believe in solid skies and slate blue earth below

This Monday morning feels like that quiet moment when you are sitting by the ocean with your feet in the sand, and it is right after the wave crashes in. The water slides flat into silence for an eerily reflective second, thin across the sand as the foam froths in swirls. There is a trough of silence there before the next wave comes roaring in.

This is a song is about assurances learned quietly, and about taking a break from all of the trying. And it is completely marvelous, track 12 on the latest Mountain Goats record All Eternals Deck (Merge Records). Darnielle is one of my favorite songwriters, and this one feels like an anthem.

This was a wonderfully connective weekend, full of warm rich music and terrific people. I remember telling a friend on Saturday at my Joe Pug house show that it was a night where I just felt for a while like everything was going to be okay.

This is a song for that.

Never Quite Free – Mountain Goats

It’s so good to learn that right outside your window
there’s only friendly fields and open roads
you’ll sleep better when you think
you’ve stepped back from the brink
found some peace inside yourself
laid down your heavy load

it’s so good to learn that from right here the view goes on forever
and you’ll never want for comfort
and you’ll never be alone
see the sunset turning red
let all be quiet in your head
and look about
all the stars are coming out
they shine like steel swords
wish me well where i go
but when you see me, you’ll know

MOUNTAIN GOATS SPRING/SUMMER TOUR
*with Bright Eyes

May
22 – Whelans, Dublin, Ireland
24 – Coalition, Brighton, England
25 – KOKO, London, England
27 – Academy 3, Manchester, England
28 – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, England
29 – King Tuts (SOLD OUT) , Glasgow, Scotland
30 – Cluny, Newcastle, England

August
3 – Meijer Gardens , Grand Rapids, MI*
4 – Egyptian Room, Indianapolis, IN*
5/6/7 – Lollapalooza, Chicago, IL

[my photo, from high above the earth, heading west]

goddamn these bitemarks deep in my arteries

When John Darnielle sings of vampires, like when Josh Ritter sings of cursed mummies or Mary Shelley writes of freakish monsters assembled of dead parts, it’s really probably not about any of the above. Lately I am fascinated with the ways we use stories and allegory to articulate the difficult parts of ourselves, and others.

This latest song from The Mountain Goats seems to be about a clash of youth and wildness (“someday we won’t remember this”) with the ways we are left perforated and torn. I can’t stop listening.

Damn These Vampires – The Mountain Goats

All Eternals Deck is out March 29th on Merge, and they are touring in support of it this spring. Theirs is a show that might change your life, in any case. It did mine.

i used to live here :: New from the Mountain Goats

I am spending a quiet San Francisco morning here in this high rise building, the sun and the clear breeze from the outside coming in the open patio door, along with the faint smell of cigarette smoke drifting from a neighboring porch. I am listening to, and completely fascinated by, the new album coming from The Mountain Goats and the pen of John Darnielle.

I’ve long been fascinated by the thoughtful, turbulent, honest undertones of faith that can permeate Darnielle’s songwriting.

Lines like these intense ones from “Love, Love, Love” have always revealed a fluency in the language of Biblical allegory and wrestles with theological concepts with transparent authenticity. The newest album, The Life Of The World To Come goes even more deeply than he ever has before. Every song on the album is named for a Bible verse reference, but it is “less a profession of religious faith than an immersion in Biblical poetry and imagery,” and these songs “take their names from verses that informed or inspired them, or which, sometimes, came up against them at right angles.” I expect, and get, honesty from Darnielle here.

Genesis 3:23 – The Mountain Goats

Somewhere in between 2007 and 2009 the same stuff started happening in John Darnielle’s life that happens in everybody else’s life: some people got sick, and some people stayed sick, and some people died young, and John started doing what he does when things go south, i.e., turning to old religious texts both musical & otherwise and trying to take comfort in creeds and prayers that he can’t wholly buy into. In what friends (wrongly, in John’s opinion) thought an excessive gesture, he bought an Amy Grant box set. He learned about an amazing songwriter named Rich Mullins, who largely gets overlooked by people who don’t listen to Christian music, and he listened to Vaisnava Kirtans, and he listened to Yolanda Adams. He played hymns when he could, and he prayed the odd prayers of the faithless, and then sat down and wrote songs about what happens when you feel sick in your spirit but you’re not sure if “spirit” is really a meaningful term.

