Rene: Hey, welcome to earshifter. He's Sean Capstick. He's Rene Rouleau. And, Sean why are we here, Renee, we are here, Sean, to enlighten people on bands that maybe were overlooked and maybe didn't get a lot of radio play, and maybe I. You might like this band too that we're introducing today, or you might actually already know this band and go, man, I wish I knew more about this band.

Well, guess what? You're gonna learn everything you need to know about that band with our podcast. Can we talk about bands that just 

Sean: make us happy? Is that a good category for a ear shifter? I believe that would be an excellent category for a ear shifter 'cause I want to talk about the mountain goats because the mountain goats make me happy.

Rene: And Sean, let's be honest, I know the mountain goats make you very, very happy. 

Sean: Yes, and you're my good friend to allow me to speak about the mountain goats on this episode. 

Rene: Exactly, because honestly, the first time I ever, now there is debate fans whether I introduced this band to Sean. But I do really, really remember hearing this band for the first time and saying.

This isn't my jam fully, but man, this band feels like it was made for Sean Kasick. So, uh, so I literally, literally reached out to Sean and said, Sean, I think you're gonna love this band. And that's the way I remember it, Sean, but maybe, maybe it's not, and that's the way it should be, but 

Sean: it wasn't right away.

What 

Rene: do you mean? 

Sean: I, let me tell you about the band and, and maybe how I, how they came to make me happy. Okay. All right, let's go. So, what can I say about the mountain goats? Right. So they've evolved from a lo-fi cassette recording to a full band making studio albums with some significant instrumentation and chops.

They've been around since the early nineties. They released, you know, innumerable tapes. 22 studio albums, 18 solo eps six collaborative eps, four compilation albums, three live albums, 10 demo albums, and at least 24 single sales. That's 

Rene: absolutely insane. I had no idea like when that is nuts. 22 studio albums.

Is that what you said? 22 studio albums. Holy crap. Okay. 

Sean: And there has not been a lot of consistency in the band. Other than John Darnell, the lead singer. The lead singer, okay. And songwriter. Okay. So back in the day they were duo he was playing with a person called [00:03:00] Rachel Ware who played bass and vocals.

And she was in a band called the Bright Mountain Choir, who was a group of female reg reggae singers. And they were all on the bands. They're credited to be on the band, the early albums, but they're not, they're not doing a lot of backup. It's pretty sparse. Okay. Okay. You know, they, they're, he, he's got a backup band that doesn't play every single song, but they're there.

Okay. They're there. Okay. Then he was joined by a guy named Peter Hughes who joined in, in 95, you know, and he just recently retired for the band. So yeah, there was a, a heartfelt goodbye and it was, he left for, 'cause he couldn't do it anymore. And so, you know, no animosity, it was just, I can't be in a touring band.

And they tour all the time. That's, whoa. They are a, uh, if you were in the states you know, you could probably see them once or twice a year. Oh, question. 

Rene: Have you seen them? Yes, I have. Once, twice. Twice. Okay. 

Sean: And they're 

Rene: [00:04:00] amazing. Where'd they play in Toronto? 

Sean: At the Phoenix. Okay. Okay. The sold out show Phoenix.

Yeah. Nice. So that's perfect. Um, you know, what is that like? That's 1200 people. I think it's around 1200. Yeah. Yeah. It's really nice. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, so that's, and, and he does that over and over again across the country plays solo. He'll play as a duo and then he'll play with his full band.

Hmm. So Annie Clark. St. Vincent. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Was on his, uh, 2008 album, heretic Pride. Okay. Now the band, the three piece that they are now, John Worcester. Who happened to be a band called Super Chunk. Oh my God. 

intro: Wow. He plays 

Sean: drums. He plays drums for Bob Mold. Wow. He's also on the radio with a guy named Tom Sharping, who's a comedian.

Hmm. Uh, voted a really funny guy. Okay. And he just happens to also run Merge Records their current, uh, album. So the, sorry, [00:05:00] who does Who, 

Rene: who runs Merge Records, 

Sean: John. Wooster. Okay. Wow. That's, that's major. So yeah, he's pretty connected. He's, he's the drummer. Yeah. And then there's this flute, saxophone, clarinet, guitar, keyboardist backing, vocal, multi-instrumentalist jazz musician who just does all fills in all of the other little.

Bits on the band, and he's been there for a decade. 

Rene: And does he tour with him? Do we know? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. 

Sean: Yeah, that's Matt Douglas. 

Rene: Okay. 

