The Mountain Goats – Getting Into Knives
Merge Records – 23 October 2020
It’s been a long, strange trip for John Darnielle and The Mountain Goats, but here we are almost thirty years on and some 800 songs later, celebrating the release of Getting Into Knives. What started out as just one man and a boombox has transformed into a far more exotic four-piece aggregation. Drummer Jon Wurster, along with multi-instrumentalists Matt Douglas and Peter Hughes, form a lineup that can cover a wide range of territory. Getting Into Knives attests to that.
The second long-player they’ve released this year, it’s a far cry from this spring’s Songs for Pierre Chuvin. Instead of lo-fi, this is a glorious, wide-scale, sonic reverie. Recorded over the course of a week in Memphis at the legendary Sam Phillips Recording facility, Al Green’s organist Charles Hodges is among the guests sitting in. The results illustrate how a band can be inspired by a setting to release a work of incredible depth.
The insistent bass and marching drums of Tidal Wave merge with an almost Woody Woodpecker-ish sounding clarinet, while Hodges adds extra texture with his organ. Against that, Darnielle’s lyrics offer a look at how things are not always what they seem, “It’s not the mutiny that gets written down in the diary/ It’s the manifest/ Forgotten cargo in obsolete measurements.” Sometimes you have to read between the lines, which he pays off with the chorus, “Not every wave is a tidal wave.”
Darnielle’s also not afraid to take on various characters, like the once-married woman driving through New Mexico on Picture of My Dress. The insistent beat and strummed guitar blends with the electric piano as the story unravels. “It still looks good, I only wore it once/ Nine years ago, nine years and seven months/ It may be a long while before the highway decides to finally set me free.” Becoming a metaphor for so much the woman has lost, all that’s left are pictures of the dress. A country version of this song would be a hit for Dolly Parton.
Like most people, when you reach a certain age you start having visions of those who are no longer around. Amidst a mournful piano, The Last Place I Saw You Alive lays out the sense of melancholy that can turn into something more painful before you even realize it has happened. “It’s only now and then you come to mind/ There’s a trillion things you left behind/ It’s just the way the math works out/ Nothing really to get worked up about/ But then I pass the last place I saw you alive.” It’s the kind of song that has a chill running down your back.
Delivering visions of a world that isn’t always what it seems to be (or what it’s supposed to be) The Mountain Goats have once again taken us on a tour of the highways and byways we may not necessarily want to revisit. Yet, Getting Into Knives reminds us that sometimes we have to look at those things to really understand who we are and perhaps chart a more coherent path.
Getting Into Knives is out now on Merge Records