| Jordaan Mason – 1990 Was a Long Year& We Are All Out of Hot Water Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| This album is tragically underrated; this song is fucking amazing. I haven't heard anything that grapples with identity and dysphoria and history quite like this. | |
| Jordaan Mason – Racehorse: Get Married! Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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you look so much better without that shit in your hair i mean, saddles if you need them, but i could ride you bare maybe the most beautiful romantic couplet ever penned. |
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| The Extra Lens – Some Other Way Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| So I was a little skeptical of this album, it's so slick and reserved-sounding when I'm still dying for old goats-style lo-fi tape hiss and yelling but this song won me over. Contemplating suicide out of spite and bitter bruised love, then backing out of it for the same, this is John Darnielle doing what he knows best and I like it. | |
| Dom – Living in America Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I'm torn on seeing this as a cool and subtle piece of social crit....or just, like, party in the USA II. Neither interpretation keeps me from blastin it when I drive down the interstate so IDK, forget all you haters I guess. | |
| Mount Eerie – You Swan Go On Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| how is this so fucking good | |
| Major Organ And The Adding Machine – Life form (transmission received) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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So have you ever had a scrap of a lyric that you just grab onto and repeat, over and over, until it digs itself inside you and makes you stronger? Utter jams. |
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| The Mountain Goats – Going to Michigan Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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No, I don't. This is one of those really flawless songs that makes the point of how-can-I-love-you-when-you-irritate-me-so-much so pointedly without really saying it. Impressive shit. (Technically this is an Extra Glenns song, too.) |
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| The Mountain Goats – Going to Santiago Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| There needed to be a good song about being a pillhead and all of a sudden coming to your senses in the woods, in the snow, by yourself, and everything's like a fever dream because you've been doing your best to melt your brain out for a good while now. And this is that song, and how does he know so well what words to pick to arrest me like that? | |
| The Mountain Goats – Psalms 40:2 Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| This song is so fucking killer. Maniacal faith, in a good way. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Isaiah 45:23 Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| A raw acoustic version of this would be my new favorite song. | |
| The Mountain Goats – 1 Samuel 15:23 Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| My thoughts were almost exactly like your second interpretation. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Papagallo Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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"There was a minute when I thought I knew what you were about, and then you opened up your eyes and the lord came out" That is one of the most arresting lines I've ever heard. I guess this song is about being completely captivated by the strangeness in someone, even if you don't understand it. |
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| The Mountain Goats – FM (Steely Dan cover) Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Better than the original. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Carmen Cicero Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Possibly the single most underrated Mountain Goats song. Also, every time I've heard it (yeah, all two times) he sang 'the words are written on water'. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Standard Bitter Love Song #1 Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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This may be Standard Bitter Love Song #1 or #2, it's up for debate. He played it live in February, and he sang it like "you got no manners. you got no manners at all. you got no manners. you got no manners. you got no manners at all. ...And as if he hadn't gotten his point across already, you got no manners. you got no manners. you got no manners at all. you got no manners. " And it was so damn good. And by good I mean stupid. Which is also good. |
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| The Mountain Goats – Sign of the Crow (Part 2) Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Mark 8:12, And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, Why doth this generation seek after a sign? verily I say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto this generation. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Treetop Song Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I love this song so much. So. Much. | |
| Iron & Wine – Two Hungry Blackbirds Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I found a video of this song just now and I've played it over and over and over for the last hour and it mesmerizes the fuck out of me, too. Maybe after another hundred listens I'll be able to say what this song means to me but I am making no promises. |
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| The Mountain Goats – Going to Kirby Sigston Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Okay, I know John is known for really bitter and fucked-up love, but this is just a damn good and pure love song. | |
| The Mountain Goats – The House That Dripped Blood Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I was listening to a boot from 2007 and they sang the last verse as Dig out the wedding album Look for pictures of your friends Flip through it page by page The means is going to justify the end ...I don't know if he just pulled that out of the air but it stopped me dead in my tracks. Damn. |
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| The Mountain Goats – Maybe Sprout Wings Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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"This is a song about a man who has not had a chance to cuddle a wombat in quite some time." - John, at the Independent in 2003 |
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| Grant Lee Buffalo – Mighty Joe Moon Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I have been to the Cumberland Gap, and the air is sweeter than oranges. This song is about where I live and the people who live there and it is quite right, | |
| The Mountain Goats – Your Belgian Things Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I've also heard it sang to Rosie (Bottom of the Hill, 2004) so I suppose all we can get from the name is that John has lost a lot of people in his life. All I know is that this is probably the most flawless piece of music I have ever experienced. |