Sean: Okay. So, you know, the recordings like over this, you know, what is it like 25 year period? You know, since the, the nineties the music's evolved from John Darnell.

Singing, strumming yelling into a Panasonic boombox and recording a cassette. Dubbing the cassette. Then that was the mountain goats. Hmm. Two Polish studio albums that were released on four 80 [00:06:00] records. They were on four a re four 80 records. Before they were on merge and if, you know, four a d records, that's, you know, like they didn't seem outta place.

It was very well polished and produced. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Which is a big change from where they were. Yeah. And you know, the one constant is John. But you know, he's a bit of a conundrum, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, okay? When you get to, you know, when you, you learn a little bit more. So let me tell you about him.

Yeah. So he was born in, uh, 67 in Bloomington, Indiana. And he grew up in California where he experienced, uh, terrible childhood. We'll talk about that later. Okay. He liked music in the eighties, best decade ever. And, uh, he was like us goth adjacent. So we'll talk about that later as well. True.

And, you know, he had a interesting period in his life and he ended up going to a small liberal arts [00:07:00] college called Pilzer College from 91 to 95 where he graduated with a double major in classics In English? 

Rene: Yeah. All right. Sounds familiar. 

Sean: He then became a psychiatric hospital nurse.

Whoa. Okay. Uh, I think the story goes, he was. He got some cash after working. He picked up a guitar and then that's how the mountain goats were born. Hmm, interesting. So he's musical when he was younger, but that was how the band, uh, uh, was born in a psychiatric hospital. 

Rene: Yeah. And also probably got a lot of interesting insights and, and stories from working there.

Right? 

Sean: Yep. And he's got some tortured characters in his songs. He describes himself as a theist. Okay, so who prays to Jesus? Okay. So that means he holds a belief in God and engages in prayer, but he expresses some hesitation. Okay. So I think theist is a pretty good word. [00:08:00] Yeah. And he released an album, the Life of the World, uh, to come in 2009.

So this would be four ad time. And every song was a reference to a passage in the Bible. Wow. 

Rene: Okay. This is the, we're, this is the second artist that is kind of a devout Jesus believer, for lack of a better term. Jim Carroll. Yeah. As well. What's going on? Sean, you want to, something you wanna talk about or, 

Sean: well, I don't know about Jim Carroll, but John Darnell has.

Profess a love for Amy Grant. So it's not just the Bible, it's Amy Grant. Yeah. The, the contemporary Christian singer who's Okay. Uh, whitest Snow. I can't remember. I, I think I 

Rene: know an Amy Grant's song, but I can't remember. 

Sean: Big contemporary Christian. Okay. The artist. Yeah. Okay. 

Rene: Okay. 

Sean: John actually has tracked on, I think, contemporary Christian radio with some of his songs.

Hmm. [00:09:00] But his favorite genre is Metal and Death Metal in particular, his first novel. He's also a, a, a, like Jim Carroll Lee is also a novelist. So his first novela was about Black Sabbath and he wrote for Decibel Magazine which is like a Headbanger magazine. And he was a regular column called South Pole Dispatch, where he reviewed concerts and he also ran uh, web zine.

Like, remember, we z? Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's still online called Last Plane to Jakarta, where he focused on underground music. 

Rene: Oh, but not death metal or metal specifically? Just, just underground obscure. 

Sean: Okay. Okay. He wrote books. So I didn't read his first book in 2014. This is about a man who suffered a life altering injury as a teenager, and now runs a male based role playing game.

He loves anachronistic stuff called Trace Italian, and the story unfolds in [00:10:00] reverse, gradually revealing the circumstances that I haven't read. I did read his, his second book called Universal Harvester. That was 2017, so this is in the nineties. With a video store clerk, a young man who is trying to figure out dating and is in a video store and he keeps getting these tapes that aren't rewound and he's watching the tapes and there's splices of really disturbing stuff in the middle of these videos.

Okay. And he engages like. A group of people who also come in and say that that VHS tape's best up, and so he searches for. The person that's been splicing these things into the VHS tape, that's a pretty good plot line. I like that. Like it's disturbing these images, but then it becomes kind of quaint. I think I enjoyed that book a lot.

I think you can, if you know, you can read it and [00:11:00] make you happy as well. And that his last book in 20. 22 is a true crime novel. Okay. It's, uh, it, the a the narrator is a true crime writer who is known for writing these books, and he talks about his research methodology and he gets the rights to cover a ne notorious teenage murder case from the eighties.

