Get Loneliest

MUSIC.

Today is August 22. Do you hear it? That last gasp of summer? That long exhale, like a friend looking over your shoulder in the middle of a conversation, telling you to make no mistake: there is something sneaking up behind you and you cannot get out of its way. For myself and at least one other friend reading this, that something coming is Friday's first wave of freshmen at South Carolina. I can't say I don't want to see them. And I can't say I do, either.

But friends, there's hope. Of a sort. This August 22 is not just the last Tuesday of your summer, it is also the release date for the newest album from any reasonable human being's favorite twosome, The Mountain Goats. For those unfamiliar with John Darnielle and Peter Hughes's indie-acoustic stylings, shame on you; get out of here. Nobody wants your kind loitering about. For those who have, I bring good tidings: thanks to the magic (yes, magic!) of illegal music downloading and client-to-client engines, I have heard and am now listening to this latest effort, entitled Get Lonely by our friendly songsmiths. It's on its third or fourth cycle, and I feel adequately prepared to say: good news - its nice. I would say more - perhaps throw a little zip into it - but its the damndest thing: I'm sorta down. This album delivers on its premise, gathering together under a fairly vague banner an emphatically serene (?) collection of tracks in keeping with the "slow stuff" of the Mountain Goats' most recent offerings. "Maybe Sprout Wings" and "Wild Sage" pick up on the winter-parking-lot motif of The Sunset Tree's closer, "Pale Green Things," kickers like "If You See Light" and "Cobra Tatoo" favor many of the offset tributes to Darnielle's friends of various eras that populated 2002's We Shall All Be Healed, namely "Linda Blair is Innocent" and "Mole," and the album's handful of light pop-infused tracks like the first single "Woke Up New" and "If You See Light" crackle in the rhythm of the album the way a song like "Peacocks" did on earlier albums: they become striking and beautiful mostly because they are such a departure from where the album seems to be taking you. As in most of the more reflective tracks from TMG's last three albums produced in part by John Vanderslice, Darnielle reverts back to a fairly simple "man with an acoustic guitar" model with light accents of electric guitars, brushed drums and a clean, harmonic bass. Pianos also make an appearance on several tracks and serve their purpose nicely, breaking up the rhythm of the album and providing a different tool for J.D.'s melancholy.

And of that there is plenty. Again, this album is difficult to discuss or review (if that is what this is); its tone is exactly what its title sets out to be, and it achieves this remarkably well, with diverse and varied lyrics, all of which find a way to touch that nerve Darnielle seems to have perhaps contemporary music's greatest link to: that small buzzing inside of us that sees children's love through the lost eyes of adults. There are mornings alone, walks in the dark, cold city streets, puritanical misjudgments; moments of frustrated release and bitter restraint and all of it timed and tuned to an entirely believable and authentic, well, thrust that pushes what should be a cumbersome album forward. The result is exactly what you want it to be: a slow processional of an album that somehow avoids the temptation to wander, instead moving evenly through the frozen scenes of a disparate and fairly crushing loneliness.

Although criticism of Get Lonely has to, thanks to that awfully conspicuous title, address this work as a unified whole (lets not say 'concept album,' okay?), the individual tracks here have been rightly described as "shuffle-able." You've got a lot of strong songs here, particularly the downright painful "Woke Up New," "Wild Sage," "Half Dead," "Moon Over Goldsboro," and my favorite of the bunch so far, "New Monster Avenue," which allows an almost-dissonant bass rumble to build as Darnielle waits for "neighbors with torches" to take him away; the song's play with both persecuted and persecutor is incredibly sharp, reminding us perhaps most deliberately of the self-aware nature of loneliness (as opposed to that word that will no doubt find its way into many a review: depression). Also exceptional is the album's briefest and most instrumentally dynamic track "If You See Light," which begins with horns before a strikingly efficient slap-bass line drives what becomes the back half of the album's answer to "New Monster Avenue," reminding us of the previous song's - and the album's - immediacy:

When the villagers come to my door
I will hide underneath the table in the dining room with my
Wings drawn up to my chest

That sense of almost-allegorical layering with Darnielle's lyrics is perhaps the album's most significant step forward for The Mountain Goats; in keeping with the emotional purge that was The Sunset Tree, Get Lonely is alive with both a keen and decidedly un-ironic emotional sincerity and a renewed grip on metaphorical expansion that seemed to cross into new territory on the previous album, particularly in songs like "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?" and "Up the Wolves." This escalation of Darnielle's typically incidental and isolated (although always astute and moving) lyrics continues here, suggesting he is not done growing yet; there will be much more to Get Lonely to in the future, I suspect, and plenty to celebrate as well. In a line that Darnielle shouldn't be so modest about from "Cobra Tatoo," he sings "God did not need Abraham / He could raise children from stone." Is this a reminder that Get Lonely is just that - an exercise for an extremely talented group in putting together "downer" songs in a music environment clamoring for more and more energy right now? Is Darnielle trying to tell us that his own output shouldn't be pigeonholed but celebrated for its dedication to its titular topic? After four listens now, I can't honestly say. But its a damn good lyric. And at least when it comes to those, on Get Lonely, there's plenty of good company to go around.