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| The Mountain Goats – Home Again Garden Grove Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I don't really think that We Shall All Be Healed has that much of a cohesive storyline, it's more like a series of impressions. I think this one is just about how fast and wild it is to be young and high and on fire, and then how that manic energy gets diluted after a while...the transition from "I can remember when we were in high school" to "Now we are practical men of the world" sort of cements this for me. Unrelatedly, the line about "shoving our heads/straight into the guts of the stove" reminds me of Lucien Carr (on-and-off lover of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg), who put his head in a gas oven as "a work of art" and was subsequently hospitalized as suicidal. So...whenever I hear it I think of a bunch of half-mad intoxicated beat kids driving around in a green automobile. |
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| The Mountain Goats – Song for the Julian Calendar Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Jesus...this song is desperate and gorgeous. I am so in love with Let me be your witness Let me walk out on the edge As for the meaning...we switched from Julian to Gregorian calendars in 1582, but I know the Orthodox church still uses Julian. And...maybe this is a stretch, but the reason we didn't keep Julian as the civil calendar is that it required a good deal of refinement and days added and subtracted to keep it aligned with the tropical calendar. These days were typically decided by pontiffs, and when the Romans were caught up in civil wars they were sometimes forgotten, leading to drift and misalignment. I think this song typifies that drift. The lines "Darkness climbing up the ladders to the sky/Rung by agonizing rung" and "The sun refused to shine on my back yard today/Darkness climbing up the house" bring on the feeling of time being different from how it's supposed to be. Just...picture the surreality that comes when we switch times for daylight savings. Now stretch that feeling out so it encompasses the entire year being off-kilter, not being sure what day it really is, and then project that feeling on to your relationship. That's how I see this song. |
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| The Mountain Goats – Raid on Entebbe Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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"they positioned themselves in strategic locations I was beginning to lose my patience." I am so proud of that rhyme. It's tied with the 'all you'd get'/alphabet one in The Anglo-Saxons in the history of greatest and most outrageous and original rhymes ever. Beautiful. |
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| The Mountain Goats – Straight Six Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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"sometimes the moon shines like a beacon to the weary and the sick in spirit. sometimes... sometimes it's dark. " I love how out-of-control this song sounds, and this line just sums it all up. Sometimes your life is under control, you know what you're doing and how to do it....sometimes not. This is a song about the not times. |
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| The Mountain Goats – Seeing Daylight Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Wait, I amend that. If the recipe is really "Toucans, clear chicken broth, two white onions, one bulb garlic" then it is JUST FINE. | |
| The Mountain Goats – US Mill Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I don't really know what this sound is, that everyone everywhere is listening to, but...Jesus, it sounds so good. "we had our ears to the ground all of our dreams resting in the same spot" and I love "it was shining as bright as gold grain gathering on the stone floor and we were spring-heeled and we were real cold" (Spring-heeled typically means able to leap very high) |
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| The Mountain Goats – In the Hidden Places Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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"Some songs you can wear glasses on, other songs, you can't wear glasses on. This song falls into the latter category. The year that I come here and begin a sentence 'some songs, you wear pants on...', the exit is right there, and I'm sure if we leave in an orderly fashion we can avoid the end of that sentence. This song is about a guy who knows when to keep his pants on, most of the time." |
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| The Mountain Goats – Dilaudid Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| The one from the day before at Club Europa is similar but even better, I think...both are skin-crawlingly amazing but my boot from 9/30 has these girls yelling each other's names through the last half. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Azo Tle Nelli in Tlalticpac? Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| "Good news like a rare blood disorder"?! You have to be a mad crazy amazing genius to have that come out of your mouth and sound convincing. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Going to Bridlington Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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"for some reason i just love saw you trying to smile. hey! you don't have to smile for me. so much." Me too. Emphatically. |
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| The Mountain Goats – Narakaloka Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Mm, forgot, Narakaloka is a Hindu concept loosely translated as the earthly realm, where violence and death and hurt exist. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Narakaloka Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Shit. I love this song. It sounds so topically bright and sunny and then you listen to it again and the words creep into your head and... SO he knows he's dying, but he's preparing everything he can to make the last days perfect and leave a piece of himself alive. Ouch. |
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| The Mountain Goats – Birthday Cake Song Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Mm, I found it. In the WMFU studio session the song is called Thought About You a Little. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Please Come Home to Hamngatan Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Aaaah I love this song. I'm not sure I fully understand what he's saying with these three examples...that we know what's going on, but we don't really care. Oh, we could catch you if we wanted, it's just not that important to us. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Wrong! Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I love how emphatic the title is. I wish they would just help him out already. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Wizard Buys a Hat Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| This is my favorite off the EP, fierce and revolutionary and brilliant. I especially love the first verse, where I expected 'steeple' and got the much more challenging 'crucible'. That is some damn genius songwriting. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Solomon Revisited Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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He's got a radio, bitches. You know how in Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod, he's like "[hope] you don't break my stereo, because it's the one thing that I couldn't live without"? He was serious. I understand. |