And so the it set probably in the, you know, in the, 2010s. Right. You know, like a, you know, a a a generation after the, the, this murder. And it is, it switches fonts. It switches Whoa. In the book. In the book. Whoa. And the, that's pretty cool. Guy really questions his, you know, should he even be writing about true crime?

What Right does he have to write about these disturbed people? Hmm. And. John Daniel shows up as a cameo in his own book. [00:12:00] That's awesome. The narrator beats him for lunch. It doesn't say, but it's pretty clear that it's like, okay, it's a traveling musician that he's meeting for lunch, that's talking about this true crime book.

So he's also got like these songs. He's got like, you know, like thousands of songs over all of these albums. And so he is got some reoccurring themes. So there's the alpha couple. So they're an unhappily married couple on the edge of divorce, and he writes about them a lot. And he writes up to 2002 album.

The first album on, on four 80 is dedicated completely to the alpha couple. So they're, they are over the top. There's going to songs. So the first albums, there was a lot of songs about going to. Someplace. Okay. And it's about being in motion and the idea that someplace is better than you are right now, which isn't true.

And so it's a interesting song. [00:13:00] Device to express frustration about people not trying to make the best of what they are right now. Right. He has a whole bunch of songs with the same title and a different number. What? Yeah. So they ha he has standard bitter love song number three and four and five on the same album or over a series of albums.

Oh, I like that more. I like that more. That's cool. And cassettes. Okay. That's early stuff. That's, and they are bitter and they're, they're simple. And then he has a whole bunch of, of, uh, he released a whole bunch of songs called Songs four. You know, songs for somebody who is okay. And then he talks about that person.

Okay. Okay. And he does speak about people in the narrative. He uses real life people in songs that are fictional and then he uses real life people and fictional characters that you think are autobiography. Okay. And I think that's, you know, probably what makes him such an interesting storyteller. You know, he's a [00:14:00] musician.

His songs are. You know, have evolved, but it, he tells a story. His songs are very narrative driven, and the narrative is what keeps it going. So where does the story begin? Right? So I, you know, I'd heard you, I think, you know, like, again, it's, it's a good thing about being friends so long you, you could make up stories yourself.

Of course you did that and I don't really remember. But I do, I do remember your pleasure at, when I was like, you've gotta listen to this song. And it was futile because you were like, no, I, my, my mind's made up. I'm biased already, and, and I gotta say I am. You know, there are some bands out there for the mountain goats, like Capital F fans.

There is a Wikipedia that describes every song when it's ever been played. Like an auto Wikipedia, like a Wiki, a fan base Wiki. Yeah, I understand. Every song ever played what he talks about things mentioned in the songs, like it is a [00:15:00] treasure trove. If you wanna wonder the difference between standard Bitter song six and seven.

So I am really you know, there's a podcast called, I Only Listen to The Mountain Goats. There were two seasons, you know, dozen episodes that talked about two of his albums. Two great albums. They sat down and he talked about a song. One of them, they talk about a song and then they had a one of the bands that had been influenced by the mountain goats.

Do a cover of the song. Huh. So again, I would recommend that another great way of, of getting to know the mountain goats. 

Rene: So you're recommending that our listeners listen to another podcast. That's what you're doing. 

Sean: The only those two episodes and then don't get sucked into the whole night fail. Uh, did you listen to them all?

Yeah, they're amazing. They're, they're that, that's, uh, other than. Ear shifter. That's the only other podcast I listen to. And Smartless. Little bit of Smartless. Yeah, 

intro: yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Rene: Maybe a few others. Yeah. [00:16:00] Yeah. There are quite a few podcasts out there. 

Sean: It's, it's amazing. Yeah. Not as good as ours. I don't wanna make them feel bad.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. So. I think all of that change pissed people off. But, you know, I'm lucky that I found the mountain goats. You introduced them to me and a decade ago they came out with an album. It called Beat the Champ. Let's hear the best song off that album. 

clip: He was my hero back when I was a kid.

You let down, but never once did you call him names to try to get beneath my skin. Now your ashes are scattered off the wind. I 

Speaker 5: heard he went nationwide, coast to coast with his dad by his side. I dunno if that's true. But I've been told it's real sweet to grow.[00:17:00] 

Rene: Okay, so that first song, look, it's fun, but it just, it just doesn't grab me. And like, how do you. We can get into the whole thing about music and why things don't grab you and why things do, and that one, it's fun. I don't dislike it. Like I just don't, I would never play it on my own, ever. And it doesn't.

Ha in terms of feels, it doesn't give me the feels and it doesn't really stand out for me as something unique. See, it does gimme the feels 

Sean: and he's like, Chavo, guerrera coming off the top rope. Like, I didn't watch wrestling when I was a kid. I, you know, like that I don't really know how to, to. You know, think about wrestling the album's entirely about wrestling.

