On Get Lonely

Get Lonely is probably the most unfairly maligned record in The Mountain Goats’ canon. I’ve argued this album’s merits endlessly, and I’m not done. It is one of my very favorite tMG records.

It is emotionally terrifying, but very quiet. The album is also the first where John Danielle learned how to fully use the studio as an instrument. There has been a lot of discussion about him recording studio albums, and whether this has been a good thing. There is no reason to rehash those old tired arguments. Suffice it to say, though I came in (barely) before the first studio record, I’ve never been overly beholden to the boombox recordings.

I expected to hate this record. I saw the band three times shortly before the album was released. The last time, an in-store at Amoeba Records in Hollywood was the first time I was able to connect with these songs. It was at Amoeba, standing in line to get my CD signed, that I first heard the studio versions. JD told me it was his favorite thing that he had done. I wondered if I would have the same opinion. On the drive home, I bonded with the album, and it slowly formed a special place in my heart. It’s still the tMG album I put on most often.

I’ll be honest. The state of my life at the time probably had a lot to do with the bond I formed with Get Lonely. I was renting a bed in a town house in Anaheim, Ca. around that time. I was drinking a lot of wine. Stuff either purchased or shoplifted from a dollar store up the street. I would get drunk, and put the album on repeat. The album can still transport me to bad places, but it’s also a bit cathartic.

I realize that my rambling introduction has said little about the album itself. Let’s look at the thing track by track. The mood of Get Lonely is pretty static throughout. The first song, "Wild Sage," uses an acoustic guitar as a backing track with a piano plucked against it.

The song is the story of a man leaving his house at daylight, and going to walk alongside a road. The lines are brutal, and especially detailed. He loses his footing, breaks his fall with his hand. Then: "and I laugh to myself and look up at the skies, and then I think I hear angels in my ears like marbles being thrown against a mirror.” Shortly thereafter he tells us “and some days I don't miss my family. And some days I do. And some days I think I'd feel better if I tried harder. Most days I know it's not true.” The song is the sound of a single person completely losing his shit, but in a manner that is so quiet he doesn’t even notice. It ends with the narrator lying down by the side, staring at the scrape on his hand, and continuing to sing to himself. It can be a very harrowing four minutes.

“New Monster Avenue” begins with drum flourishes, before another acoustic guitar kicks in. It’s seemingly the sound of a man scared out of his mind, anticipating the end of the world: “sometime before the sun comes up, the earth is going to crack.” By the end of the song he seems OK with his impending destiny, as he sips coffee at sunrise, and notes that his number is finally coming up. The song ends in a moment out of Frankenstein: “all the neighbors come on out to their front porches, waving torches."

“Half Dead” is a lovely moment, containing a bad ass bass line. If you’re sick enough, it can be turned into a sing-a-long: “ can’t get you out of my head. Lost without you. Half dead.” It’s the kind of song that should get under a person’s skin, but you’ll find yourself singing lines like “what are the years we gave each other ever going to be worth” without a hint of remorse.

The title track finds the narrator still going out at odd hours, trying to find comfort anywhere he can. He tries to hide in a crowd, or paint, or call a friend. Still, there’s another person he can’t let go of: “I will get lonely and gasp for air, and send your name up from my lips like a signal flare.” That person is a constant ghost throughout the album. She is everywhere, even though she’s only actually seen once or twice.

“Maybe Sprout Wings” has the narrator locked in his house. He spends most of the song trying to shake off a bad dream, and it’s probably the most haunted song on the record: “I thought of old friends, the ones who'd gone missing. Said all their names three times.” He mentions ghosts and spirits repeatedly. You get the picture of a man, maybe agoraphobic, but probably just fucked by the shock of loss, trapped in his house.

“Moon Over Goldsboro” continues the theme of odd movement, and odd hours: “I went down to the gas station for no particular reason.” It’s also one of the few moments you see a person other than the narrator. He lies down in the weeds, is happy for a moment, goes home. He is happy for another moment as he recalls moving into the house, than goes to bed. He wonders if he should continue blindly holding on to this woman, but he does so anyways. Of course, the song could be pure hallucination as he mutters to himself: “spend each night in the company of ghosts. Always wake up alone.” It’s the best song on the record, but also the hardest to get a grip on.