The songs that flowed out of him to make this album brewed from all of these influences converging in his time of need. He dug deeply into his longstanding love of the Bible, and tried to write honestly about wanting to believe. The songs that came out are about losing people you love, and leaving places to which you can’t return, and about things from which people don’t & can’t recover. They are about faith and doubt and the long dark hallways that run between the two.

I am completely intrigued. First listens are gorgeous, laden more heavily with piano than ever before, and most of all — what I want in any exploration of matters of the heart and soul: honesty.

The Life Of The World To Come is out October 6th on 4AD Records.

“and i hope i never get sober”

Following a long ride on the El last night (is that how natives call it?) out to the far reaches of Chicago, accompanied by a lovely homeless man who kept trying to touch my shoulder without dropping his can of malt beverage, I saw John Vanderslice and John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats on their “Gone Primitive” tour at Chicago’s grand old Portage Theater.

The last time I saw the Mountain Goats, I proclaimed an earnest declaration of permanent affection for the way that show made me feel and the literate, stabbing richness of John Darnielle’s music. After last night, yeah, I feel the same plus some.

The 1,100 seat ornate old theater (which still screens old films and has a Wurlitzer organ) was packed to the gills with fans last night. Since the last time I saw Darnielle was in a small rock club venue with sticky floors, all of us packed tightly and dancing side by side, it felt oddly sterile to be sitting 14 inches apart in velvety chairs, so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Therefore what happened next felt especially excellent.

After three or four songs of well-behaved silence, one brave fan walked right up to the edge of the stage and stood there in appreciation to enjoy the show. Warily, a few other folks eyed the door guards, watching to see what they would do, and then walked forward to join Brave Superfan as well. I jumped to my feet. Within 30 seconds, a stream of kids ran down the aisles to pool against the stage, smiles on their face, ready to sing and jump along.

Darnielle beamed, and suddenly the show felt much more right. With perfect timing and furious strumming, the next song he launched into was “Up The Wolves,” an absolute favorite of mine.

“There’s bound to be a ghost in the back of your closet, no matter where you live. There’s gonna be a few things, maybe several things, you’re gonna find really difficult to forgive. There’s gonna come a day when you feel better, you’ll rise up free and easy on that day…and float from branch to branch, lighter than the air, when that day is coming, who can say, who can say?”

Up The Wolves – Mountain Goats

Whereas last year’s anthem for me was the song “This Year,” and when I saw them in October it took all my ferocious determination to yell those words, “I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me…” — last night I resonated much more with the words of rising up free and easy. And thank God.

The solo acoustic setlist included some rarer gems (like “Beach House” about how you don’t want to toy with wily seals) and the gut-wrenching spectrum of tunes like “Woke Up New,” “You Or Your Memory,” and “Surrounded.” He closed with “This Year,” and encored with the divorce epic “No Children.” Walking out on the wooden box over the Wurlitzer, I watched the crowd jump and yell and pump their fists in catharsis, finding some sort of common meaning in those terribly depressing lyrics (“I hope it stays dark forever, I hope the worst isn’t over, and I hope you blink before I do, and I hope I never get sober“). Everything about his music resonates so strongly with me, and he puts on one of the most intelligent, challenging, passionate shows I’ve seen.

John Vanderslice opened the night with stripped down, beautifully rendered versions of his densely orchestrated songs, and then played alongside Darnielle for several songs at the end of the night. Vanderslice is an artist that I have always esteemed and enjoyed, but never seen live or explored deeply. I found myself wondering last night why that is so. Armed only with his acoustic guitar and harmonies, he reminded me very much of another favorite artist of mine, Matthew Caws of Nada Surf. Since I love his music, there is no good reason why I am not equally passionate about Vanderslice. I’m on it.