That's awesome. That is awesome. Every song is about, [00:18:00] so, and it's a great album. Or maybe it's about growing old in life and, you know, using wrestling as an allegory. But the whole idea of him being happy about a wrestler makes me happy. Yeah. 

Rene: Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. I'm, I'm, I get it. I just don't, I'm not in it.

Sean: Okay, so then let's go to Goss. So this is the next album, and this is what, when you really were full on about the mountain goats being made for me. So let's hear the next one. Andrew Aldrich is moving back to leads. Alright, let's listen to it 

Speaker 7: from the agent. Everything's been taken care of. No big changes in the roadways since you left.

That buildings gone to dust and some new ones in, they'll look just. The old ones when the winds [00:19:00] have had their, see the children bound from London, you'll all be back too. Everybody the membrane, but no one pushes.

Come on boys, that

you think.

A basket Nile down among the

is moving to. 

Rene: Okay. So that song, okay. What I like about it is that I don't know who Andrew Aldrich is. Maybe you'll tell me. Yes, you do. I do. Okay. Alright. All right. All right. But I'll say this. That, you know, the title is [00:20:00] Andrew Aldrich is moving back to Leads and it feels like a fellow named Andrew Aldrich is moving back to leads.

Like it's got a nice pep to it, almost like a Diddy. And uh, so I love that he's done that with it. He's like, I'm going full in, full on with his feel. So you may 

Sean: know Andrew Aldrich from The Sisters of Mercy. Oh, I didn't know he was one of the members of Sisters of Mercy. Well, they're, they're from leads.

Yeah. Fair. Fair. And so that song's about, you know, Andrew Aldrich, who, dear listeners, the Sisters of Mercy, were an influential goth band. I think I liked the More Than You, but we both liked 

Rene: the Temple of Love. Hundred percent. Love a hundred percent. Absolutely did. Yeah. Yeah. Solid band. So, and 

Sean: became. So full of themselves.

So his band left him and became [00:21:00] necrophiliac in Brazil. What? Really? Yeah. I dunno. That was just a rumor. And then he went on and he played with the guys from Siege se Sputnik and uh, but released two great albums, um, as Sisters of Mercy. As Sisters Mercy. Yeah. And that, those whole bunch of dance singles that were just so much fun.

Rene: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. 

Sean: Yeah. And he was, he's only about this tall, he's like super small and he had really long hair and uh, wore aviator glasses. And 

Rene: Sean was holding up his hand about four feet, about four feet tall, is what it 

Sean: looked like. Yeah. I, I don't want to meet you Andrew. So, yeah, four feet. I did meet Andrew at a show and you know, he was wearing his aviators and, uh, he was rude to some woman and a guy took some umbrage and said.

That's not very nice, Mr. Aldrich. And he just started freaking out at this guy and stood behind the bouncer, like don't, you know, hold me back, bouncer. I'm gonna kill this guy. And the guy just looked at him and laughed and laughed and everybody was, he was, I think [00:22:00] he was trying to sign autographs and be cool, and everybody was like, you're not that cool at all.

So he was a fan. What was the, do you remember the concert? What was it? That was on flood land tour in okay. Uh, with Sputnik. Okay. And that was the, uh, that was great. Like it was a good show. Yeah. Nice, nice. So that album has all the characters from that scene, right? Do you remember the bat cave?

The band? No, the place, the bat cave. Oh yeah, totally. Yes. So he sings, the first song is about the bat cave. No one knows where the bat cave closed. And it's all these little things about that, you know, if you were in the eighties and goth adjacent or goth. You know, you knew what the bath cave was, right?

Right. And that is actually set to he rips the flood land theme off. And it's, it's beautiful. I knew we could play that too, but let's keep going. [00:23:00] Alright. There's a song called Rage of Travers, so do you remember Pat Travers? No, I don't. Okay. He was, you, you, you were alive in the eighties, and he's a Ontario guitar hero Whose song was snorting?

Snorting whiskey, drinking cocaine. Okay. You know, was a rock icon. Had what kind of rock? Like, like, like blues rock, and then had a crossover. You lost me on blues rock. You would've heard it because it was everywhere. Fair enough. Enough, fair enough, fair enough. It was everywhere. It was like a, you know, if, if, if you were listening to the Mighty Q or Chum FM because you were trapped in an elevator, I don't think they played in c.

