Darnielle:
"this is a big jump ahead. All the preceding songs are old ones. I prefer the newer songs to the older ones by a wide margin, and I suspect that most eMusic listeners would, too. With my early stuff, it's wise to take advantage of those thirty-second song clips, because my early recording technology was more primitive than anybody's. (I repeat, anybody's. Nobody could touch my boombox flow.) But it's always harder, much harder, to talk about newer songs. I feel like I don't really know anything about a song until it's five or six years old.
Here, however, the story is pretty clear, or I hope it is, and the song gave me a pretty good punch in the face as soon as we were done recording it, because I just lost my mind for about five minutes. Gone. Slumped over a piano a few feet from the microphone I'd been singing into, Erik Friedlander sitting in his chair where he'd been playing. (I did my vocal live with one of the cello parts, sitting facing Erik as he played.) I was thinking again about people who others talk down to: young mothers and fathers who have no prospects, no money, nothing going on.
The two kids here give birth in a cheap motel somewhere in San Bernardino, probably right off the freeway, and the young man tries to express his love for the girl who's about to give birth. Which she does, and they feel at home in the world, even though the world isn't giving them its best yet. I feel hope for them, because they love each other. I know that that is a corny thing to say, so for people who have corn allergies I apologize. But these two, they're going to be the future, so it'd be awesome if we could give them enough leeway to become who they're gonna become, and encourage them when we can. I have a fondness for them though I barely know them. Their feeling for one another inspires me, is what it is."
http://stereogum.com/archives/john-darnielles-five-favorite-mountain-goats-chara_008165.html
Darnielle: "this is a big jump ahead. All the preceding songs are old ones. I prefer the newer songs to the older ones by a wide margin, and I suspect that most eMusic listeners would, too. With my early stuff, it's wise to take advantage of those thirty-second song clips, because my early recording technology was more primitive than anybody's. (I repeat, anybody's. Nobody could touch my boombox flow.) But it's always harder, much harder, to talk about newer songs. I feel like I don't really know anything about a song until it's five or six years old.
Here, however, the story is pretty clear, or I hope it is, and the song gave me a pretty good punch in the face as soon as we were done recording it, because I just lost my mind for about five minutes. Gone. Slumped over a piano a few feet from the microphone I'd been singing into, Erik Friedlander sitting in his chair where he'd been playing. (I did my vocal live with one of the cello parts, sitting facing Erik as he played.) I was thinking again about people who others talk down to: young mothers and fathers who have no prospects, no money, nothing going on.
The two kids here give birth in a cheap motel somewhere in San Bernardino, probably right off the freeway, and the young man tries to express his love for the girl who's about to give birth. Which she does, and they feel at home in the world, even though the world isn't giving them its best yet. I feel hope for them, because they love each other. I know that that is a corny thing to say, so for people who have corn allergies I apologize. But these two, they're going to be the future, so it'd be awesome if we could give them enough leeway to become who they're gonna become, and encourage them when we can. I have a fondness for them though I barely know them. Their feeling for one another inspires me, is what it is." http://stereogum.com/archives/john-darnielles-five-favorite-mountain-goats-chara_008165.html