What a cathartic night.

[see all my photos here]

Friday night: Mountain Goats with Kaki King in Denver

There’s a scene in Elf where Will Ferrell’s character, as naive and untainted by the world as he is, falls for Zooey Deschanel’s shopgirl character. He stretches out his arms wide and yells, “I’m in LOVE! And I don’t care who knows it!!“

As I stood four feet from John Darnielle and his rotating crew of Mountain Goats at a sold-out show at the Bluebird on Friday night, I found myself thinking the same thing, with almost that same embarrassingly unabashed fervor.

Darnielle is not hip. He is too vulnerable and transparent, too honest in his lyrics and unselfconscious in his delivery to be cool. Combine that with the potent gut-punch of the songs and you’ve got a memorable evening. Amidst exuberantly lame dance moves (me too John! Me too) he spat out lyrics of hope and despair, and rocked and tore through an amazing range of intelligent and gorgeous songs from his catalog. As Rob Sheffield wrote about Pavement in the awesome Love Is A Mix Tape, “The songs were all either fast or sad, because all songs should either be fast or sad. Some of the fast ones were sad, too.” For being as obviously intelligent and well-read as Darnielle is, he hasn’t forgotten how to rock, and rock loud.

In addition to new songs off Heretic Pride and the Satanic Messiah EP, they also played some rare back-catalog tunes (“Genesis 19:1-2“), and closed the main set with “This Year.” Those final moments with the whole crowd yelling along were among my cathartic concert highlights of this entire year. It was, for me, transcendent and very timely.

Darnielle has Wilco-like fans in their rabidity. Whenever I go to a show of an artist I’ve not seen live before, and the fans are like that, I pay extra close attention to the proceedings so I can investigate catching whatever fever led them to be foaming at the mouth in the first place. In between a crazy variety of song names being shouted as requests, the range of hardcore fans was noteworthy. I saw everyone from early high-schoolers (I think it was an all-ages show) singing along at the top of their innocent hearts, to burly biker dudes and everyone in-between.

I missed opener Kaki King because I was hauling heavy things onto moving trucks, but she came out and joined Darnielle for a good chunk of the set on her guitar, alternating between acoustic and electric and even playing some slide guitar down on the floor. She is the guest guitarist on that eloquent instrumental ballad from the latest Foo Fighters’ album, “The Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners,” as well as a collaborator with Tegan & Sara. Her distinctive style can also be heard on the new EP collaboration with Darnielle, the Black Pear Tree EP (she wrote music, he wrote lyrics). They performed “Mosquito Repellent” from that EP together, wide smiles across their faces.

The show ended too soon and left my cheeks flushed. Somewhere in these lyrics Darnielle sang, the night remains suspended:

Do what you have to do
Go where you have to go
When the time comes to loosen up your grip, you’ll know

Called my friend in New York, 3000 miles away
Halfway through her metamorphosis, nothing I could say
Hoard my small resentments
Like rare and priceless gems
Hang on to your dreams until there’s nothing left of them

All pics here

there’s gonna come a day when you’ll feel better, you’ll rise up easy on that day

John Darnielle and the Mountain Goats hit Denver’s Bluebird Theater tonight with Kaki King, in a show billed as “The Last Happy Night of Your Life.” That sounds promising. I am truly madly deeply looking forward to seeing Darnielle if I manage to get the U-Haul truck loaded in my driveway in time (it’s moving weekend!). I hope to not miss it.

Darnielle is one of the most piercing lyricists of our generation, writing songs that combine hyperliterate mythical/biblical imagery with eviscerating emotional honesty. He has a way of writing a lyric that hones in on exactly the way a situation feels, and even though you’d never thought to express it in those words yourself, it feels like he’s coalescing a truth inside you that you’ve known all your life.