“Autumn came around like a drifter to an on-ramp” begins "In The Hidden Places." The narrator begins to “walk barefoot around town.” The song is mostly him riding a bus, going around town. He get’s a glimpse of his ex on the bus, then goes home to freak out: "pulled my sleeves down over my hands, over my hands. and I wished I was someone else. And I wished it was warmer. And when I got home, I thought about you.” The brutal sadness continues unabated.

"Song for Lonely Giants" is a short song. It’s a brief tale of a man singing songs to himself: “practicing my solitary scales 'til they rose like balloons”. It’s not one of the heavier songs on the record, but it still leaves an impression.

Following that is “Woke Up New,” probably the only thing resembling a pop moment on the album. Still, it contains it’s share of brutal moments: “and I began to talk to myself almost immediately, not being used to being the only person there.” That is followed by "the first time I made coffee for just myself,I made too much of it, but I drank it all, just 'cause you hate it when I let things go to waste.”

The chorus is simple: “And I what do I do without you?” It’s simple, and sad, but also possesses a little hope, rarely seen on this record. The song ends with the line: “and I got ready for the future to arrive.” The narrator is still numb and hopeless, done in by his situation, but he’s at least trying to move forward.

"If You See Light" is kind of a continuation of “New Monster Avenue.” The narrator is still waiting for the villagers, hiding. He’s “waiting for the front door to splinter” but instantly condemns his neighbors; “no one knows how to keep secrets ‘round here, they tell everyone everything as soon as they know. “ It’s a brief moment of pure terror, and ends as such.

The worst thing here is “Cobra Tattoo”. It fits the mood a bit, but seems oddly out of place in a way I’ve never been able to place. It seems the narrator is directly talking to a person in front of him, which is odd. It doesn’t quite have the hallucinatory effect a lot of the best songs that Get Lonely offers. It’s also odd to have god mentioned on this album.

“In Corolla” is basically a fuck off to the world: “the day I turned my back on you people I felt an itching in my thumbs.” It’s a goodbye, and also the second bit of hope on the record. Even though he leaves a trail of destruction behind him, every where he goes, he’s going to be OK. It’s probably the only way to end a record like this: “the sun was sinking on the Atlantic the last time I turned my back on you.” You get the sense that the narrator is drowning himself but it could also be a bit of a baptismal. So it goes.

Get Lonely is difficult record. It’s extremely heavy on pain and sorrow, and at least half of it it pure hallucination. If you get too close, it can hurt you. Despite my personal adventures, and the emotions it brings up, it could be my favorite tMG record. I think people have a hard time surrendering themselves to a musical recording and letting it wreck havoc on their emotions, but that’s what Get Lonely does best. If you can survive it, it will teach you something about yourself, and you’ll be a better human being for it.


By Jeffrey Whitelaw. Mr. Whitelaw lives, works, and attends school in Seattle, Wa. His previous music writing can be found at http://popwreckoning.com/author/jwhitelaw/ and http://blog.kexp.org/blog/author/jeffreywhitelaw/. He is currently thinking of six ways to prove to you that you're wrong, but can be contacted at istayedupallnight@gmail.com.

On Tallahassee

Because I’ve been listening to it very often lately and have more and more discovered its brilliance, because by now I also like those songs that in my opinion were a bit lame at first, because by now I also learned to acknowledge the subversion in the smoother songs, because the narrative arc is intriguing and makes the somewhat stale idea of a concept album attractive again, because the lyrics of this album stand for themselves as a cycle of poems about two lost souls, and simply because “Tallahassee” was the first album I bought by The Mountain Goats, here is my hymn to “Tallahassee”, one of the best records of the then duo – casually extended by other musicians (and now complemented by drummer John Wurster) – consisting of songwriter, singer and guitarist John Darnielle and bassist Peter Hughes.

