The Mountain Goats “The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton” (Live)

OK, sorry that this week, maybe this month, has turned into PCR Featuring The Usual Suspects of Indie Rock. Maybe I lack imagination or maybe the holidays are making me return to my musical equivalent of comfort food. (A Sebadoh post can only be fast upon the heels…)

Anyway, archive.org says that back in 2002 my About page read, in part:

Please don’t blame the man, but PCR is more than partially inspired by John Darnielle’s zine, Last Plane to Jakarta, which really every one should read. I’m sure I’ll be talking soon about his most recent album under the Mountain Goats moniker, All Hail West Texas, probably the album that’s meant the most to me this year.

It occurred to me to follow up on this, since we’re almost at 2007. That’s about my typical turaround time on plans. So over the course of the next _____, from time to time I’ll come back to All Hail, a concept album made by one man, his acoustic guitar and an obsolete boombox, which nonetheless got me through and over my first real, major break-up. I’ll try to minimize the use of the phrases “tape hiss,” “yelp,” “frenetic strumming,” “genius,” but please don’t hold me to that.

The lead-off track, “The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton,” is a heartbreaking wolf disguised in novelty-song sheepskin. I mean, death metal is no laughing matter for Darnielle, right, but there’s a jokiness here… if I have to explain it, it’s not funny, right?

The story of Jeff and Cyrus, the duo who make up the eponymous and ultimately untitled band, is about how the world can beat you down. Or at least about how the powers that be in West Texas doesn’t see the greater good of teens indulging naive ambition–really, are there any death metal bands who can afford to travel via Lear jet?–and a little good old fashioned Devil’s Music–ah, those damning pentagram stencils.

But it’s mostly setup for the bitter prospect of revenge, the Moment that so often gives me goosebumps, Darnielle crying, “When you punish a person for dreaming his dream/don’t expect him to thank or forgive you.” What’s better is that it’s followed by instant catharsis, albeit a promise that I often doubt: “The best ever death metal band out of Denton/will in time both outpace and outlive you.” I can’t be so sure that Jeff and Cyrus will triumph. But I’m a cynic.

The closing refrain is, then, no joke, but as anthemic as the Goats get, an invitation to pump fists along with these young men cast aside by society. “Hail Satan, tonight,” indeed.

And you have the birth of a little masterpiece and fan fave. A note on the attached mp3, a recording made by someone else of the recent secret Mountain Goats show in Claremont, Cali: I’m generally very anti singing along with performers at acoustic shows, at least until they invite that audience participation (which, OK, Darnielle does around 1:40), but for the reasons enumerated above, the singalong–and the devil’s horn salute–are very very necessary.

Can I get a “fuck yeah”? I think I can.

All Hail West Texas at Target.

Spoon “Everything Hits At Once”

The radio got totally intolerable last night while I was driving home from work, so I needed a change. I put in Girls Can Tell, Austin rockers Spoon’s moody and marvelous 2000 return to the indie world after an ill-fated sojourn into the indifferent arms of Neglektra Elektra. I ended up kinda just listening to “Everything Hits At Once,” the album opener, on repeat. (Yeah, you got me, at first it was all about that “lights in traffic we become/on the way back home” line.)

I notice that I focus a lot on lyrics–which are easier to pick apart in that “what is a song but poetry set to music” way, especially for a words guy like me–to the exclusion of talking about the actual, you know, music. Sometimes it’s really hard to get past the rockcrit mad libs: [stock adj] [instrument] (e.g., “swirling organ,” “jangly guitar,” “booming drums”) or “sounds like [band 1] meets [thing 2].”

So today, one and a half instrumental things that surprised me about “Everything Hits At Once,” and one and half that didn’t.

The Trouble Tone: If you’d've asked me what the very first sound on this song is, I would’ve said, “Easy. The drums kick in, ‘bish-dum-dum-doo-dat.’ ” But really, a split second earlier, a really quiet synth drone comes in, and maintains that chord for the song’s first 30 seconds or so. (It might go on longer, but I lose it around the half-minute mark.)

That the presence of this sound is a revelation to me speaks to either (1) my listening so often on shitty computer speakers, (2) my habit of listening while distracted by some other task or (3) that hole in my head everybody keeps talking about.

Anyway, as the song gets going, the bass moves and some brighter keyboards alternate between a couple chords. But that static drone in the background hangs, somber, creating unease like the sound of distant sirens. It’s super-subtle, but it’s alerting yr animal brain that this isn’t necessarily a happy time coming up.

Dreamtime Solo: Britt Daniel, the main Spooner, has always had an inventive touch with guitar solos, at times ending up just this side of out–blasting minimal skronk or tearing off figures that are more rhythmic in character than shreddy or melodic. Solos become little detours and tangents in Spoon songs.