You would've heard it. Okay, so he's got on Goss, he's got this album called Rage of Travers. It was about Pat Traver who wanted to jam. This is a true story. Supposedly he wanted to jam with Bauhaus after they played a show in California and he had played a show in [00:24:00] California and he showed up with his guitar and said, Hey, let's jam.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. Now, I'm sure Baja said absolutely not. He was not let in, but I think that's why Peter Murphy left. I think it was uh, who is Kevin Ash? Was that the guitarist? Daniel Ash. Daniel Ash, yeah. Insecurities. He couldn't keep up with a guy from Ontario. He named checks KROQ.

Okay. The la modern Rock station, the equivalent of CFNY. Oh, okay. Back in the day in la. KROQ nonstop K rock. It was great. Trent Resner as someone who is not a real goth or a real goth, would not wanna play with. Robert Smith, Susie Sue, Richard Blade, Billy Corrigan. And in the last song on the album with lyrics, gene loves Jezebel.

Rene: Whoa. Gene loves Jezebel. Nice. How good were they? I act well, I'm not sure. Are you being a [00:25:00] facetious? 

Sean: No, I loved that. They were awful, but like that, that, that. 

Rene: For 

Sean: an emotive dance 

Rene: song, it was great. Well, they had one really creepy, creepy song about a rape in a park. Do you remember that one? It was like, I don't listen to the lyrics that much.

I was just dancing to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it was not a dance song. It was really creepy. But really well done. It was like seven minutes long or something. It was just this tale, a storytelling of this couple walking through this park and, oh, it's creepy. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I just do their dance stuff. 

Sean: Hide love.

Hide love by the water. Oh, it's good. He talks what it's like to grow up. He talks about like a aging goth who's keeps his bobs and his boots and his black leather in a closet. And it talks about how he loved playing music and he, now he's paying down the mortgage, but he used to get paid in cocaine.

Okay. 

Rene: Okay. 

Sean: And you know, it's a great album. Do we, did you listen to the ambient tracks at the end of it? [00:26:00] Which album? The Goss. So on the deluxe version, there's four ambient tracks and Mr. Ambien over there. 

Rene: No, I did not. I couldn't, I couldn't. I couldn't finish it. 

Sean: They're the ambient tracks that I remembered on late night college radio stations playing.

They're just like, you know, simple. Just so it's like perfect. So do you love it? I love those. Hell and like, there you go. I think they're great ambient tracks. No lyrics. No lyrics. Okay. And not loud, soft guitar explosions. Yeah. So I. If you've ever won black in the summer for multiple days, then this could be a good introduction to the mountain goats for you.

So then he went on to a album that wasn't about Dungeons Dragons, but you know, had a lot of role playing. Mythical songs on it. A song about Ozzy Osborne, about him playing in a place called Passaic, [00:27:00] New Jersey. And again, another true story Ozzy comes out in his kimono and he is so high he can't read the teleprompters that they have put out for him to sing.

So this is a song about that. But the B side is. Takes it over the top in terms of being made for me. So let's hear, get high and listen to the cure. Ah, let's hear that one. 

Speaker 7: The whole of pornography, especially side two.

clip: I want

I

and listen all night. I want to get high. I, I wanna get high.

I wanna get high[00:28:00] 

Speaker 8: and listen to the cure all night. A forest secrets hold the figurehead primary, Charlotte sometimes.

Let's go.

clip: I wanna get high.

I wanna get high.

I wanna high.

Rene: Okay. So I like the cure. Did I like that song? Eh, [00:29:00] not that much 

Sean: actually, 

Rene: I 

Sean: don't think. I think that's the point. That's why it's a B side. It didn't make it onto Goss. Oh, okay. Okay. But it makes me happy. The lyrics, if you didn't pick up, I heard Let's Go To Bed are only songs by the Cure. Yeah. So the entire song is names of songs that somehow to go together.

Yeah. 

Rene: Yeah. I appreciate that. Except the title of the song. Yeah. I don't want to get high. Yeah. Yeah. But I wanna listen to the Cure. Yeah. Yeah. So I did appreciate that. Uh, I did hear that. But yeah, just, yeah, I, the rest of it was just like, okay, it's cute, it's cute. That's where I'll go. It makes me happy. I listen.

That's, that's what music should do. That's all that music has to do, and we don't always agree. 

Sean: Okay, but for all, there's happyness for all of that joy. [00:30:00] Then he releases an album like Get Lowly 

Rene: now. Listeners. So Sean tells me we're gonna do mountain goats. I'm like, okay, that's, that's cool. They're not really my jam.