I first encountered The Mountain Goats on some compilation with “No Children”, their Übersong of the album, a one part hysterical, one part cheerful song about the most devastating aspects of a relationship, wrapped up in a folk song that sounds like Dylan on caffeine, with witty, bitchy, extremely poetic lyrics, lo-fi enough to make my punk rock heart beat faster, but still recorded well enough to emphasize all the nuances of Darnielle's nasal voice, of the brilliant bass playing of Peter Hughes and of the beautiful piano (different from 1996’s “Sweden," where the noisy home recording every now and then makes it, to me, hard to enjoy the record in one piece. No apologies.) I was stunned by the music as well as by the lyrics, which told this sad story in such a lively, optimistic way I just had to laugh about its brazenness – a quality, I later discovered, that is typical of John Darnielle’s lyrics as well as his recitation: even the worst things are told with a spark of hope, much respect for the protagonists and with a strong and sometimes even fierce will of survival.

And the rest of the album is in no way inferior to its "hit." It includes fast, always slightly hysterical songs like “No Children”, as discussed above, and “First Few Desperate Hours”, “Southwood Plantation Road” or the final song “Alpha Rat’s Nest," which each take turns between very beautiful, calm, melancholic pieces like the heartbreaking “Game Shows Touch Our Lives”, “Idylls Of The King” or the “International Small Arms Traffic Blues,” the latter of which offers a politically informed, ironic metaphor for love gone bad. From time to time, though, all this beautiful, slightly melancholic evening sun mood sometimes becomes pitch black. “The House That Dripped Blood”, “See America Right” and “Oceanographer’s Choice” each open an abyss that appears to be even more frightening and cruel amidst all these – fake – idylls for the Everyman, who somehow is aware of this all the time, and who suddenly stands alone with all his guilt and fearfully and wearily asks: “What will I do when I don’t have you, when I finally get what I deserve?”

A legitimate question, for only a few songs earlier, the singer seems to wish bad things upon his partner: “I am drowning, there is no sign of land. You are coming down with me. Hand in unlovable hand. I hope you die. I hope we both die.” While this is a cruel, sadistic wish, even the lover’s oath is dreadful, full of alcohol abuse, fear and apocalyptic imagery: “My love is like a dark cloud full of rain that’s always right there up above you,” the singer threatens his partner while being afraid himself: "[W]e try to keep our spirits high, but they flag and they wane [...] through these first few desperate hours“.

Of course the guy who speaks is not John Darnielle himself. “Tallahassee” is the last album before his forthright autobiographical phase and therefore also marks a break in The Mountain Goats’ continuum. It is the Alpha Couple about which Darnielle sings, a probably married couple with massive alcohol problems who pop up time and again throughout the existence of The Mountain Goats, depicting all the bad sides of relationships under the influence of alcohol and drugs and a somehow bad, addictive love. While on the other records prior to this one, this unhappy couple have their songs hidden among other topics, “Tallahassee” is the first album that deals only with the two – and putting them to rest for good, for after “Tallahassee”, these doomed guys don't appear anymore.

The story told here – a couple moving into an old, empty house somewhere in rural America to fight the demons of alcohol and drug abuse without professional help, with only themselves to rely upon – could be the plot for a novel, a play or a movie similar to “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”, the great, intense, intimate play about a couple who deeply hate and love each other at the same time. Darnielle’s story has the same intensity, the same aspects of love and hate, the same moments of cruelty, peace, despair and passion: “People say friends don’t destroy one another. What do they know about friends?”

The fact that Darnielle chose to unravel this elaborate story in a record, whose course he tells in short, spotlighted, more or less abstract poems focusing on details rather than on the whole, rather than a novel, renders the album even more compelling, adding another, deeper dimension to these beautiful, warm, surprisingly positive songs. And maybe – but maybe not – there is salvation in the end for the Alpha Couple. This is comforting, because what happens to this couple can happen to all of us. The story Darnielle tells us, those poetic lines, those depressing situations, those details as well as the whole drama may be sung about two special people, but – the expression “Alpha Couple”, a name the two got somewhere along their way, already tells it – all of this of course is about all of us.

It is a monstrous idyll somewhere in sunny America about which Darnielle sings, a love that has long become a death trap, and there’s no way to ease one’s own guilt and responsibility for this. The whole thing is carried by an acoustic and a bass guitar (except for those pitch black songs in which driving drums and a painfully distorted electric guitar respectively a bitchy distorted bass are allowed to break free at last), and from time to time a piano, a little percussion, an organ and other small instruments join in. The melodies are simple, beautiful, catchy, the chord progressions are plain, and if those songs and those lyrics were not of such an intensity, performed with that much happy despair, with a tongue-in-cheek weariness, playful hatred and somehow funny madness, one could think they were too plain, perhaps even boring. As written, though, they remain breathtaking even after the 100th listen, in a good as well as in a bad – because of the shock – sense.

