Review Summary: "My love is like a powder keg..."
My love for the The Mountain Goats has always been difficult to understand. On one hand, I would subjectively call them one of my all-time favorite bands precisely for the reason that John Darnielle’s every last effort seems remarkably earnest and passionate – I cannot point to a single song in their catalog that feels the slightest bit phoned in. That said, the albums in the Panasonic Boom Box era of the Goats’ catalog seem wildly unfocused, probably because Darnielle allows his ambition to run rampant. Take, for example, Tallahassee’s predecessor, All Hail West Texas: it lays out a clear concept – exploring the lives of small-town Texas’ faceless youth in tiny vignettes – but there are so many different stories and characters that it becomes overwhelming very quickly. Ambitious work often tends to be daunting for the listener.
Darnielle’s boom box finally blowing out may have ultimately been the best thing for the Mountain Goats in the long run. It lasted a good while, producing some classics, like the hilarious novelty “Golden Boy” or “Jaipur”, which is capable of being my favorite Mountain Goats song on any given day. With the addition of high-tech studio technology to the Goats’ arsenal, the albums became much more concise focused – and considering the high-concept work the Goats are known for, that is definitely a step in the right direction. While some would argue that the album’s slick production is a sign of the band becoming defanged in some way, a look at the lyrics sheet suggests that the studio era is grittier than ever, but that roughness exists in the lyrics rather than the sound quality.
Tallahassee is the remarkable beginning of the Mountain Goats’ second life. It is a potent, astonishing landmine of an album, conceived out of a long-running series of stories about the “Alpha Couple” – a mutually-abusive, but startlingly co-dependent married couple that somehow grits its teeth and perseveres come hell or high water. We don’t learn much of anything about either individual in the relationship; the more important details are about their union as a monstrous, destructive entity.
That brings me to the character work that makes Tallahassee such a superb piece of artistry – its characters are clearly destroying one another, but could not manage by themselves. For them, a draining life of circular quarrelling is still better than a life of crippling loneliness. Not only that, but there are moments when the characters express genuine care for each other (“Old College Try” and “Southwood Plantation Road” are good examples) and seem to be viewing each other with the same wonderment with which they fell in love.
These moments are so effective because they make the couple’s inevitable crash back to reality so much harder. The ugliest scenes of the album are painted with a layer of surrealism, clad with buzzards, trash, and smoke rising from the barren ground of Florida’s panhandle. “No Children”, comes out of the album’s torrid midsection, and spells out the nameless male’s masochistic lists of desires, including such blunt lines as: “I hope you die, I hope we both die” and “You are coming down with me, hand in unlovable hand”. It is about as subtle as a swift kick in the groin, but the unapologetic “alpha”-ness of this couple is why they are doomed to a life of despair.
The ultimate conclusion of the album becomes clearer as it progresses into the characters’ sobering realization of their own helplessness. “International Small Arms Traffic Blues” carves up the couple’s turbulence deftly by comparing it to the unstable military border between Greece and Albania. “Have to Explode” follows, featuring the couple lying on a cold tile floor, bonding over their individual self-loathing – “name one thing about us two that anyone could love” is their mutual point of reconciliation, where they both begin a futile attempt to find the good in one another and fix things once and for all.
It all cumulates to the album’s horrifying conclusion: the couple’s appreciation for one another lasts for a moment with the pristine “Old College Try”, where they promise to “walk to the end” with one another despite their obvious tension. The subsequent songs, however, explain why their union is doomed to implode on itself. “Oceanographer’s Choice” is the beginning of the end for the Alpha Couple, with their abuse finally becoming physical and relentless. “Alpha Rats Nest” brings their discourse to a screeching halt, with the narrator concluding that his lone path to salvation is to engulf himself, his partner, and his delipidated home in flames that will rip through them and put them out of their collective misery. The end of Tallahassee is about as grim as it could be, but it is oddly fitting. The couple’s living hell relinquishes only with what seem to be literal flames.
Tallahassee is the piece of work that John Darnielle had so long been capable of producing, but never quite mustered. Stories like “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” or “Fall of the Star High School Running Back” came close to being on the level of Tallahassee in terms of character work, but were never quite as dense. His stories always dabbled in surrealism, but often leaned more heavily on hope than desolation. Tallahassee adds a twinge of venom to Darnielle’s lyricism, and ultimately gives his songwriting the most purpose it ever seemed to have.
Grade: A
