Lovecraft in Brooklyn — The Mountain Goats

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrHgZRGLgo0

The second Mountain Goats I ever heard, and the first I ever heard knowingly. A school play used Your Belgian Things in a scene, and I remember it vividly, but it doesn't count. This song was a song I heard of choice, knowingly and in full control; and yet the song takes so much of that away. This is a song I like and understand and relate to, despite its inherent refusal to be understood and related to.

In short, it is a man in Brooklyn for whom Lovecraftian Horror is at first a metaphor for, and then a real description of, his personal anxieties. It plays a bait-and-switch; what is first analogy becomes very real; the music goes buck wild, flailing and screaming and whining as the ocean rises over his head, crossing galaxies to tie the incoming alien invasion of winged monster-demons to the man's own fear at walking on the street, or having people over for dinner, or ordering coffee. And, as such, of course I'd love it.

Mole — The Mountain Goats

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW8WJrb0XmY

There's  a moment in this song — 1:24, I think, and then strongly at 1:57— where this ghostly, horrid piano comes in, elevating the song from acoustic guitar and voice to acoustic, bass and voice, to, suddenly, this incredible, desolate landscape of — well, it's an aesthetic reaction to a combination of things. I think it's evocative of a large, empty room; of a single, lonesome pianist; its sudden intrusion is like a dam bursting; it is a moment of both great importance — this must be said — and great isolation — only this can be said, I must be louder than the rest — and it breaks my heart. The song is about waking up from a coma, I think, and this one moment has tricked me into listening to the song three, four, five repetitions at a time, and it's just... listening to it now, it's quieter than I remembered. Maybe I wasn't expecting it. These songs are like visual poems; each comes quicker the second and third time, but they have this ethereal quality that resists analysis. I love them so.

Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace — The Mountain Goats

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ-zZJu6LKI

I often find my ability to communicate what I hear in this sort of music outpaced — there are so many things here that are transplendent, holy and quiet and surreal and perfect, not peaceful and not even polished, but... evocative, perhaps. Piano is better at it than acoustic guitar is better at it than most everything else — it pauses you where you are and makes you listen, it can't be danced to, albiet slow danced. What it's about matters, but not right now. Maybe on the fourth or fifth listening, it'll matter.  It's not happy or sad; it's contemplative, low-tempo, and very present, written and performed with care. This is music that lasts, written without urgency, but about pressing issues, with a driving need. Perhaps to communicate, perhaps to purge.

Surrounded — The Mountain Goats

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIvrrh48pC8

Something about the mood and setting of this album, Moon Colony Bloodbath always hits me like a movie. There's the weird harmonica and bells and the quiet strings, but moreover there's the sense of a real story behind it. This song is about an astronaut (maybe?) living in  Colorado; he lives alone with a television and speakers and computers and technology (maybe?); a storm cuts him off from the rest of the world (maybe?) and he's thrilled and delighted (maybe?). As ever, lyrical interpretations only go so far. The rest of the album suffers (and benefits from) the same wonderful vagueness that is so rich and rewarding to listen to. The arrangements of the music only make it the richer.

To quote John Darnielle:

"Some of the songs have something to do with a loose rock opera/'concept album' idea about organ harvesting colonies on the moon and the employees thereof, who spent their off months living in secluded opulence in remote American locations. Concepts like this are actually more fun when you abandon them but leave their traces kicking around, so that's what we did."

And it's so wonderful.

This Magic Moment — The Mountain Goats

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtxsS_Jfww4

One of the things I like most about oldies — R+B, soul, motown hits from the 1950s and 60s — is that they're unquantifiable. It's hard to explain why they've stuck with us for so long. Songs from the 1970s are dated as 70s songs, dismissed as disco or free jazz; songs from the 1940s are dated as standards; Sinatra, pre-rock'n'roll, and the end of classic Jazz. But the oldies are still somehow relevant; they influence the timbre, tone, and content of modern music in an unusual way. Maybe it's a sliding scale, and in ten years we'll be influenced by the 1970s, but I doubt it. Something about how music was written and produced in the 1950s and 60s was special; still holds value.

This Magic Moment was originally by Ben E. King and The Drifters; most people know the song and its tune; less know the name; nobody knows who wrote it. But it's somewhere in the popular consciousness, along with A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte and perhaps The Canterbury Tales: it's outlived its era and it's hard to say why.

Genesis 30:3 — The Mountain Goats

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hajocz5c59w

When a song is written with a background; when it samples a context, it gains and loses meaning. Casual listeners will find it less open, but it can also be more rewarding with a bit of effort. Done tastefully, it shouldn't matter.

So: John Darnielle wrote an album of biblically-influenced songs. Genesis 30:3 is based off the stories of Jacob, Rachel, and Bilhah; it is at once immediately accessible through its basis as well as emotionally uncertain — almost cryptic. The song, as the verse, is gorgeous and sublime and graceful, if you will.

I'm not sure how much analysis I can perform without burying Caesar, rather than praising him. I want you to read the verse for yourself and perform your own interpretation. There's not much left to be said about the Old Testament, I think.