“Tallahassee” marks the crossroads between the early, lo-fi boombox recordings and the studio productions, still lo-fi, but yet produced, and it’s coherent that Darnielle puts the Alpha Couple to rest here and moves on. But still the album can easily be integrated in the body of work of The Mountain Goats, lyrically as well as musically. It follows metaphors and musical motifs that can be found time and again, but, nonetheless, this album feels more urgent then all their other records I own (except for its successor “We All Shall Be Healed” from 2004). It breaks your heart more than everything else seeing a good-humoured Darnielle (or better his persona, probably the male part of the Alphas) running down the road to ruin while exactly knowing what he is doing when he just takes his counterpart with him. Nowhere else so far in the Mountain Goats repertoire have fear, despair, hatred and guilt been wrapped up as sunny, heart-warming, poetic and at the same time down-to-earth as on “Tallahassee.” Nowhere else can one feel as comforted and at home in the face of all the forsakenness and loneliness one meets here.

Thus, on Tallahassee, from the abyss comes a smile in the form of wonderful and - despite all the hopelessness of the Alpha Couple - still hopeful love songs.

By Sascha Buehler. Mr. Buehler is currently working in marketing, as a freelance lecturer and author in Southern Germany. He is also the singer and guitarist of SingSallySing (http://singsallysing.bandcamp.com ) and Cyco Sanchez Supergroup (http://garagepunk.ning.com/profile/CycoSanchez).

On Hot Garden Stomp

When asked about the Alpha Couple, the fictional couple who has spent the better part of the past twenty years slowly grinding each other into the ground in one of the band's on-going song cycles, John Darnielle often responds that he feels as if he’s abusing the characters by forcing them to go on this way. That feeling of abuse represents, in part, an aggression of the songwriter who chooses not to write about the Western ideal of “courtly love,” but instead elects to force his characters into a modern perversion of that ideal. The Alpha Couple do love each other, but they will always continue to destroy each other.

There are no Alpha songs on Hot Garden Stomp, The Mountain Goats’ third full-length album, but the aggression of the songwriter is no less present. At this time, The Mountain Goats consisted of Darnielle, the songwriter and main force behind the project, along with the Bright Mountain Choir: Rachel, Sarah, Amy, and Rosanne (or, in the liner notes, “Rosaaanne”). The album is the last of the initial three albums released on cassette by Dennis Callaci’s Shrimper Records, all of which remain out of print. Yet of the three, Taboo VI: The Homecoming, The Hound Chronicles, and Hot Garden Stomp, it is Hot Garden Stomp that is the strongest as an album, and likely the most worthy of reissue.

As the songs on The Hound Chronicles showed a significant growth from the songs on Taboo VI, Hot Garden Stomp demonstrates further advances in Darnielle’s songwriting and many of the tropes found on Hot Garden Stomp will become standard among other early Mountain Goats releases. There are the more obvious connections, like two early “Going To” songs, Japan and Norwalk. There are also opaque references to Roman and Greek classics found in songs like “Love Hymn to Aphrodite,” and “Thanks for the Dress.”

Of the group, “Thanks for the Dress” is the most explained, and examining its origins may give some insight into Darnielle’s early process and inspirations. The liner notes provide a Latin quotation, another standard feature among the early releases, attributed to the Roman poet Ennius. In a deviation from his normal practice, however, Darnielle offers a translation of the quote, and writes: “see also side II, song #7,” i.e. “Thanks for the Dress.” The quote from Ennius is not attributed to a work, but it can be found in Ennius’ translation from Greek into Latin of Euripides’ Medea, which is what “Thanks for the Dress” is about. Darnielle doesn’t bother explaining this, though. For him, it’s much more important to get the song down and move on.

