(4AD)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
As the song goes, "I am not this body that imprisons me." Luckily, the appeal of the Mountain Goats' second most recent album isn't tied up in the Bible verses that form its central conceit, even though that comprises the bulk of discussion about the LP. I'll admit to a certain ignorance on Biblical matters, and additionally an ambivalence toward them. But even at that, I don't buy that the cultural or spiritual framework provided is any more important here than on any other Mountain Goats album, informed as John Darnielle's lyrics always are by the grand palette of religious and social and artistic American culture. I read all of the verses referred to in the song titles here and I understand the links most of them share with the lyrical content; the rigid context suggested by The Life of the World to Come's package still seems unnecessarily constraining, even pretentious to me -- it grapples with the same themes Darnielle always does, but dressing it up this way gives it a Gimmick. And at that, an inconvenient gimmick; replacing meaningful song titles with Biblical cross references makes remembering which song is which a tiresome puzzle game... unless you know your Bible, which I suppose is the point.
But that is my lone serious objection to this album, which does stand apart in other ways. Pretension isn't audible; even when Darnielle plants lines like "Go down to the netherworld, plant grapes" and "My house will be for all people who have nowhere to go" in the first couple of minutes, it sounds unforced. For one thing, even encompassing the adventurous and sprawling All Eternals Deck from this spring, it is Darnielle's biggest stretch to date, a real tour de force for him as a songwriter and performer. Moreover, it is an at times almost oppressively dark, haunting record, deliberately paced and marked by a seriousness that would be stifling if not for Darnielle's natural levity. The witticisms and gentle humor that populate most of his work is absent here ("Feel bad about the things we do along the way, but not that bad" would count if it didn't come across so threateningly); taken all at once, hearing his gifts applied to such dour material can be overwhelming, but what makes it all tick is his attention to detail, the lovingly defined feeling of heat in the dying man's fingers as he idly pores over a magazine left behind by a friend, holding it close to his face, just before the nurse comes in.
And although there is a conscious slowing down of pace, a concentration on stripped-down piano and acoustic laments here (the solemn reflection of "1 Samuel 15:23" a rather curious opening until the pounding from outside begins), these are some of the most durable songs Darnielle has written, even if it takes them some time to come into focus. In a few cases, string arrangements swirl around the songs, adding both a slickness and a sense of disorientation new for the band. And plopped down at scattered points on the record are three of the most advanced, expertly crafted pop songs he's ever released -- sounding as far from his boom box-recorded treasures of yore as can be conceived.
The chief difference, of course, is the absense of catharsis, which can be difficult to handle on first hearing something like "Philippians 3:20-21," but when the curtain lifts, the hushed folk rock reveals its beauty. The swirling, ideally placed strings and drums add ample drama to the stunning "Hebrews 11:40," but even it continues to retain the mood established in the record's first seconds. The sparest acoustic moment is the shattering death song "Matthew 25:21," the longest and most deliberate track here, and seemingly (though it's hard to be certain) the most personal; if Life of the World to Come feels like the document of a stressful period, this song gives some clue as to potentially why: an ending life is celebrated ("I am a witness to your life and to its worth"), but when the inevitable phone call arrives, there's "no one around to break my fall."
Upon reaching the second half of the album, Darnielle takes a Randy Newman stance, with some of his finest melodies approached in solo piano arrangements -- a stark sound applied to disparate material, the barroom hangover "Genesis 30:3" ("for several days the visitors were here") far off from the lilting lullabye "1 John 4:16" ("long ago and far away"), calm Darnielle at his all-time peak. The piano backgrounds hints of hope on "Deuteronomy 2:10" ("the sun above me..."), the brightest break in the tension that any of the ballads can offer, but then we descend into appropriate apocalypse for the closing "Ezekiel 7," cementing Darnielle's mastery of the ballad, and finding his voice begin to stretch in the ways he would further explore on All Eternals Deck. Its beating-heart close leaves you hanging; never before has Darnielle so avidly and devotedly captured and sustained a mood.
The exceptions prove equally fascinating. "Psalms 40:2" is Darnielle's regular nod to metal, with one of his most furious vocals, the sole instance of his once-trademark frayed edges across this LP. The genius popcraft of "Genesis 3:23" -- "therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden" spilled into a story of a man secretly returning to the home he shared with his ex-wife (chorus "I used to live... here") -- is one of the most tantalizing signals of progression Darnielle has yet emitted, a gentle and introspective but intricate piece that builds its character perfectly, musically and lyrically, until his "Drive home with old dreams that play in my mind, and the wind at my back" is so evocative you can almost see and feel it. "No Children" and "This Year" notwithstanding, "Romans 10:9" might be the closest thing to a pop single Darnielle has ever written, despite its overtly religious themes -- upbeat, back-against-wall strong, and redemptive, all cast into bliss by its decidedly un-Goats-like, delicious opening riff.
Best of all is "Isaiah 4:23"; this song, although it arguably relies more on the album's spiritual themes than any other track save "Romans 10:9," may have a claim to being, at the very least, one of the Mountain Goats' half dozen finest songs. It is here that Darnielle so lovingly delves into a drawn-out expiration and its hard-won acceptance, lifted and supported by the stirring chorus: "I won't get better, but someday I'll be free." If Darnielle set out to create something like a hymn somewhere on this album, here he's got it. He gets deep, unbelievably deep with this one; you feel it in your bones, shaking down to your heart, and it amounts to the rescue it so loftily describes. If The Life of the World to Come had only this masterpiece, this triumph, to offer, it would be worthwhile, years of development and work paying off in three and a half minutes. But there's more, lots more, and so much to reveal and reinforce its heights. Back to front, this is as strong as The Sunset Tree and Tallahassee, even if its unifying theme is less specific, even if its music is consciously less varied.
But can I please please please retitle all the songs??
[SEE ALSO:]
All Eternals Deck (2011)
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