The Sunset Tree


Band: The Mountain Goats
Album: The Sunset Tree
Best song: “Lion’s Teeth” is amazing. “You or Your Memory” is really good.
Worst song: “Dinu Lapatti’s Bones” isn’t my favorite. I don’t really like “Dilaudid”

I so desperately want to enjoy the Mountain Goats. Like Modest Mouse in my earlier years, John Darnielle does something really interesting and writes outstandingly smart music. But that voice. I want to be able to digest Darnielle’s voice more easily, but cannot do so.

This is why his most recent album is my favorite of his. The Life of the World to Come features a less frantic and uncomfortable than his other records. Subdued and calm, the album constructs songs from Biblical verses, without the need or construct of religiosity. It’s literary and smart, giving backing to the New Yorker’s claim that Darnielle is “America’s best non-hip-hop lyricist.” On the other hand, Darnielle’s blog is kind of hard to read.

Before Heretic Pride, widely considered his best record (as seen above, I disagree), Darnielle wrote songs mostly speaking in others’ voices. The Sunset Tree, however, is a striking autobiographical work. Written about a terrifying childhood of abuse, the record is thinly arranged and sung like a man on the run.

On some level, this fits. Darnielle’s voice should make the listener squirm in a song like “This Year” that references the horror that abuse brings to the abused. It’s desperate song created from a desperate situation. Or the list of things he needs for an escape in “You or Your Memory,” the album’s opening track:

st. joseph’s baby aspirin,
bartles and jaymes,
and you or your memory.

Or the gorgeous revenge fantasy of killing his stepfather, “Lion’s Teeth,” wherein Darnielle clearly frightens his family by murdering the “king of the jungle.” Or the escapism in pleasure that “Dance Music” shows in passion. Or the optimism that “Love Love Love” features. Or the more happy memories of Darnielle’s trips to the racetrack with his stepfather in the album close “Pale Green Things.” With regret and some calm, Darnielle tells of learning that the man died, with “she told me how you’d died at last, at last/and that morning at the race track was one thing I remembered,” recalling happier times.

These are the type of things that make one squirm, even in pleasant points. And it’s one of the more fitting pairings of voice with subject matter. While it’s not perfect for me, I can love and respect the record in a very intellectual way.

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  • About Me

    I'm Ross Jordan Gianfortune. I am not a writer, but I sometimes write here about music and my life. I live in Washington, DC.

    I used to review each of Rolling Stone Magazine's top 500 albums of all time. Now I'm writing about albums I own.

    My work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Gazette, The Atlantic, Sno-Cone and a bunch of defunct zines.

    You can contact me at rjgianfortune at gmail dot com.

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