The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree – 2005
The soft piano, the brushes on the drums, something’s a little different on The Sunset Tree. Now, albeit I have refused to go deeper into the past of The Mountain Goats. I’m not interested in all that lo-fi stuff recorded on boom boxes in the back of department stores and stuff. I have limited time, you know? So, maybe this isn’t all that uncommon, I mean, there was some piano on Tallahassee, right?
This is different though. The Sunset Tree is a lush, delicate investigation into John Darnielle’s youth, which was dominated by an abusive step-father, who gets credited with a thank you on this record.
Each track paints another vivid image of this suburban hell. Whether it be the crappy motel room in Los Angeles in “You and Your Memory” or the white shag carpet thick with pet hair on “Broom People” or the escape and return on “This Year”, (the first time I would actually say The Mountain Goats can swing hard, Jack.) a song as vivid in its portrayal of that terror as it is clean in it’s delivery.
I’m not sure why Darnielle has my number. Maybe it’s because we are close in age. When he talks about Watergate being on the tv in “Dance Party” I remember my childhood. I think I’m a couple years older but not by much. His suburbia is NOT Spielberg’s of Poltergeist and E.T. Darnielle’s is realer. My parents were together and there was no abuse in ours (unless you call Jewish guilt and boomer refusal to admit culpability abuse…) but Darnielle manages to capture adolescence of that time perfectly. It might be universal, I don’t know. I know that it hits home for me.
Sure, The Sunset Tree gets tired toward the end and, after a bit of reflection resolution. On “Pale Green Things”, the monster is finally dead. Even though John is released I can’t help but weep. Maybe its because I’ve been a stepdad. Maybe its because, as an adult when I didn’t need it, I had a stepdad that I didn’t like. I don’t know.
The Sunset Tree is like a musical memoir. It’s pure, it’s wrenching, it’s terrifying and it’s brilliant.
Grade: A+
ASide: You and Your Memory, This Year, Lion’s Teeth, Pale Green Things
BlindSide: Broom People, Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?