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| The Mountain Goats – Seeing Daylight Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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That is a shit recipe. Kid needs some thyme and carrots in there. Really though, this song has such an utter feeling of disconnect it makes my skin crawl. |
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| The Mountain Goats – Pseudothyrum Song Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I think he is really singing this song at himself. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Dilaudid Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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"This is a song about how when you're in love but you know it's going to hell you take drugs and have sex. It's called Dilaudid." I think when he mentions 'three score and ten' he's talking about years. A score is twenty, and seventy years is about the average american lifespan. It is definitely an 'if', not a 'when' for these two...their love is going down hill and they're destroying themselves and each other and even if they do live to the end of their days it's never going to be like this again. |
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| The Mountain Goats – 02-75 Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Haha, at a show in 2001 he prefaced it with "Do you want to know the secret of 02-75?" .... "I bet you do." |
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| The Mountain Goats – Waco Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Pretty clearly this is about the Branch Davidians. They were a group of Seventh-day Adventists who had broken away from the church and had a ranch/compound near Waco...they were led by David Koresh and were waiting for the second coming of Christ. Anyway, they were (legally) stockpiling weapons for the end of the world, and the ATF charged in there and both parties started shooting each other. Six of the Davidians and four agents died, and then after a two-month siege fires started that burned to compound and killed seventy six people. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Going to Marrakesh Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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He plays it under the name 'The Mountain Goats,' and honestly trying to separate John from the Goats is impossible. Wherever there's John, there's Goats. I think this might honestly be the archetypal Mountain Goats song. Out love is dying, it honestly should be dead, I don't even want it anymore, but it's still there. We're still there. And we're going to stay alive together. Damn. |
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| Bright Eyes – Kathy with a K's Song Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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I was listening to this song sort of half-heartedly the other day, thinking it was the first version I had of the song (a bootleg titled 'love is real' that only had the first verse, but was DEFINITELY Conor)..and then it kept going, and I started listening closer, and then the orchestra burst out and I swear I stopped breathing. I absolutely adore the cacophony at the end...If you listen carefully you can hear two girls singing An Attempt To Tip The Scales in the background. Stunning and brilliant. |
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| The Mountain Goats – Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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Darnee...I don't think it's focusing on the trivial at all. If you've been one of these kids you know, sometimes your stereo is honest-to-god the only thing keeping you alive. John did a show at Duke in 2005 and played this live for the first time, and when he finished he sort of gasped and said: "I can tell you, I now know for sure that I've never played that in front of an audience before, because the funny thing about this record, you know, is that they're all true stories, which is not what I'm used to doing. I lie my ass off, that's why people always think I'm lying when I say I don't know how to play a song because, you know, I do lie, a lot, and so why wouldn't I be lying about that? But I'm not. But, yeah, you play a song, one of the songs off this album for an audience the first time, there's this shock of letting a secret out. And I know there's a few people in any room who know what I'm talking about, and when you tell somebody about something bad that happened in the house where you were a kid, there's this shock of release, and it's really exciting, if...if maudlin, to talk about it on a stage, but what can I do? So, thank you for being here for that." (Thank you bootlegs, for that lovely insight!) |
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| The Mountain Goats – Game Shows Touch Our Lives Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| "Okay, it's the one thing that's weird about playing colleges. I'm married, and Peter's divorced, and so we start talking about marriage and stuff and I know I'm talking to a room full of people who go "Yeah, that's in the distant future, you know, and I'm not very interested in that right now"...But there may come a day--and y'all who are talking need to hear this--there may come a day when you get married, right, and --yes!--and when you get there, when you get there and you run out of Vicodin, and all that's left is the cheap vodka because you went to a liberal arts college and you studied poetry. Yeah, and so now, now you're married and poor and strung out on sleeping pills in Central Florida, and all you've got is cheap vodka, and you want to sing love songs to the person you now want to destroy. I want you to know the words when the time comes." | |
| The Mountain Goats – No Children Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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"This is a song which I wrote for people...unlike most of my songs, which I write for mice, to run through mazes while I watch them...Cause that's how we roll! So anyway, I wrote this song for people to sing to themselves when they come to a certain point in their lives. And, you know, you say "Well, what point is that?" but to the people who've already gotten to that point, I don't need to say anything about that. And for the rest of you who haven't been there yet...It's coming." |
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