[Before I begin, I must beg forgiveness for any assumptions I make about the reader’s knowledge contained in the following “review.” Anyone who has not heard The Sunset Tree yet may be hopelessly lost. If that describes you, I can only recommend that you remedy that condition as soon as possible. As much as I might gush about albums in this forum, I rarely give ratings of 12. For me to do so means that I feel it is essential listening, has broad appeal, and engenders passionate discourse beyond its artistic boundaries.
Almost from the first time I heard it, this record haunted me as surely as its subject matter must have compelled its author. This review can only capture a fraction of my enthusiasm and deep respect for it. Part of this fervor is that of the recent convert. Despite friends’ repeated attempts at intervention on my behalf, I had not listened to The Mountain Goats in any depth until now. As penance for my inattentiveness, I can only offer my own sincere apology to them and John Darnielle, and in the true spirit of The Sunset Tree offer the following vow: “I will mend my ways.”
Also, I apologize in advance for anything below that seems like an attempt at psychoanalysis. I don’t pretend to understand anything more about John Darnielle’s life than what he reveals in The Sunset Tree, but that’s already a hell of a lot. I can only say that any conclusions to which I jump are well-intentioned errors.]
Stories of the abusive parent are so ingrained in Western literature and art that one could argue they now exist in the realm of the mythic. Countless fairy tales use these figures both to establish an emotional mood and as an engine for plot development. Charles Dickens built a veritable franchise out of describing child abuse in all its guises in institutional and familial settings. More recently, what used to be mostly private stories of abusive parents have become a mainstream cultural fixture through media (over)exposure. So much so that every new revelation runs the risk of being greeted with jaded yawns and indifference.
Into this atmosphere comes John Darnielle, the prime mover and most public face of The Mountain Goats. Long revered for his ability to bring characters alive in his songs, Darnielle has in recent years turned his spotlight on his own life and begun to tell more personal stories through his music. On The Sunset Tree, Darnielle tells of his childhood and adolescence growing up in the shadow of an abusive stepfather. Darnielle demonstrates admirable wisdom in understanding how his own story fits into the larger framework of generational cycles of abuse. This recognition could have absolved him of certain narrative responsibilities; he could have told his tale through a series of episodes and count on the societal collective consciousness to fill in the blanks. But Darnielle does not shirk his duties here. Without exception, at least one narrative thread in each song is carried over into the next in the album’s masterful sequencing yielding a compelling and satisfying whole.
The musical arrangements and musicianship throughout are consistently astonishing. They enhance the considerable drama of the lyrics without ever becoming overwrought. At times they transcend the structure of song and function as soundtrack, an emotional sounding board that adds depth and resonance to the gripping story. John Vanderslice’s production is simultaneously lush and spare; it adds a polished sheen while accentuating each instruments’ contribution. Darnielle has commented on how fortunate he has been in his musical collaborators and The Sunset Tree is no exception. The playing of Mountain Goats stalwarts Peter Hughes and Franklin Bruno is taken to a new level by the injection of the talents of Erik Friedlander. More well known for his contributions in the forward looking groups of Dave Douglas, John Zorn, and Myra Melford (to name but a few), Friedlander fits his brilliant emotional playing effortlessly into the ensemble. We can only hope this begins another long and fruitful association.
When his stepfather died in 2004, Darnielle found most of the material that eventually became The Sunset Tree coming upon him unbidden, forcing its way into his mind and then his music. The creation of The Sunset Tree may have needed to wait until its antagonist had passed away, but it also benefits from the years between the principle traumatic events and their telling. There is constant perspective embedded in every phrase because the listener knows that despite the visceral immediacy gained through Darnielle’s careful and descriptive language, these events happened a long time ago and are only surfacing now.
The opening “You and Your Memory” is actually a memory within a memory since it tells the tale of that critical moment of resolution to confront the demons of one’s past. Like most of us, adrift when faced with how to deal with this process, Darnielle cloaks himself in ritual beginning with his sequestration in a “bargain priced [motel] room.” Even though the understated shuffling brush work on the drums, the piano’s minor chords, and the gentle spare strumming of guitar evoke that time at the end of the day when the heat has dissipated, Darnielle’s barefoot trip to the corner store across the “soft and hot” “tarry asphalt” is akin to an act of purification; a lower temperature version of walking across hot coals. However, far from monastic asceticism, the “supplies” for this interior quest are the self-medicating and nostalgic accoutrements of youth (“St. Joseph’s Baby Aspirin, Bartles and Jaymes”). Given that his stepfather was a drinker (e.g. the later mentions of “sleeping off your demons” in “Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod”), Darnielle’s use of alcohol in his search for “the truth about me” has an eerie resonance. Though the song may be about a primarily external “you”, the fact that its membership in Darnielle’s trinity is mentioned directly after he “looks myself right in the eye” is an acknowledgement of how much the self-destructive patterns of the stepfather are recognized in the behavior of the son. His humble mantra “I will mend my ways” is rooted not only in penitence but also a desire to stop the cycle of violence.
