037: The Mountain Goats - Tallahassee (2002)
"The next time I saw him, he brought a CD for me to try out: The Sunset Tree by the Mountain Goats. ... 'Music can do this?' I thought, utterly stunned. I listened to it for days on end."
—Bev Williams, Survival Kit’s Apocalypse
There are plenty of love albums out there and plenty of breakup albums, but apart from Marvin Gaye's fascinating Here, My Dear, how many romantic spite albums can you think of? It's a tough balance to strike, but Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle has created likely the ideal such creature on Tallahassee: a schadenfreude- and gin-sodden indie-rock epitaph for the Alpha Couple, two characters he'd been working with for years and whose relationship only got less healthy with time. Join Will, Dan, Rich, and returning guest Brent Heard, won't you, as we don our emotional headlamps and rotgut-protection boots and investigate the open throat of the Alpha Couple's cellar door?
Miscellany
Here's where you can find all the other (released) songs that have been confirmed to be about the Alpha Couple:
Bitter Melon Farm: “Alpha Desperation March,” “Alpha Double Negative: Going to Catalina,” and “Star Dusting”
Ghana: “Alpha Gelida”
The Hound Chronicles: “Alpha Negative” and “Spilling Toward Alpha”
Nothing for Juice: “Alpha Double Negative: Going to Catalina” (This is a different version from the one that appears on Bitter Melon Farm.)
Protein Source of the Future... Now!: “Alpha Omega” and “Alphabetizing” (Darnielle initially intended 1995's “Alpha Omega” to conclude the Alpha Couple series, but later decided they deserved an album-length demise in Tallahassee.)
See America Right EP: “Design Your Own Container Garden” and “New Chevrolet in Flames”
Taboo VI: The Homecoming: “One Winter at Point Alpha Privative”
Zopilote Machine: “Alpha in Tauris,” “Alpha Incipiens,” and “Alpha Sun Hat”
Martial Arts Weekend, an album by the Extra Glenns, Darnielle's side project with Nothing Painted Blue's Franklin Bruno: “Twelve Hands High”
Will mentioned “No Children” is likely the band's best-known song. The only real competition comes from The Sunset Tree's “This Year,” with its memorable teenage resolution, “I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me.” Stephen Colbert performed this song with the band recently on The Late Show and everyone was clearly having a blast.
Darnielle has somehow found time to write a third book in addition to Wolf in White Van and Universal Harvester, which we discussed on the episode. Prior to those two, he wrote the entry about Black Sabbath's Master of Reality in Bloomsbury's essential 33 1/3 series. Unlike most 33 1/3 books, this is a work of fiction rather than a straight album history or critique. Darnielle formats the book as a series of compulsory journal entries written by a teenage psych ward resident, who decides to spend most of his entries describing and analyzing his favorite Sabbath album. It's an interesting approach to a 33 1/3 book, but as someone who doesn't particularly care for Sabbath, Will didn't get much out of this one.
Here's Scharpling & Wurster's classic comedy album, Rot, Rock & Rule, which is one 47-minute prank aimed at humorless music geeks. Jon Wurster calls Tom Scharpling's WFMU radio show, The Best Show, in the guise of a terrible writer who has released a pop music encyclopedia that he promotes as “the ultimate argument settler.” Every gag in the scene is funny even before infuriated callers phone in to argue with him. To bring it back to the Mountain Goats, Darnielle has said that his favorite Scharpling & Wurster sketch is “The Gorch,” in which Wurster claims to be a sociopathic nogoodnik who was the inspiration for Fonzie from Happy Days. That one's hilarious too, and the one that made me laugh hardest of all is “Tom's Daddy.” You really can't go wrong with Scharpling & Wurster.
The introduction is a reference to I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats, a podcast collaboration between Night Vale Presents, the Mountain Goats, and Merge Records that looks into the creative process that goes into each Mountain Goats album. The first season looked back on their 2002 album All Hail West Texas, and the second season detailed the making of their most recent album, 2018’s In League with Dragons. They have yet to discuss Tallahassee, but if they do so, it will undoubtedly be excellent.