But Sean, to his credit said, okay, try. I know you Renee, try this album. So the album he told me to try was Get Lonely and sure enough. I actually listened to it, I think four or five times the entire thing, and I was kind of liking it. In fact, I actually, uh, there, I actually made note of the fact that wild Sage, kind of felt like it was about an unstable, eventually homeless person. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what it felt like. Mm-hmm. And I actually read the lyrics and I was like, wow, this is really heavy and, and beautiful. The song is beautiful. If you see light. It's not very sad in feels, but, but in terms of the album overall, it was a pretty sad album.

But what you said to me was, you [00:31:00] said saddest album ever. Do you wanna stand by that? So, yes. So what makes a sad album to you? Well, again, it's the feels and, and also like, like things like Software Slump, which is clearly we've got an alcoholic robot. We've got, we've got some sadness going on there. And the feeling of the album too is just overall.

Overall sad exception of Crystal Lake maybe, but, but overall, it has a sad vibe to it. My favorite, sad album of all time is Tom York's the Eraser. Which is, which did you listen to it by the way? I listen to it by way. Were you surprised that that was, uh, a sad album for me? 

Sean: I didn't get it. I mean, eraser head's good, but like it's, it wasn't like it had a feel of a sad, but the, like, the song structures, I couldn't tell what he was talking about.

I could, you know, it was, it was hard. Like he's kind of repeating the same thing, you know, so I didn't get a feel. Of why he was so sad. Yeah. Yeah. But it is kind of sad. Yeah. And yeah, like I, I, [00:32:00] I did listen to it. Yeah. It kind of reinforced how I feel. And we can agree to say it. We can on about radioed. Yes.

Rene: Okay. But this album is my, I can confidently say this without listening to the other 21 albums that this is my favorite Mount Goats album. You've got a whole bunch of others. That's the 

Sean: the best thing. So why do I find this album so sad? 'cause it's a breakup album, right? So of all the great breakup albums, you know, Lou Reed, Berlin, Nick Cave and the Pat Seeds, the Boatman's call, first and Last, and always by uh, the Sisters of Mercy.

That's a great breakup album. Left and Leaving by the weekend ends. You know, all of the cure albums between 17 second Faith and pornography, but especially pornography, you know, they're breakup albums, right? Like the singer, the narrator is angry. He is [00:33:00] blaming his partner for something, you know, he describes how he's the victim, you know, 'cause they're all guys.

This album holds no blame, right? It reveals no motives. It doesn't develop the characters the narrator's character. It could be a guy and a guy or a girl, right? Yeah. It, it's, you know, the narration is you know, it doesn't depend on the point of view of the sex. It is a breakup album, but the, the breakup isn't described.

It's when you turned your back on me. That's how the breakup is described, but it's the sadness of the narrator. He just simply catalogs a situation. He becomes a monster. He sleeps with ghosts. He fears his neighbors are going to get him. In the end, that's the, if you see light is about the neighbors coming to get him finally.

Right? And in the end you know, he says, when I [00:34:00] turned my back on you. Now I've had this debate I think it's suicidal, uh, when he turns his back on you. Right. That it isn't a turning point, but maybe an optimist listening to the album would think that that is, you know, he just goes into the Atlantic Ocean for a swim and everything's fine, you know, baptized or it's sad.

Sad. Yeah. Yeah. It's sad, right? So, yeah, I think, but I can listen to it once it's cathartic and then I don't have to listen to it on repeat. 

Rene: Okay. I'm glad 

Sean: you got out of it just after five times. 

Rene: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I, I could comfortably it's, it's the eraser that, uh, is lethal for me. Yeah. No, that, that album was a nice little surprise.

It really was. 

Sean: Okay, so let's listen to his self-assessment or the narrator there. Again, I'm being sexist. The narrator's self-assessment of the situation they're in. Okay, the title track. Get Lonely. Get Lonely, let's hear it.[00:35:00] 

Speaker 7: I will rise up early

and dress myself nice,

and I will leave the house.

clip: And check the deadlock twice,

and I will find a crowd

and blend in for a minute[00:36:00] 

and I will try to find.

A little comfort in it,

Rene: and I'll get lonely. Okay, so look, I love that song. It's beautiful and, and the way he sings it too. Is just very purposeful and, you know, he gets really quiet at some points and, and then builds after that. And it's lovely. It's a lovely song 

Sean: and this is one of his non autobiography albums completely made up.

