Most Mountain Goats releases are automatic candidates for year-end lists around the Grillpants HQ, but Mr. Darnielle’s EPs can sometimes be pretty frustrating–never really as consistent or as stunning as his full-length releases tend to be. (I invite my fellow writers to contest this point, since I know y’all might feel differently.) Last year’s Dilaudid EP, for instance, had several great songs, but two of them were taken directly from The Sunset Tree. The other, “Collapsing Stars,” was nearly as great as anything on the album, but the EP was rounded out with a rather disappointing remix of the title track. As a whole, not really worth buying just for one new song, except for completists. The demos and b-sides collection Come, Come to the Sunset Tree fared a little better, but still suffered from the same kind of inconsistency.
The Babylon Springs EP (buy), released exclusively in Australia by 4AD, is something else entirely. It’s comprised of five songs, all new (though one is a cover), and all of them good enough to make a proper Mountain Goats album. The first couple tracks in particular, “Ox Baker Triumphant” (continuing Darnielle’s strange obsession with pro wrestling) and “Alibi” make perhaps the best use of the full band sound that Darnielle has been cultivating over his past few releases. “Alibi” cruises along on a vibe and tempo that he never could have pulled off in the Casio days (in a way, it’s amazing how much his sound has evolved since All Hail West Texas), layered acoustic and electric guitars floating over a little synth as John spins a pretty simple story of a college hookup in the idiosyncratic way that only he can.
Elsewhere on the album, the territory gets darker. In fact, the EP seems to progress rather neatly from happiness (though the protagonist in “Ox Baker Triumphant” seems a bit more deranged than happy) and hope toward misery and despair. “Sometimes I Still Feel the Bruise”, a Trembling Blue Stars cover, is a straightforward lament for unrequited (or, I guess, not-quite-as-requited) love, but it cuts deep all the same. It’s pretty easy to tell that the lyrics aren’t Darnielle’s–the imagery just isn’t there, and the emotions aren’t as realistically tangled and confused as they are in his originals. “Wait For You” is a much more characteristically-Mountain Goats-y take on something like the same material, bathed in sunset/death imagery and sung the way it has to be sung: hushed, and with a dying note of hope.
I got bored last night before I went to sleep, so I transcribed the lyrics for the entire EP. Look:
OX BAKER TRIUMPHANT
I will rise
from the swamp
where they dumped my private plane
I’ll be clutching the life
preserver
in my teeth
and I will find
the highway
and I will flag down a truck
worry lines on my forehead
blank stare underneathand when I come
back to town
I’m gonna cast my burden down
a little worse for wear
practically walking on airI will thank
my ride
and claw my way back inside
to the guts of the building
where my enemies
hide in the dark like roaches
and I will signal the camera crew
and everyone will do what he’s been trained how to do
sweat dripping from my face
as my moment approachesclick your heels
count to three
I’ll bet you never expected me
a little worse for wear
practically walking on air
ALIBI
I got off work just past 11
laid one finger to the breeze
you can almost taste the action
on nights like thesetrees were bending in the wind
you were forty miles away
and I was heading your direction
I’ve been waiting all day
I’ve been waiting all daymoon over west covina
was huge and white
and I was like a patient on a table
headed for the lightlean toward the center divider
feel the wind in my hair
keep a light up in your window
I’m gonna be right there
I’m gonna be right therewith a gleam in my eye
and an almost airtight alibidown by the chemistry building
I found a quiet place to park
and I made my way down the street toward your place
stepping lightly in the darkclimbed the steps up to your doorway
like a man prepared to jump beneath a train
it’s real warm outside tonight
maybe tomorrow it rains
maybe tomorrow it rainsinside your room we shut the window
and we turned on a fan
and we lay there in the darkness
I can keep a secret if you canfinishing one another’s sentences
like a pair of identical twins
your boyfriend is out of town until tuesday
and nobody saw me come in
nobody saw me come inwith a gleam in my eye
and an almost airtight alibi
SAIL BABYLON SPRINGS
and meanwhile downstairs
I’m setting up shop
a little too proud
to let the matter dropand I can hear you up there
isn’t it romantic
you’re huffing and puffing, rearranging
deck chairs on the titanicand I reach for a glass
of cool water drawn
from the rivers of babylonand meanwhile outside
the stars have come out
and the humid summer air
pulls at the ring in my snoutand you stand at your window, looking down
and I spread wide my arms
jump if you want to jump
jump if you want tothe water’s warm, I know
I know because I’ve been swimming
blindly along through the rivers of babylon
SOMETIMES I STILL FEEL THE BRUISE
this is just to say hello
and to let you know
I think of you from time to time
I know I never really knew you
but somehow I miss you
and wish that you’d stayed in my lifemaking contact gets harder
as the silence grows longer
isn’t it only me
who’d like us to see each other?