The song “New Chevrolet in Flames” mentioned from the See America Right single (their first ever single, apparently!) is available to stream here, along with other b-side “Design Your Own Container Garden”
Mountain Goats live shows are often bootlegged, and frequently with surprisingly high audio quality. The clip of the live version of “Oceanographer’s Choice” was captured from a show they played at New York’s City Winery on their 2016 Brine Crypt Exodus tour.
To resolve a question from the episode, according to the Mountain Goats wiki entry for the song “Tallahassee,” the song has been played live pretty regularly since the album’s release.
Other links
John Darnielle on Marc Maron's WTF (note: Premium access only)
Pitchfork's 6.7 Tallahassee review (Rob Mitchum)
The Lockhorns and “No Children” (The Comics Curmudgeon)
Discord & Rhyme’s Tallahassee playlist (Spotify)
Discord & Rhyme Roll Call
Chris Willie Williams (host)
Rich Bunnell (moderator)
Dan Watkins
Brent Heard
Mike DeFabio (guest appearance)
Tallahassee tracklist
Tallahassee
First Few Desperate Hours
Southwood Plantation Road
Game Shows Touch Our Lives
The House That Dripped Blood
Idylls of the King
No Children
See America Right
Peacocks
International Small Arms Traffic Blues
Have to Explode
Old College Try
Oceanographer’s Choice
Alpha Rat’s Nest
Other clips used
The Mountain Goats:
Two-Headed Boy
This Year
High Hawk Season
Cubs in Five
The Mess Inside
Oceanographer's Choice (Live)
Transcendental Youth
Others:
Sun City Girls - Space Prophet Dogon
Van Der Graaf Generator - Man-Erg
The Legendary Stardust Cowboy - Paralyzed
Dave Matthews Band - Dancing Nancies
Lee Ann Womack - I Hope You Dance
Cake - Comfort Eagle
The Emotions - Best of My Love
They Might Be Giants - The Biggest One
Julien Baker - No Children/Blacktop
Songs we mentioned but didn’t clip
The Mountain Goats:
Woke Up New
One Winter at Point Alpha Privative
New Chevrolet in Flames
Amy aka Spent Gladiator 1
The Diaz Brothers
Dance Music
Others:
Howlin' Wolf - Smokestack Lightning
Vic Mizzy - Green Acres Theme
Robert Pollard and Doug Gillard - Do Something Real
Howard Ashman and Alan Menken - Under the Sea
Cake - The Distance
Phil Collins - In the Air Tonight
The Moody Blues - Twilight Time
Lorde - Perfect Places
Bruce Springsteen - Jungleland
Captain Beefheart - Wild Life
Band/album personnel
John Darnielle - guitar, vocal, bells, keys, xylophone, harmonica
Peter Hughes - bass, guitar, harmony vocal, drums, keys, shaker
Franklin Bruno - guitar on "See America Right," piano on "Have to Explode" and "No Children"
Michael Ivins - tambourine on "Southwood Plantation Road"
Credits
“Discord & Rhyme (theme),” composed by the Other Leading Brand, contains elements of:
Amon Düül II - Dehypnotized Toothpaste
The Dukes of Stratosphear - What in the World?? ...
Faith No More - Midlife Crisis
Herbie Hancock - Hornets
Kraftwerk - Autobahn
Talking Heads - Seen and Not Seen
The Mountain Goats - The House That Dripped Blood (this episode only)
You can buy or stream Tallahassee and other albums by the Mountain Goats at Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Amazon [affiliate link], and any number of other retailers. Follow Discord & Rhyme on Twitter @DiscordPod for news, updates, and other music stuff that strikes our fancy, often related to the Moody Blues. Editing is by Rich Bunnell, and special thanks to Mike DeFabio for production and original music. See you next album, and be ever wonderful.