After this album, he said, I'm not gonna write about breakups anymore. He's happily married. He's got two kids. He lives in uh, North Carolina Chapel Hill, where Merge Records is like, he's, you know, he's a pretty well adjusted, uh, man of a certain age, but Lovely. That was yeah, he. [00:37:00] Went full on describing a feeling.

Rene: Yeah. Well I'm glad to hear that too 'cause it was getting a little dark there this episode with his pass and just his giness and all that stuff. So it's nice to hear that he kinda leveled out. Yeah. 

Sean: But then he is got auto autobiography albums, you know, there's his number one hit off the sunset tree is about his tough.

Upbringing. He had a stepfather, an alcoholic, abusive stepfather who you know was really, you know, rough to live with. And that sunset tree is about that relationship and you know. It's universal, what he's made that album to be. People can, you know, I, you know, I, I like the song I, I'm not gonna play it, but you know, the, the, the this year is about, you know, being drunk and in an adolescent haze and then going back home.[00:38:00] 

And I, you and I knew that we would be welcomed back home and you know, everything was good and he was not. 

Rene: Yeah, but you know, this year has 44 million listens. Right. So when I looked at Spotify all, first of all, the mountain goats have 600,000 monthly listeners. When you put that in perspective, the joy formidable have, I think 200,000.

So they got some hardcore fans. But this, there's two songs, Sean, that were at the top of the Mountain goats Spotify playlist, and one of them had 70 million listens. No children, it's called. And the other one was this year, which is the one you're talking about right now. I think, uh, has 44 million.

So first of all, the drop off from 70 million to 44 million. And then after that 40 film, I think it drops down to like 2 million is the next highest. And we don't, we, we have talked about this already, but we don't know why those two songs. I thought it was a movie soundtrack or something, but nothing, [00:39:00] I couldn't, I could find nothing.

Sean: They're fan favorites. He plays them 

Rene: live. I don't know. They're good songs. Why do we hear no children? Why don't we hear no children? 'cause that's actually my favorite of the two for sure. And, and for you though, before we do that, they're not in your top songs. Those two songs are not your favorite songs.

They're not my favorites. No. Yeah. You know, like, I think I, I like them. 

Sean: Yeah. You know, like I, I think, i, I can sing along 

Rene: to them, but they're not my favorite. Okay. Well, if you were to put together a mountain goat's besties playlist of your favorite songs, would they make it Sure. Depends how long the 

Sean: The, the thing would be.

But again, he's got a thousand songs. Yeah. So. You know, are they in the top 100? Yes. Okay. Okay. Alright. You know, 10%. Yeah. 20% for sure. Yeah. You know, they, they're fun. I've seen him, like he's played I think both of them, each time I've, I've seen him, but yeah, I'd put any song off Goss before that. 

Rene: Yeah. 

Sean: Yeah.

Okay. Well let's give 

Rene: a listen. [00:40:00] 

Speaker 7: I hope I cut myself shaving tomorrow. I hope it bleeds all day long. Our friends say it's darkest before the sun rises. We are pretty sure they're all wrong. I hope it stays dark forever. I hope the worst isn't over, and I hope you blink before I do. I hope I never get sober, and I hope when you think of me years down the line, you can't find one good thing to say.

And I'd hope that if I found the strength to walk out, you'd stay the hell outta my way. I'm drowning. There is no sign of land. You are coming down with me hand in unlovable hand, and I hope you die. I hope.

Rene: Okay. So I like this song. This song's fun. I mean, I know it's depressing, but it's got a nice, fun sort of, it carries [00:41:00] along lyrically, I actually did look at the lyrics. It is super depressing, but, uh, but I like the song overall. And the other thing I wanted to say, and I I, I meant to say this earlier, is I was trying to figure out, you know, what, what doesn't grab me about the mountain goats?

And, and at first I thought it was his voice and his cadence. But then his voice, actually, Sean reminds me of the emus column. Moy, in some ways. Yeah. And reminds me a little bit of the Nutri Hotel uh, Magnum, right? Jeff Magnum. And I love those, those bands. So it's not that and it's cadence is so interesting to me, Sean, because.

It. It's done in such a way that it makes you pay attention to his lyrics, and I think that's quite clever as well, but I just can't pinpoint why I don't love them as much as you do. But on that note, do you have a favorite Mountain Goat song? No question. Really, no question. Is it called? No question. No.[00:42:00] 

It's called Jenny. Jenny. Okay. Tell me why. Or do you want to hear it first? 

Sean: Well, Jenny is a reoccurring character in the this is not why it's favorite, but tell me why it's named Jenny. Jenny is an idea, an emotion, a regret in terms of the way he has described in the way I hear him talk about the narrator, talk about Jenny in this series of songs that she shows up in.