The urgency and temporality that characterizes Darnielle’s work in this period is clearly exemplified in the brief introduction he gives to “Love Hymn to Aphrodite,” in which he states: “Today is the 17th of April, Love Hymn to Aphrodite.” The time and attitude in which the work was produced has a direct effect on the work. And so, in contrast to the later The Life of the World to Come, for example, Hot Garden Stomp feels like a very youthful album. This youthfulness is part of the aggression of the songs, as well. In the liner notes, there is a quote from Romeo & Juliet written in all capitals, and gone over so as to appear bolded. “…Peace!” Darnielle copies, “I hate the word / As I hate Hell, all Montagues, and thee!” (I.i.70-71). There is no room for peace in the songs on Hot Garden Stomp.

Part of that aggression is manifested in the rough assembly of the work. The familiar wheel-grind of the tape deck is clearly audible as a monument to cheap production. At this time, Darnielle was still playing his first guitar—a cheap, three-quarter sized Hawaiian model—and a simple sounding Casio keyboard. Darnielle audibly goes out of tune on some songs, but boldly presses on anyway. The packaging itself is unpolished as well; the tape is packaged in a photocopied sheet of handwritten liner notes, hastily colored with crayon. It’s not a remarkably off-putting front, especially with regards to the musical scene from which it emerged, but it certainly doesn’t go out of its way to be welcoming. Furthermore, the price of the album certainly wouldn’t encourage the current trend of music commodity fetishism; when Hot Garden Stomp was released, the album sold for $3.00, postage paid.

The aggression is in the songwriting as well. When discussing the title track in a bit of live banter, Darnielle said that the “description of the room [was] fairly accurate” but that in order to spice up the song, he made the protagonist of the song “totally psychotic.” That same kind of sociopathic psychosis can be found on the opening track, “Pure Milk.” In that song, the narrator declares: you and me are gonna get drunk tonight. / We're gonna steal some tractors and head on into town, / find the main strip and start mowing them down.” It’s not conventional, but it’s certainly a compelling idea for an evening outing.

That kind of character building is one of the real strengths of Darnielle’s writing—he carefully selects details in order to give a clear idea of a character, without revealing too much. And in this song, one potentially crucial line that Darnielle sings reflects this intention: “don’t ignore the obvious.” All of the details Darnielle chooses to include are significant, possibly essential. In that light, “don’t ignore the obvious” is as much a hint as it is a warning. In the same way, Hot Garden Stomp is as much a good album as it is a clear signpost for what early Mountain Goats fans could expect in the years to come.

By Carl Schlachte. Mr. Schlachte is a graduate student and a poet living in New York City.

On We Shall All Be Healed

A time traveller, or a memory athlete, or an omniscient narrator with brain damage can move from scene to scene without shock; but he doesn't get it right, he learns his lessons but doesn't retain them. He knows what's going to happen, but he lets it happen anyway. He's seen it all, but it surprises and hurts him still. It's more beautiful that way, and more devastating.

He moves among others like him. They laugh with shared elation at common discoveries, and study familiar trivialities for what more they may reveal. They tear through shades-of-grey civilian settings, upsetting the extras. We accelerate to white-hot incandescence and leave a trail of ash and bone for baffled coroners and weeping survivors. No looking back.

I move among others different from me, stand-up guys who read the papers and have never seen the breadth and length and depth and height. I sit vigil at gravesides, in hospitals and cells. We were discharged. We live where we used to rip. It's dark here, not like before, just bleak and rough. I catch your eye, you saw it too, you've walked down that alley too. We’re alone with the time traveller. We are left, but we haven't left them behind; he’s gone, but he keeps calling us back.

A corner turns, and something blinks, and the roar of a surging wave of shearing force passes through us. Nothing has been lost — we're all still alive, and God, what a life! With this stuff, we can outrun angels; we can go faster still, I can take you faster. Push ahead, push ahead through the fire that lingers in our muscles, through the ache that sears every nerve, through the muddy hung-over hazy hunger for more, faster. Is that how it was, or am I just making it up to fill a blank left in my recollections? If I went back, I might know, but it’s not there any more. I can’t get any more. I can't return.