Take a listen to these alternate versions of songs from the limited-edition vinyl Come, Come To The Sunset Tree. According to the cover, “this vinyl edition of the sunset tree consists of songs recorded at home in north carolina.”

Love Love Love (demo) – The Mountain Goats [lyrics]
You Or Your Memory (demo) – The Mountain Goats [lyrics]
Up The Wolves (demo) – The Mountain Goats [lyrics]

There’s also a great interview with Darnielle on the Denver Post’s site right now, where Darnielle reveals a recent obsession with Amy Grant (oh John, the songs I could sing) and talks about the catharsis of this amazing song live in concert:

This Year (live in San Francisco) – The Mountain Goats [lyrics]

[from this set from Noise Pop in San Francisco; still one of the best live recordings I’ve heard from TMG]

Monday Music Roundup

This last week I started twittering. Suddenly all the small moments in my life are memorialized in 140 characters or less. So now in addition to being able to keep up with what some of my favorite real-life friends are doing RIGHT THIS MINUTE, I’ve also laughed daily at the twitter feed of writer Joshua Green Allen aka fireland. I don’t know him for reals but I first read about him over on Heather’s Dooce blog, and he turns out to live up in Denver. Now, my Denver is never as fun as his Denver, but now I can chuckle at his twitter feeds like: “First time I’ve ever been fired for sexual harassment during a job interview, but your sick gams ARE my biggest managerial weakness.”

Allen also penned a great article about the perfect length for a song, and posits that it “had to be closer to three minutes than two, but definitely shorter than three minutes. Three minutes is where bloat starts to set in. Where the band thinks: Hey, let’s do the chorus seven times. Hey, let’s give the saxophone guy a real moment to shine on this one. Hey, let’s add another bridge.”

He goes on to give some love to The La’s “There She Goes” as the ultimately perfect song of that perfect length. In sum, a man after my own heart. Listen to the 2:42 muxtape too if you’re in an abbreviated mood.

Music for this week:

Pop Song
Starfucker
This Portland band played on Saturday at Denver’s Hi-Dive but I was literally still trying to thaw under my comforter from a freezing afternoon attempting to understand Australian Rules Football in a friend’s tournament over at the Air Force Academy. Starfucker rocked the joint, and I dozed cozily. But I’ll bet the cool kids there enjoyed their sound — sexy but not sleazy, light but with an undercurrent of electronic grime. I think this song should have played in Empire Records; it’s got that mid-90s innocence and pop heft. Starfucker’s self-titled debut is out now on Badman, and their cover of Madonna’s “Burnin’ Up” is also streaming on RCRDLBL. Worth noting, they are neither the NIN song nor the Belgian band of the same name, but apparently this recreational hobby seems to be hitting its stride.

Balloons (Foals cover) - Holy Fuck
Balloons (original) – Foals
Hey, while we’re already using words that make my mom blush, let’s throw this little nugget in here as well. This week Foals and Holy Fuck released a collaboration/mutual admiration society 12″ where they each covered one of the other’s songs. These dudes both played Monolith, so I like to picture them sitting down at the oxygen bar and coming up with this idea amidst the red rocks. It could happen. To get the vice-versa cover (Super Inuit), click here. The split 12″ is out now on white vinyl via Young Turks, or on their tour(s).

Satanic Messiah
Mountain Goats
As I write this Sunday night (35° outside!), I’ve been listening to Mountain Goats on shuffle while I pack and go through stuff I’d rather not look through in prep for moving this next weekend. The poetic ache of Darnielle’s lyrics, his indignation and passion keep these songs on repeat. The newly-released Satanic Messiah EP is not Darnielle’s foray into black metal but rather a lovely 4-song acoustic collection with religious metaphor themes (not uncommon in his songs). Of these songs, Darnielle writes, “I am fond of them; they remind me of old vanished things.” This particular tune is ostensibly about going to see a show or performance, and how “we were all made young when he stepped onto the stage, like an animal escaping from his cage,” and then sings about how they all were “too dazed to leave when it was over.” Mountain Goats play Denver on Friday night with Kaki King, and I’m going to hope for something similar.