My favorite one's the first time she, we get introduced to Jenny. This is off an album called All Hail West Texas. So this is back 2002. This is his last classic boombox song. This is the original version. You could hear the tape, the, like, the, because it was making noise as he was recording on the tape.

You know, made. 10 or 20 cuts and picked the, the one that he liked and that went on the album. It's been remastered this, uh, that sonically a [00:43:00] little bit better, but you know, of the time. Great. You know, if you want to hear, you know, that genre of uh, mountain goats all hell, west Texas is a really good one.

But to me this song's a fantasy. This song is just. It describes a feeling, so why don't we hear it? Okay. Let's 

Rene: give 

Sean: a lesson

Speaker 7: you into the driveway of our Southwestern Ranch style house on a new Kawasaki. All yellow and black, fresh out of the showroom.

Our house faced west. So the big orange [00:44:00] sun positioned at your back lit up your magnificent silhouette. How much better? How much better could my life get? 900 cubic centimeters of raw whining power? No outstanding warrants for my arrest. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The Pirate's life for me. 

Rene: Okay, Sean. So I listened to the song.

I looked at the lyrics and I went, oh my God. Of course he loves this song. It's all about motorcycles. Yeah, 

Sean: but it's a fantasy song. Everybody knows Kawasaki's are green and black, not yellow and black as he speaks in the lyrics, right? Everybody knows that. It's a complete fantasy. Right. You know, I would like to try a Pirate's life for short period of time.

Right. The song ends. We were the only thing in the universe [00:45:00] God didn't have his eyes on. I love 

Rene: that line. Actually. I really love that line. Who Galaxy? It was Galaxy actually. 'cause I thought, oh, not the universe, just the galaxy. Okay. Okay. 

Sean: Yeah. 

Rene: Okay. So 

Sean: I want to be unique in the universe or galaxy. Okay.

Gimme the galaxy. Yeah. I'll take 

Rene: the galaxy 

Sean: any day. So, uh, yeah, you know, it's just a fantasy and I just love the feel, you know, getting on the back of someone's motorcycle 

Rene: and his last album, what is it called? His Jenny from ebs. Oh, okay. And the whole album is about Jet and about that time. Wow. Wow.

And do you like that album? Yeah, I, it, 

Sean: it's, uh. Yeah, I listen to it. It, it, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's good. I've liked the last few albums, like Dark In Here is Great. He's got a song about the quiet parts on death metal songs that he listens carefully to that. Oh, that's awesome. Um, that's awesome. The getting into Knives, bleed Out is a album completely about ho hostage taking and is, you know [00:46:00] is stylistically after like a seventies bank robber type movie. Right. Cool. So, yeah, he just, there's something there for anyone. Yeah. You know, we haven't talked about transcendental youth.

That was a. Autobiography album when he was a methamphetamine addict in Portland. Holy shit. Wow. Damn. Okay. And there's some good uplifting songs there about Just Stay Alive. Wow. Wow. So he's lived a colorful life. I hope he makes other people as happy as I do. Right. The fact that he can you know, make these personal experiences universal and then make.

You know, a made up character seems so personal to him that you think that that is him, right? He's got joy, pain, everything. That's why he's an ear shifter band, Renee. 

Rene: I don't disagree that he is. It's an [00:47:00] ear shifter band because for the very reason that. They zag, right? Everyone else is zigging. They zag and I, that's to me, what always makes senior shifter band, whether I like them or not, is almost irrelevant, so long as they're doing something different.

And, and, and, and by the way, I don't dislike them. I just, they just don't grab me as much as they do you. But that's for me what it air shift. Your band is just do something fucking different. That's it. So maybe that's the way it end. I don't know. What do you think? And, and he does it. 

Sean: Okay. So 

Rene: who's our next, 

Sean: who are we gonna be talking about next time, Renee?

Rene: Well, next time we are going to be talking about a band that I willingly saw. Both nights that they came to Toronto two nights in a row. I've never really done that for any other band and I do not regret doing that one bit. Okay. Until next time. All right, until next time. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Air Shifter.[00:48:00] 

Tune in next time where we'll cover another band that deserves more. You can find Air Shifter on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Friend us or listen to our playlist on Spotify and visit air shifter.com for more information. Special thanks. Go to our logo designer Stuart Derby and our intro Outro music by Joe Novak.

You can find him as, bye. Bye. Badman. One word on SoundCloud and a big shout out to Joe for being our awesome sound engineer slash editor. Until next time.