This place is a pit. How can anyone live here, ankle-deep in pizza boxes, cans, bottles, scrips, each one a fingerprint, each a phone number, each a snapshot of someone we loved or hated. It’s where we belong. It’s where they all will always belong, even the ones like him who paid the full price to belong somewhere else. They can smile and puke here, and most of the time someone will hold their hand. He has been here before; he’ll be back. With Olympian grace he pulls apart the swinging doors and displays a horizon we never crossed. He draws us toward it, delicately gesturing toward each safety pin, acknowledging every rumpled empty bedsheet on every sagging couch. I say that’s a rueful half-smile; you tell me it’s grief struggling to claim every muscle in his face. It’s nine-thirty, but the sun’s not up yet. We’re not sure it’s going to rise.

He remembers you all. He would do it again.

By A.K.M. Adam. A.K.M. Adam is a Lecturer in New Testament at the University of Glasgow's Department of Theology and Religious Studies. His blog is available here. His writing and editing credits include What is Postmodern Biblical Criticism? (1995), Making Sense of New Testament Theology (1995), A Grammar of New Testament Greek (1999), A Handbook of Postmodern Biblical Interpretation and Postmodern Interpretations of the Bible: A Reader (2000); and "What These Cryptic Symbols Mean: Quotation, Allusion and John Darnielle's Biblical Interpretation," Biblical Interpretation, A Journal of Contemporary Approaches, ed. H. Pyper, v. 19, no. 2, pp. 109-128 (2011).

On We Shall All Be Healed

We Shall All Be Healed is an album full of hallucinations, ghosts, and doomed people. While it marks the place where songwriter John Darnielle first started writing nakedly autobiographical songs, the songs here exist in a land where it is impossible to distinguish myth from reality.

On the opener, “Slow West Vultures” the narrator is instantly unapologetic: “We are what we are, get in the goddamn car” and then: “we are sleek and beautiful, we are cursed.” This is followed by the sound of something breaking. That instant is an “oh, fuck”. It’s not unlike smoking meth. You wonder what you’re getting yourself into, and then you realize you don’t care. You’re in it for the ride, whatever may come. The characters are obsessed. Not just with the drug they chase, but subconsciously (or consciously, who knows) they lust for destruction.

We have gotten ahead of ourselves. WSABH is largely the story of people consuming methamphetamines in Southern California. The album was instantly attractive to me, because I spent most of 2001 doing exactly that. There is a bootleg recorded in a 2003 in which JD tells us that “it’s about all my old friends up in Portland, may most of them rest in peace.” That probably tells us more than we need to know. JD switched the location to SoCal, and he probably fudged a few of the details. This is fine. The nature of meth is that shit tends to get really weird really fucking quickly.

So, the album. Let’s get back to that. The second track, “Palmcorder Yajna”, has turned into a bit of a hit. It’s played live quite a bit, and has turned into some kind of horrible sing-a-long. I myself have been guilty more than twice of shouting along to line like “and I dreamt of a house haunted by all you tweakers with your hands out.” The headstones climb up the goddamn hill. It’s a kind of catharsis to be able to shout these words at the world. I have more dead friends than I have time to remember. “Palmcorder Yajna” tells us it’s OK to be OK with this, it’s OK to move along. It’s an important few minutes.

“Linda Blair Was Born Innocent” begins with a simple plucked bass string, before an acoustic guitar kicks in, followed by the lyrics “gentle hum of the old machine”. This is the sound of bodies in motion, headed downtown to buy drugs, and maybe find love. Love is always a key motivator in these songs. Unfortunately it is the second key motivator, only to that which engulfs everything. The song is subtle, and belies a million things, but it comes along so sweetly, and so swiftly that it can easily be missed. This song is a key in a way, however. Motivations are made known here. It’s possibly one of the most important tracks on the record.

Track 4, “Letter From Belgium” seems to be little more than tweakers being tweakers. It’s filled with lines of useless junk that could easily be other junk. Stage makeup, electrical equipment... send us everything just as long as we don’t have to see the sun. The song feels like a bad memory. I remember spending an entire night smoking shit, before going out to shop Garden Grove mall at 6am. These things happen, don’t tell me they don’t.

“The Young Thousands” is next, and I have no idea what that phrase means. This song is scary if you get into the lyrics: “The things that you've got coming will do things that you're afraid to. There is someone waiting out there with a mouthful of surprises.” The song is a continuation of the previous one. Methheads on the march, methheads being methheads. It’s also the first time JD mentions ghosts, and the first time you get an idea of just how haunted these people are.