I Can’t Make You Love Me (Bonnie Raitt cover)
Denison Witmer
No, really. Listen to this cover, even if you haven’t given Bonnie Raitt much thought since you (like my sister) sang this song in Pops Choir in high school. Philadelphia folk artist Denison Witmer loves covers as much as I do, and he’s taken to releasing a whole slew of them for free in his achingly stripped-down style. Through his MySpace and a partnership with the ace Cover Lay Down blog, Denison has been giving away free songs on a regular basis, including ones originally by Band of Horses, Oasis, Van Morrison and Red House Painters. This particular one is my favorite of the batch. It starts with a settling in a room; you can hear the grey empty space starkly bouncing back his plaintive, resigned voice. It is an absolutely devastating song, and especially the way he does it — all void and defeated. Witmer’s new album Carry The Weight is out November 11th, and side project alert: check out his River Bends band with Steve Yutzey-Burkey of The Swimmers.

Urban Lull (At Once Charmed)
The Umbrella Sequence
I’ve said it before, but our local community college radio station is one of the best I’ve ever listened to. They have turned my ears on to so many things that I previously missed, like The Umbrella Sequence from Minneapolis. This song came over my car speakers the other day and I was instantly addicted and turned it way up. With sunshiney chiming pop melodies that fight valiantly (and occasionally win) through a scratchy wall of fuzz and electronica, they garner comparisons to Flaming Lips and Super Furry Animals. This is the lead-off track from last year’s Events (on Princess Records), and like a good aspiring rock star, Ryan Rupprecht sings over and over “We’re all getting bored” — but no, I am definitely not. Great song.

OH, A CLOSING PLEA: Help me think of fabulous Halloween costume ideas, potentially surrounding a long red dress with marvelous sequin trim I found in my basement? I also have a red feather boa, if that helps (or perhaps doesn’t). Or suggest something completely different. I’ll probably be at the Girl Talk show first that night, so I could go dressed as a hipster in neon sunglasses.

Or just this, I suppose. That would be amazing. [via]

Noise Pop: The Mountain Goats day show at Bottom of the Hill

It always feels a bit weird to come in from the bright glorious Sunday afternoon sunshine for a day show, but the Noise Pop set with the The Mountain Goats at Bottom of the Hill last weekend was so good as to make it worthwhile for the packed, all-ages crowd. The Mountain Goats played a rarely-seen three-show run at Noise Pop and this was the last — a Sunday matinée, the early-bird special.

After this, I’m hands-down adding John Darnielle to my list of the best songwriters of our generation. The depth and emotional punch, and sheer beauty of these lyrics actually physically hurts at times.

You Or Your Memory (live in SF 3/2/08) – The Mountain Goats
(from 2005′s The Sunset Tree)

I checked into a bargain priced room on La Cienega
gazed out through the curtains of the parking lot
walked down to the corner store
just before nightfall in my bare feet
black tarry asphalt, soft and hot
and when I came back I spread out my supplies
on the counter by the sink
I looked myself right in the eyes

st. joseph’s baby aspirin
bartles and jaymes
and you
or your memory

So Desperate (live 3/2/08) – The Mountain Goats
(from the new album Heretic Pride)

We were parked in your car
in our neutral meeting place, the episcopalian churchyard
I had things I’d been meaning to say
but in the dazzling winter sun that late
I could feel them melt away

I felt so desperate in your arms

I like crowd singalongs, and you may find yourself marveling as I did at the enthusiasm of this group of Sunday show-attenders. Not only could they sing the whole chorus for John on songs like “You Or Your Memory,” but listen to the performance of the title track off their brand new album Heretic Pride — it’s only been out for two weeks!

