Illustration from Felix O C Darley's Sketches Abroad with Pen and Pencil, 1868
John Darnielle has released a new album under his nom de musique, the Mountain Goats. Darnielle has a nasal singing voice that is hard for some people to get past, but getting used to that voice is a process that that can deliver big rewards because of what it has to say. Darnielle is one of the best songwriters working today, and his ability to tackle a project like The Life of the World to Come is further proof of his ambition. It's an album about the Bible, a concept that would be a disaster in the hands of a less talented writer. Each song is a Bible verse presented in the form of a modern-day parable, and each is delivered with a great deal of humanity and grace. Darnielle is definitely a skeptic in his views on theology, but he also has a lot of compassion toward this subject matter. He also evidently knows the Bible very well, and the lyrics are, for the most part, subtle in their use of biblical language to draw very personal vignettes.
The Life of the World to Come opens with "1 Samuel 15:23", a quiet acoustic number that addresses the idea of religion as a business or self-help scheme. It's the kind of song we've heard from Darnielle many times before, but the rest of the album shows more variety, particularly as many of these songs were written and performed primarily on piano (a first for the Mountain Goats). Thematically, some of the album's best songs form natural pairs. In "Hebrews 11:30", a pagan anticipates a fleshly resurrection - in "Isaiah 45:23", a patient with chronic pain waits for his soul's escape from the bodily prison. "1 John 4:16" evokes the Christian being fed to lions, while "Deuteronomy 2:10" is sung from the point of view of the beast, ruminating on its own extinction. The album's two road songs, "Psalms 40:2" and "Ezekiel 7", tell the respective stories of a vandal's pilgrimage that borders on religious ecstasy and a killer contemplating the salvation of his soul after torturing a boy to death. Two of the album's most poignant songs deal with the passing of a loved one - "Philippians 3:20-21" ponders the departure of the spirit and its destination, while the very personal "Matthew 25:21" focuses on a person's feelings in watching a loved one succumb to cancer.
A couple things on the album seem a little "on the nose" compared the light touch I expect from the Mountain Goats - the "vehicular disaster" imagery of "Matthew 25:21" seems particularly obvious and dampens the song's emotional "oomph" for me. The beating-heart sound effect that ends the album is also a little much, but these are minor quibbles based in very high expectations. Darnielle's superlative word choice and vocal style is on full display here - the bone-chilling effect of his phrasing on a seemingly neutral line like "Someone will have to mop this floor for me" is very impressive.
The album's most overt pop song, "Genesis 3:23", is a good starting point here, but it also has an unexpected depth to it. Darnielle uses the expulsion from Eden as the foundation for pondering the instinct to return to places where terrible things have happened to us. I can identify with the desire to return to formative places and see them from a new perspective. There's a lot of weight behind the simple chorus phrase, "I used to live here."
"Genesis 3:23" by the Mountain Goats
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