“Your Belgian Things” has the narrator telling a woman that her possessions are OK. This is pure methhead logic, and it’s brilliant. The song is basically reassurance. JD doesn’t say this, but it’s what he conveys: “your stuff will be Ok, so you’ll be OK.” The he reminds us that: “a tiger’s never going to change his stripes”. He misses this person, he wants them as they are, and he doesn’t care what condition.

The next track, “Mole” has the narrator visiting a friend in handcuffs, and full of tubes in the hospital. Of course, all he wants is information, or why would he have come out? We have no idea what kind of information, however. This is a portrait song, a brief glimpse of what one might be up to when they’re all fucked up on drugs. The hope is there, still “out there in the desert we’ll have no worries” and “I came to see you up in intensive care.” This song haunts like few others on the album. It could be a continuation of the previous song, but it seems more likely that the narrator is speaking of a different person.

Next up is the balls out rocker “Home, Again, Garden Grove.” It’s also the first song that feels like full blown meth psychosis: “plotting triumphant returns to the city, keeping Tec-9's tucked under the floorboards.” Shortly thereafter is a key line: “now we are practical men of the world. We tether our dreams to the turf.” These are characters that have ceased carrying about their hopes and ambitions. Now they only have one goal. That is to do meth, and steal shit.

“All Up the Seething Coast” is probably the simplest song on the album, but it freaks me out the most. It starts as a simple list of daily living, but the spoken word gets scary. A few lines: And nothing you can say or do will stop me. And a thousand dead friends can't stop me” followed by “I go back to places I remember. See what's been going on without me.” Those lines ruin me, for reasons I’ll get to later.

“Quito” has the narrator back to his inflated self-worth. It’s the dream of a king returning: “when I get off the bus down there my children they all are going to greet me at the station.” He’s not unapologetic either. “When I got off the wheel I’m going to stop and make amends to all I’ve wounded.” The things is, he feels as if he has a magic wand, which will right all wrongs, and convince people to submit to his will. It’s meth psychosis, again.

I always think of the song as “Have To Explode, “but “Cotton” is the montage moment. You can see every person mentioned in this album walking around like they’re in the in the SIMS. “This song is for the people who tell their families that they're sorry for things they can't and won't feel sorry for.” If you’ve been there you know exactly what is being said.

I watched tMG play this song in Portland this June and it was especially brutal. I looked up as JD sang the lines “I wanna sing one for the cars that are right now headed silent down the highway” and I could feel the pulse of traffic. He continued: “And it's dark and there is nobody driving.” I remember what it is like to know that nobody is driving. This is the penultimate track on the record, an honesty that can’t be reversed.

The second to last track is “Against Pollution,” and it is pure hallucination: “When I worked down at the liquor store, guy with a shotgun came raging through the place. Muscled his way behind the counter. I shot him in the face.” The second and third verses are more plaintive. It has the feel of an epilogue, the narrator seems to be either looking back on the past or anticipating the future. It gives the feeling that some people do survive this, no matter how much they don’t deserve it.

The last song “Pigs That Ran Straightaway Into The Water, Triumph Of” is basically “Going to Jail.” The narrator is defiant, but relatively resigned to his fate. His ego is there to the end, however: “I come from Chino so all your threats are empty.” So the album ends. Not with a bang but with a whimper, leaving us to either hit play again, or contemplate what we just heard.

The title of the album itself is a prayer. It’s also bullshit. Practically no one who goes through the mire is OK. We survive, yes, but we’re forever haunted. WSABH exists to urge us on to our lives as regular people, while acknowledging our pain. The problem is there are wounds that will never heal. As I write this I’m a month and a half shy of 30. I realize I’m lucky. It gives me hope that the friends I haven’t heard from are OK. Sarah I miss you, Robin you too.

By Jeffrey Whitelaw. Mr. Whitelaw lives, works, and attends school in Seattle, Wa. His previous music writing can be found here and here.He is currently thinking of six ways to prove to you that you're wrong, but can be contacted at istayedupallnight@gmail.com.