Heretic Pride (live 3/2/08) – The Mountain Goats

Everyone sings so emphatically. It kind of makes me look around and say, “Who are you people!?” I guess that’s a sign of a well-loved band, one with the kind of lyrics you instantly want to learn by heart.

You can stream and download the entire show here.

[photo credits]

Tuesday Music Roundup

I took something of a long weekend; one of my good friends from high school was in Colorado and it was wonderful to see someone who is familiar with a good chunk of me from age thirteen forward, in all my dorkiness and unwieldiness during those years. He was my old neighbor two blocks over; if I stood in my front yard and yelled really loudly, he could hear me and vice versa. We tested this theory several times over the years.

After I picked him and his friend up from the airport we wound up on the slightly janky, late-night special stretch of Colfax that I love, eating amidst dive bars at Pete’s (Greek) Diner [pictured right]. I got the best gyro I’ve ever eaten; I’ve been told that I am too enthusiastic in talking about it. They say it’s just a sandwich. They are so wrong. Just thinking about it now makes my week more bearable.

Music I am listening to this week:

San Bernadino
The Mountain Goats
I am excited about the range of songs I’ve heard off the new Mountain Goats album, Heretic Pride, out this week on 4ad. My heart stopped beating the moment that I heard the opening notes on this gorgeous song from the pen of John Darnielle [1, 2]. If you haven’t heard them before, the incisively stinging vocals remind me a bit of The Decemberists, with some of the most hyperliterate lyrics you’ve ever heard. This song begins with the vista of “we got in your car and we hit the highway, eastern sun was rising over the mountains. Yellow and blood-red bits, like a kaleidoscope.” Somewhere along the journey he utters the reassurance that “it was hard, but you are brave, you are splendid, and we will never be alone in this world.” Sigh. What more could someone really ask for? This is a hotly anticipated album for me as I just start to grow more familiar with John Darnielle’s work. The Mountain Goats are playing three shows at the upcoming NoisePop fest in San Francisco.

Paper Tiger (live in Sydney 2005)
Spoon
Oddly enough, Spoon seemed to be following me everywhere I went on Saturday. This was disconcerting and cool — first on the speakers of my new thrift store addiction, then a few hours later at the brewery where we found ourselves on Saturday night. On Friday I had just downloaded this live track for free from the bonus section of Spoon’s pop-artsy website. Originally on the 2002 album Kill The Moonlight, the spare arrangement of the original grows slowly bigger and a bit more eerie sounding here. BONUS: Connor and Nathaniel are offering you Britt Daniel’s remix of songstress Feist. [pic from my Monolith 2007 post]

It’s My Fault For Being Famous
White Stripes + Beck
New these days in Best Buy stores, you can get the matadoriffic White Stripes Conquest EP bundled with 2007′s Icky Thump album. Cool because they added tiny Beck as a producer and a performer for these living-room session songs, on this tune you can clearly pick up Beck’s voice (and piano) in a twangy back-porch stormer all about the perils of fame.

Digital Love (Daft Punk cover)
Mobius Band
Brooklyn electro-indie dudes Mobius Band gave away a nice six-song EP of covers to show their heart for you on Valentine’s Day. This Daft Punk cover is my favorite of the bunch — their version is quirky and perfect for my next mixtape, as it reveals the memorable melody with less robot voice. But the EP also has songs originally by Neil Young, The National, Daniel Johnston (who is on tour?! did I read that right?), Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, and Bob Dylan. Quite the selection for you to choose from, and what better way to say I love you than free music? Exactly.

Second Chance
Liam Finn
And yes trusty readers, after some heart-stoppage yesterday morning I scored fanclub tickets to see Vedder in Berkeley in April (!!!) which means I will be seeing this chap — son of Crowded House/Split Enz New-Zealander Neil Finn, and impressively catchy solo artist in his own right. Liam Finn released an album on Yep Roc a few weeks ago called I’ll Be Lightning. Rolling Stone wants to make it simple for you and break it down into easily-illustrated formulas, so here’s what they’ve got on Liam: