In a weird way, we are this song.
I’m not in love with anyone at the moment, but parts of this song— especially the refrain— are telling me everything I’m feeling right now. The idea of lying on cool tile floor “sweating out the poison” is so clear to me it’s like a memory.
- from reelaroundthefountain
(in no particular order and for no particular reason
1. Love, Love, Love- People just can’t seem to deny the power of this song, whether they are Mountain Goats fans or not. Even my friend who’s not into music just kind of went “well” in a very appreciative way. The Kurt Cobain part is so good. I doodled lyrics of this song into my notebook a lot during English class senior year. It’s so haunting and beautiful, it never seems to leave.
2. Alpha Rats Nest- This is one of my favorites because of the lyric “I am sure that we’ll both decompose” which I definitely doodled into my notebook and my friend definitely saw and he definitely gave me a very quizzical look. When I brought this song into my guitar teacher to learn she said that she was glad that music like this still exists.
3. No Children- Obviously. If you’ve ever yelled this song at the top of your lungs then you know what I’m talking about.
4. High Hawk Season- This is becoming a real favorite because of the line “we are young supernovas and the heat’s about to burst.” I like it when songs cover the intensity that you feel when you know that you can do things, that you have potential but for some reason you are frustrated and things aren’t getting done and you’re not making progress and you just might explode. I like it when songs make me want to explode.
5. Standard Bitter Love Song #4- “well I see you’ve left me a photograph of a leopard tearing an antelope in half, what have you done?” Now, where else are you going to see that lyric except in a Mountain Goats’ song? yeah, no where. (I like the version without the African singing intro)
6. This Year- See No Children in terms of songs that just get under your skin and stay there.
7. Dance Music- Even though this song is very autobiographical, and fortunately I was not raised in an abusive household, I can really relate to “so this is what the volume knob is for.”
8. Fault Lines- All Hail West Texas is my second favorite album after The Sunset Tree. I have a great memory of listening to this song on a rainy day during Spring Break where everyone around me was busy cramming for exams and I wasn’t. I got to sit in the common room in my friend’s dorm and watch it rain on New York City from the thirteenth floor. So this album reminds me of pleasant rainy days in an unfamiliar city that, for some reason, I love. “I’ve got pudding for a backbone, and so do you!”
9. The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton- Hail Satan.
10. Going to Georgia- I’m from Georgia so this song has a real emotional impact on me. I listen to it non-stop every time I come home from college and it still hasn’t lost it’s power. That’s probably because the lyrics are so good no matter where you’re from. “The best thing about you standing in the door way is that it’s you and that you’re standing in the door way.”
11. Counting Song for Bitter Children- “1, 2 I don’t love you 3, 4 any more” you know that you want to see a children’s choir sing this.
12. The Cow Song- You know that this is actually better than any of the other songs listed above. I don’t think that John Darnielle ever wanted anyone to like this song. “Yeah, you know who I mean, talking about those cow machines”
13. See America Right- I love how angry this song is. It just makes you think “fuck.” “Your love is like a cyclone in a swamp and the weather’s getting warmer.”
14. Color in Your Cheeks- This is another favorite from All Hail West Texas. And I can’t really explain why except that I like the idea of people being so exhausted and the other people comforting them. That’s kind of a simple interpretation isn’t it? There’s not even a lyric that stands out specifically, I like all of the places mentioned.
15. Estate Sale Sign- I still haven’t completely absorbed this album completely, so I’m sure that I’m missing out on some great songs that haven’t completely registered with me yet. However, this and High Hawk Season are the two songs that seem to resonate immediately. And I really do love any song that makes me want to run and freak out and kick things. “every martyr in this jungle is going to get his wish.”
16. Anti-Music Song- I don’t agree with the lyrics, I for one do like Brian Wilson. But I always think of Jimmy Fallon and his impression of Van Morrison, but I like Jimmy Fallon. And this song is so spiteful, I love it.
17. Lion’s Teeth- I don’t know if this song celebrates revenge or acknowledges the fact that revenge fails so badly. I don’t know if it’s like “you go man, stand up for yourself!” or “think it out better next time.” But man, doesn’t your skin crawl with anger when you hear this song? “everyone’s screaming / I am dreaming of you.”
18. Orange Ball of Hate- Again, another classic Mountain Goats title. And with the lyric “I sure do love you”, you can’t ask for much more from a song. “I grab hold of your hip and I pull you in”
19. Magpie- What does this even mean? I don’t know but I love it. I love it so much.
20. This Year (with Craig Finn)- I know that I should pick another song. But this version is just so great and jumpy. You can tell that Craig Finn is a fan, and he’s happy to sing along. And I love Craig Finn. And I love The Mountain Goats. And I love it when worlds collide. And I love it when the audience can’t get enough and the band can’t either. And when John Darnielle adds “and it almost killed me” and that’s the title of a Hold Steady album and it’s really just too much for me to handle.
—- a note- I am very aware that this list will continue to be edited forever because it seems like there is just a bottomless pit of Mountain Goats music and I didn’t really dig deep at all.