“Broom People” sets the stage for the journey. The house of Darnielle’s youth is cluttered with discarded detritus. Newspaper covered floors, an ancient automobile in the garage, unwashed dishes and uneaten food, even shed pet hair are among the cast of cast-offs that populate his “home.” This is a bleak and unforgiving atmosphere that offers little solace or peace. Confronted with the “well meaning” but ultimately ineffectual actions and advice of friends and teachers (beyond parents, the only other adults a child might regularly come into contact with), it is no wonder then that the yearning expressed is for human connection for only through that rescue is escape possible. And by human connection, Darnielle often means physical intimacy. The teenage melodrama of “writing down good reasons to freeze to death” is a poor substitute for the real release he feels in the caress of arms and tresses of hair.
Just as the claustrophobia of “Broom People” threatens to suffocate the listener, “This Year”’s breezy piano chords and bouncing bass burst through the veil of melancholy. As Darnielle sings “I broke free on a Saturday morning”, there is now no doubt from where he is escaping. Anthemic in its musical progression and its chorus of reckless fist-in-the-air bravado, “I am going to make it / Through this year / If it kills me” is a classic refrain both in its obvious dark humor but also in its acknowledgment that at some point death is preferable to a certain type of a life. By the time Darnielle has bruised his hands and assuaged his heart in a Scotch-fueled video game binge with his girlfriend and has returned home to the inevitable showdown with his stepfather, the motor of his car is not the only thing “screaming out” – the whole song is an ode to the power of defiance as an expression of and reaction to the inability to change an abusive situation. The shift in verb tenses from past to present between the verses and chorus is a beautifully rendered reminder of how memory breathes life into the past.
While “You and Your Memory” correctly places the ultimate confrontation of one’s own demons as a personal one, The Sunset Tree contains a continuous undercurrent of the power of sensation be it the codependently entwined “twin high maintenance machines” of “This Year”, or the hungry, desperate eroticism of “Dilaudid.” At seventeen or seventy, one never knows when the opportunity for joy will present itself (no matter how darkly it may unfold), so every moment is crucial. In “Dilaudid”, the passionate open-mouthed kiss of a fishnet-stockinged lover is echoed in Friedlander’s thrusting cello notes. The fatalistic arc of an ephemeral relationship (“Now you say you love me / Pretty soon you won’t”) does nothing to diminish ardor; in fact it only accentuates it. The only thing that will survive into memory is the heat contained in this crystallized moment so let’s feed the fire. As Darnielle’s frenzied voice urges, “Take your foot off the brake / For Christ’s sake!”
A generation’s fascination with the power of popular music to distract from the political malaise of the Watergate scandal is personalized and given a very different spin in “Dance Music.” While the jaunty piano melody gets one’s toes tapping, Darnielle reveals a grim story of verbal and physical abuse and his own refuge in his record player and its volume knob’s ability to blot out the noise and chaos if only for the time it takes to play one side of vinyl. Music holds the promise of escape and empowerment and it is the one temporarily effective salve to the daily woes in the house on Johnson Ave.
The “special secret sickness” hinted at in the second half of “Dance Music” matures in “Dinu Lipatti’s Bones” (named after the Romanian pianist who died of leukemia at the age of 33 in 1950) into a downward spiral of death. Even in this hellhole stinking of “hair dye and ammonia” Darnielle is willing to forsake his friends and sell everything he has to try to fend off the illness that consumes his loved one in a vain effort to prolong the arrival of the end. That the end is inevitable only makes his sacrifice more poignant. Darnielle’s fragile falsetto emphasizes the emotional extremes of the song’s subject.
After immersing us unflinchingly in the details of his heartbreaking tale, Darnielle opens “Up The Wolves” with the assertion “There’s bound to be a ghost at the back of your closet / No matter where you live / There’ll always be a few things, maybe several things / That you’re gonna find really difficult to forgive.” Speaking more to the world as comrades, it’s as if the overpowering emotion of the last song has finally forced him to acknowledge his audience. “Up the Wolves” has an important pivotal role in The Sunset Tree as it is the first time Darnielle takes the specifics of his own situation and contextualizes them within universal experience. Tellingly, it is also the first appearance of genuine hope and optimism. Even an “absent” mother is not enough to deter Darnielle from his quest to shatter the secret conspiracy of silence on which abuse thrives. If anything, combined with having faced death in the previous “Dinu Lipatti’s Bones”, it galvanizes his resolve to act. The bourgeois censoriousness of his neighbors is anticipated (“They will shake their heads / And wag their bony fingers”) but nothing will stop him from victory in this battle.
