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The Mountain Goats: Get Lonely
4AD, 2006
Rating: 4.0
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Posted:
August 19,
2006
By
Laurence Station
On Get Lonely, John Darnielle is confident enough in his
songwriting abilities that he doesn’t have to trot out literary or cultural
references to add additional heft to his intimately couched insights into
the human condition. Unlike last year’s
The Sunset Tree,
which dealt with Darnielle’s conflicted feelings regarding his recently
deceased stepfather, Get Lonely doesn’t need forced references to
Raskolnikov or Kurt Cobain to be effective. Though not as musically forceful
or possessing as many memorable hooks as Sunset Tree, Get Lonely
rates high in the Mountain Goats catalog primarily for its disciplined
focus, a peculiarly masochistic celebration of heartbreak that downplays
showy arrangements in favor of hushed, haunted lyrical sketches.
Opening with “Wild Sage” and closing with the floral anatomy-referencing “In
Corolla,” Get Lonely is as tightly constructed a song cycle as the
structurally conscious Darnielle has yet created. Throughout, the central
character wanders streets, lies in abandoned lots, has nightmares and
aimlessly rides buses. There’s a twilit, zombified drift to this acutely
examined life, wherein the main character’s lover has left their house and,
in a sense, left a gaping hole in the heartbroken protagonist’s existence.
“Half Dead” is ostensibly about cleaning house while it rains outside, but
focuses its gaze on a box of tossed-out stuff and features a nicely
repetitive guitar refrain, like a nagging memory of better times that won’t
go away. The title track explores the classic lonely-in-a-crowd scenario as
the main character gets dressed up and tries to blend in, but can’t overcome
a crushing sense of isolation and abandonment. The string-laden “Moon Over
Goldsboro” mentions spending the entire night “in the company of ghosts.”
The strongest element to Get Lonely -- and one regrettably left
under-explored -- is the social pressure felt by someone no longer attached,
an outcast in a suburban environment of block parties, children and lots of
gossip. Who wants to be the only single person in such a setting? Two songs
-- “New Monster Avenue,” in which the apocalyptic observation “Sometimes
before the sun comes up / The earth is going to crack” is nicely reinforced
by the more immediate reality of “All the neighbors come out to their front
porches, waving torches,” and “If You See Light,” in which villagers come to
the only-lonely’s door, threatening to break it down -- nicely encapsulate
the feeling of being the oddball in a prescribed societal order, like some
emotionally crippled Frankenstein’s monster fearfully “waiting for the front
door to splinter.”
Plaintive guitar, emotive piano keys and aching strings effectively back
Darnielle’s thematic conceits. “Song for Lonely Giants” is the lone dud, a
too-abstract detour lacking the wonderfully incisive and concrete details of
the surrounding tracks.
Isolated misstep aside, Get Lonely reveals an artist in full command
of his craft, bringing a keen-eyed sensibility to those awkward and painful
aspects of a breakup, but also noting, as on “Woke Up New,” the
near-ecstatic sense of possibilities such a sea change creates. For some,
every day brings the hope of a second chance, a Mulligan in the game of life
and love.
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