The Life of the World to Come

I love The Mountain Goats. I was immediately intrigued by their The Life of the World to Come: each of the 12 songs on the album? record?--I can't remember the music terms--is named after a scripture verse, on which the song is more or less loosely based.

This album seems like one long poem in 12 parts, set to music. There are themes that weave through the whole thing: John Darnielle often (not just here) refers to cities and states and concrete places ("House in Clearlake / Where I used to live"; "I flew in from Pennsylvania / When I heard the hour was coming fast / And I docked in Santa Barbara"; "Maybe make Culiacan by sunset"). There is lots of rain throughout the CD, and lots of transportation (cars and planes and travel in general), and lots of sickness (hospitals and dying and insanity).

The songs are full of shocking juxtapositions of biblical or medieval things and modern things: "The path to the palace of wisdom that the mystics walk / Is lined with neuroleptics and electric shock." There are also smoke alarms, a fentanyl drip, etc.

Occasionally, the songs feel like they're in the tradition of great Christian poetry. For instance:

"Each morning new
Each day shot through
With all the sharp small shards of shrapnel
That seem to burst of me and you"

This section reminds me of the sentiments of Donne's "Batter my heart..." or of Eliot's "The sharp compassion of the healer's art / Resolving the enigma of the fever chart." The third line could be straight out of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

There are some wonderfully catchy refrains on this album (although "catchy" seems like the wrong word): "I won't get better, but some day I'll be free / I am not this body that imprisons me" (this reminds me of the sentiments of old gospel songs [well, and just in general of Christianity]); "I used to live here"; "I will do what you ask me to do / Because of how I feel about you"; "I know you're thinking of me 'cause it's just about to rain." The songs are pretty simple and rely a lot on the refrains, which he plays on, sort of like a villanelle.


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