Reviews Music / The Mountain Goats

Tallahassee

The Mountain Goats' first fully non-Lo-fi album, Talahassee, is a collection fourteen songs about two people trapped in a hateful relationship — the Alpha Couple. There's about a million ways of describing that exact feeling, but let's cut to the chase:

It's not a hateful album. (You might know that already.) The Alpha Couple are characters, and they deserve your sympathy at some (but not at all) times. Because sometimes they're pathetic. Sometimes they're helpless.

Notable songs:

• "Old College Try:" Instantly beautiful and heartbreaking, both melodically and lyrically. "Like a trashcan fire in a prison cell/Like a search light in the parking lots of hell." Ambiguously set at the beginning of the relationship.
• "Oceanographer's Choice:" Possibly the best song on the album. John Darnielle's narrative songwriting is almost film-like here: he changes perspective from the television set, to a person's thoughts, to physical sensation, all with complete competence.
• "Game Shows Touch Our Lives:" A soft song, but the one most explicitly about alcoholism. The album's 4AD minisite also has the brilliant "Now How Much Would You Pay?" video clip.
• "See America Right:" The Mountain Goat's first proper single. Some might like it; however, at only 1'52", I found it a bit too fast to capture my attention.
• "No Children:" The album's iconic, and supposedly saddest, song. Some people say it's the Mountain Goats song. I found it something I had to warm up to. It took me a little research to figure out that it's a deeply introspective song masquerading as Hate Song. The self-loathing the song shows is far deeper than the hate the couple has towards each other; that's the saddest part.

The rest of the songs may or may not grow on you. If you like these songs, or if you like The Mountain Goats, they probably will. But the album overall isn't as memorable as the previous seven-character All Hail West Texas or strong a narrative as the succeeding The Sunset Tree.

The complete album lyrics can be read here.