how I would hate to be a bother
the way we left it was you’d ringI’m under no illusion
as to what I meant to you
if you made an impression
sometimes I still feel the bruise
sometimes I still feel the bruisenow and then I’ll stumble on
what I’ve misplaced but never lost
an ache I first felt long ago
for you’ve appeared and disappeared
throughout these past few years
I’d be surprised if you now showedmaking contact gets harder
as the silence grows longer
why would you think of me?
when you were not the one in love
when you were not the dreamer
when you were just the dreamI’m under no illusion
as to what I meant to you
but you made an impression
sometimes I still feel the bruise
sometimes I still feel the bruise
WAIT FOR YOU
when it came time to wait for you
I took the bus to malibu
found a café by the ocean
watched the sky for signsand a rainbow in the west
wrapped its coils around the earth
like a serpent
I felt like I was going to
suffocatebut I knew this was not the day
you would find me come my way
but I waited all the same
watched the water through the windowand a rainbow in the west
held its head beneath the waves
and grew dimmer
nothing anyone could do
I suppose
User
niina
/ April 6, 2006First off, you should know that I thought Come, Come to the Sunset Tree was lovely, perhaps specifically because of its inconsistencies. Where The Sunset Tree was a work of blissful genius replete with a stunning narrative thread, this other bit, its slightly austistic counterpart, was perhaps less “together” and “decipherable” but had its gorgeous moments. For instance, more than once I found myself thinking I preferred the stripped-down sound of the songs on Come, Come, and definitely once, driving along listening to it, I randomly burst into tears.
After two listens, however, this EP has left me lukewarm… I think it’s because it steps back from the last album’s subject matter to a bit more abstract storytelling, and as a rule, I’m generally drawn to despair like a cockerspaniel to a summer sausage. God knows I like a little bit of pain. But to be fair, I’ll keep rummaging in the closet, even if the skeletons aren’t as obvious.
“Alibi” rocks, though. It really does. And the full sound is something I can appreciate. And although I was a little indifferent to “Sometimes I Still Feel The Bruise” at first, I just found myself kind of humming along when it came on. Overall I guess that for now I like these songs like I like the songs on the new Belle and Sebastian album — they kind of rock and they’re catchy, but they don’t, you know, clutch me by the throat, knock me down an emotional snowbank, and leave me there, shivering and stunned.
So far.
Ben
/ April 6, 2006“like a cockerspaniel to a summer sausage” is almost a Darnielle line. Hah.
I love many things about Come, Come but it doesn’t work as a coherent musical or narrative experience for me the way that his albums often do and (I think, to a lesser degree) this EP does. Yeah, a lot of the songs here are more upbeat–probably more upbeat than he’s been in a long, long time–and yeah, it’s a lot easier to have that kind of immediate, throat-clutching emotional reaction with a downbeat Mt. Goats song. Or, at least, a lot more likely. Who isn’t unhappy more often than they’re happy? It’s the same deal with the B&S album: they used to be melancholy and now they’re edging toward fun and sunny. Fun and sunny is always going to sound more trite than melancholy (the kind of escapist fantasy you find in, say, “White Collar Boy”), but that doesn’t mean that the songs are inherently any less enjoyable, witty, complex, etc etc on an internal scale.
I know you well enough to know that you’re not implying all music needs to be depressing, or that the Mountain Goats/B&S must always write deeply personal odes to pain and suffering. I sometimes get pretty upset when an artist goes through a major stylistic shift mid-career and, honestly, I hope the next full Mountain Goats album is more like Sunset Tree/Tallahassee and less like this EP. Still, I think this one is pretty sweet for what it is.
Also, I think that last stanza of “Wait For You” is just as devestating as a lot of his recent stuff. Yikes.