Elements of this approach translated to the mellotron solo, played by one of the dudes from Trail of Dead, that starts around 2:16. “Everything Hits At Once” goes all the sudden from being lean and dark to turning lush and weird and starry-eyed.

Skins: I love the way Spoon places the drums in their mixes. They’ve figured out a consistent sweet spot where you really feel and hear what the drums are doing, but they don’t overpower the song, while the overall sound remains streamlined and clutter-free. As a result, they’re one of the few rock bands who have sat out the overcompression/loudness wars but nonetheless make songs that can sit next to a hip hop track in yr party shuffle without sounding weak.

In “Everything Hits At Once” you get a steady, nuanced performance from sticksman Jim Eno. It sounds like a real drummer doing his thing in a room (this is rarer than you think), booms loud and clear enough to really move the song, and has accents that actually, you know, seem to accentuate the feel and meaning of the song.

(And OK, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks: I find the refrain “I go to sleep and think that yr next to me” to be a perfectly succinct encapsulation of the post-breakup desolate devastation blues as I remember them; and the concept of fading into the sea of rush hour cars as a kind of communion is mystifying.)

Please enjoy the computerized rotoscope magic of Divya Srinivasan’s video for this song. It’s got parts that are lean and dark and lush and weird and starry-eyed, so it’s kind of perfect.

Girls Can Tell at Target. (and at iTunes.)

The Thermals “Here’s Your Future”
Hutch & Kathy “Infinite Loop”

The Body, The Blood, The Machine, this year’s release from Portland punks the Thermals, is easily one of my favorite records of 2006, maybe the best the band has produced. While this is something like the billionth blog to big up these guys, I guess I’ll go ahead and share the opener off that disc, part one in a prolonged paranoid nightmare about America as a theocracy.

(That’ll never happen now, right?)

“Here’s Your Future” takes a couple Bible stories, Noah building the ark and Jesus headed to the cross, and remixes them–humanizing and somehow modernizing the characters. As doubts and fears spin out, we’re presented the typical biblical scene, G-d addresses folks directly and asks them to do crazy things, and confronted with its implications in today’s world.

(What happens when an influential voting bloc thinks it has a direct line to the higher power? When our leaders do?)

The vocals’ insistent rant, the fury of the three-piece rock delivery, they amplify the weary, questioning spirit of this tune.

(I wasn’t surprised to discover that the Thermals, like me, are disenchanted products of a Catholic education.)

I wanted to go somewhere else with this, though. Or maybe back to an earlier point–the fleshing out of these mythic personae. Singer/guitarist Hutch Harris imbues cowed Noah, tortured Jesus, with real feelings, mixed feelings, the stuff of humanity.

I’ve posited before the importance of The Moment in pop songs. There are certain galvanizing parts in certain songs where everything comes together. These are usually dramatic shifts or points of extreme release, like a sonic analog to the sun bursting through clouds.

(This might tip my hand as a singer-songwriter-loving fuddy-duddy, but the examples that most readily come to mind are the part in Neil Young’s “Old Man” when James Taylor’s banjo playing ambles through the mix, and the onslaught of the reverbed Drumz of God against the swirling mellotron in “Everything Means Nothing To Me” by Elliott Smith.)

Which is the long way of getting to the spot around 1:40 into “Here’s Your Future” where Harris gives voice to a reluctant Messiah answering his dad’s call: “I will, but Dad, I’m afraid!” The extreme empathy in this line, intersecting with a rhythm section drop-out and some flaying guitar work… I call that The Moment.

(This is the part where the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end for a fraction of a second every time I listen to the song. Heavy stuff, no?)

To either accentuate, or give you a break from, the heavitude of theme and performance in Thermals 06, I thought it’d be nice to also share a snapshot of cuter days from the band’s principals. “Infinite Loop” is a shining example of indie pop, off the 2002 self-titled record from Harris’ and Thermals bassist Kathy Foster’s earlier team incarnation (…wait for it…), Hutch & Kathy.

The song’s a cupid arrow connecting with my music geek heart. You’ve got strummy acoustics and boy-gurl vox risking hyperbole in praise of love. Here the road of a relationship is like the highways to a touring band, and being together is a sweet labor of love that requires practice, like the song you play over and over.

The line about “yr spine showing through yr sweater” always pops out, both for the wink at an old school indie rock signifier and as a treat for those of us who worship at the Church of the Small But Telling Detail. Then the writing of the song is referenced in the song, a po-mo wrecking ball through the fourth wall.

(Not bad for an unassuming little pop ditty.)

TBTBTM at Newbury Comics. (and at iTunes.)
H&K at Newbury Comics.