“Lion’s Teeth” describes that fateful moment of direct physical action that aims to stem the tide of violence, albeit through misguided escalation. Darnielle describes with harrowing clarity sneaking into the car where his stepfather (the “king of the jungle”) sleeps to “reach into his mouth, and grab onto one long sharp tooth” (the seat of power for the lion he was just described as). Even though ultimately he may regret his actions, he acts on the premise the “nobody in this house wants to own up to the truth” and so the job of confrontation is left to him. The glorious ambiguity of a phrase like “When your chances fall in your lap like that / You’ve gotta recognize them for what they really are” recognizes both the infrequency of a position of advantage while carrying with it a tacit admission that the chances of a positive outcome in such a situation are not really that good anyway. The tacit becomes explicit when Darnielle realizes that “there’s no good way to end this” as his struggle with the “lion” becomes a stalemate (“I hold on” becomes “We hold on” in a subtle but significant shift in the balance of power). Edgy staccato guitar and drums amplify the atmosphere of tension with Friedlander’s cello the only vaguely calming thread weaving it all together.
In “Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod”, Darnielle continues the process of contextualization he began in “Up the Wolves.” After his attempts not to rouse the sleeping tyrant and retreat into the “dream chamber” of his stereo have failed, and he finds himself being held “underwater” by his stepfather’s hand, Darnielle proclaims “one of these days, I’m gonna wriggle up on dry land.” Combined with the title’s reference to one of the earliest amphibians, it posits Darnielle’s own struggle within a larger evolutionary framework. The key to evolution is adaptation, and Darnielle begins claiming a new identity in the allegorical “Magpie.” Small achievable gestures of generosity and nurturance (“Feed the kittens in the kitchen / Set food out for the strays”) become a pathway to a personal redefinition, one that exists in direct opposition to his brutal life denying stepfather. He recognizes that these acts are important even if ultimately “the magpie will have his way.” It is rebellion, not in kind, as the attack in “Lion’s Teeth” was, but instead a quieter insistence on working for justice or at least some semblance of fairness as long as there is “something left to save.”
In “Song For Dennis Brown”, Darnielle fears that on his current trajectory that he will become “past the point of caring” when “his habits catch up with [him]” but through a clever musical reference, the acoustic guitar riff and even its production quotes Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.” For this is a song about the sinner confronting his excesses and deciding whether and how he will live and in so doing how he will be redeemed. This process will involve constant struggle. It may not take “all the coke in town” to bring down Darnielle, but even after all of his progress, he seems to question how long it can last.
If “Song for Dennis Brown” is the recognition of how tenuous any new identity can be and how fiercely one must protect it, then “Love Love Love” provides the answer for how this can be accomplished. Completing the rejection of his stepfather’s hatred in the formulation of his own identity, Darnielle tries to ensure that when his story is told it will be about the things he did for love. “Love Love Love” is about building a legacy and how your own actions will resonate through the years even beyond your passing (as his stepfather’s have). From an exploration of his own memories, Darnielle has transitioned into how others will remember him. As he nears the end of his tale, he is throwing out a lifeline for those that follow him bringing the dedication and advice to the victims of abuse he offers in the liner notes (“You are going to make it out of there alive / You will live to tell your story / Never lose hope”) and the grainy video still of clasped hands on the back cover into sharp focus.
“Pale Green Things” is the final framing reminiscence and is the perfect bookend to “You and Your Memory.” In it Darnielle describes a small moment of calm he experienced with his stepfather at the racetrack early one morning as they both stared off into “no man’s land” where they could possibly meet and be “lonely and frightened.” Later, looking down at grass poking up through the cracked pavement of the parking lot, Darnielle draws the parallel between these “pale green things” and his own survival of the brutal oppression of his childhood. And like these fragile stalks, he has done so by growing out from under and up through an oppressive weight.
“You and Your Memory” has now been revealed not only as the beginning of a flood of memories but also as the starting point of a quest for who Darnielle wants himself to be. The repeated phrase “at last” in response to the news of his stepfather’s death is the lullabye the child sings to the parent as they depart for the ultimate sleep. It is also an olive branch that can now be offered; a wish that the peace his stepfather never knew while he was alive might be his for eternity. It is a gift not necessarily of forgiveness but it does acknowledge that there was pain on the other side of this relationship as well. Ultimately Darnielle escaped “the living Chinese fingertrap” of the escalation of abuse not by pulling against it but by relaxing his way out of it; his stepfather was not to be so lucky as to recognize how to make it through the exit door.
One of the things I’ve learned during my immersion in The Sunset Tree is that I am sure that I will not ever understand completely the intricate structure of Darnielle’s narrative contained therein. But this only heartens me as it should any listener who demands that classics give back to you every time you listen to them. The Sunset Tree is one of those rare works that transcends genre to point the way to universal truths. While we may grieve for the loss of Darnielle’s childhood, for his reclaiming and beautiful retelling of his story, we can only offer our sincerest gratitude.
