My song title would be Andrew Eldritch Once Sang On A Sarah Brightman Record, which is why I don’t write songs…
[Video][Website]
[6.50]
Alfred Soto: Populating his songs with real personages that register as themselves as much as they do as stalking horses, John Darnielle uses the Sisters of Mercy bullfrog as an example of what Darnielle hopes to become and probably is already: a survivor, not in the showbiz sense but a person of subcult visibility who can return to his hometown without requiring a pine box. The vibes, keyboard, and especially the string section swath the track in amiability; Eldritch is happy to be back. How uncommon for a Mountain Goats song to eschew ambiguity.
[8]
Thomas Inskeep: I love that this lead single from Goths, ostensibly about the lead singer of Sisters of Mercy (but really about so many people, famous and not), sounds so synth-plinky and pretty — there are even woodwinds! I also love that John Darnielle’s voice sounds so light and wimpy (I mean that as a compliment). This is what I wish Magnetic Fields sounded like, with clever-clever lyrics to match.
[7]
Hannah Jocelyn: “Andrew Eldritch is Moving Back to Leeds” is such a Mountain Goats song title, and “a rusted fog machine in a concrete storage space” is such a Darnielle lyric; nonetheless, his warm style ensures that he never diverges into self-parody. Even his sillier moments have depth and fatalism, and even his darker moments have gallows humor. Repeating himself just feels endearing, because it sounds like talking to a friend you’ve known for so long that he’s probably told you the same story three or four times. The one problem with this song, though, is the guitar-less production. One reason why Beat the Champ and Transcendental Youth were so successful was how well the instrumentation served the vocals, and they don’t quite mesh here. The twirling woodwinds are gorgeous, but the song would be better served if there was more energy, and maybe if it was a bit shorter as well.
[7]
Katherine St Asaph: Objectively excellent craft like most Mountain Goats tracks, yet I waver between “way too pretty” and “way too much projection” and “[un-critical personal associations]” and “I pledged John K. Samson instead.”
[6]
Tim de Reuse: Many good Mountain Goats songs are 90% mundanity anchored by one or two lines of perfectly-honed, broad-picture context — and, of course, obligatory name-dropping of some mid-prominence population center. We aren’t let down here: the former in the gorgeously ominous “everybody tests the membrane / but no one pushes through,” and the latter in, well, Leeds. It’s not all retracing of steps, though. The Mountain Goats have shifted instrumentation styles ever since they decided to have instruments at all beyond a six-string and a growling tape recorder, but they’ve never settled on a specific formula, which I guess I can respect. John Darnielle made some waves by announcing that this album would be free of guitars, and the bouncing bassline, the plucky woodwind arrangements and the mechanical snare on the two and the four are chipper in an antiseptic dentist’s-waiting-room sense. Darnielle is too Darnielle-y to ever not sound like The Mountain Goats, but this particular result is odd.
[7]
Micha Cavaseno: This is great because it sounds as crusty and lame as Sisters of Mercy actually is, no matter how hard your local new wave elder argues otherwise. John Darnielle is not the dude who drank himself to death who used to tell me how Eric Clapton killed his own kid for a Grammy, nor is he the woman who’d read Tarot cards and sneeringly ask if I still liked “Twenty-Five Cent,” and thank goodness he isn’t those kinds of corny. But the eternal reach for earnestness and will to good reminds me of those old goths I took so much shit from. I don’t think people really like the songs of The Mountain Goats, though I could be as snide and cynical as those whom I’ve left behind. I think what people get out of him is a man who tries to make as many songs that ennoble the peculiar as possible. I’ll ultimately never love this music, but I don’t know a musician anywhere with such a relentless drive that doesn’t try to challenge or ensnare or overwhelm but do good onto its listener.
[3]
Edward Okulicz: I love how the woodwinds swell like it’s a wistful, fond homecoming, but the rest of the song paints it as mundane, even defeated, focusing on details of decay and progress masking decay. I’ve had a rough 12 months and thought about going back to my hometown; this song speaks to the universal truth that there’s glory in being a survivor long enough to go home, but there’s no triumph or glamour in it.
[7]
Claire Biddles: Nostalgia is different for adopted places because it’s where you chose to be, not where you’re forced to be. Until I heard this song I had no idea that Andrew Eldritch ever lived in Leeds, which I suppose would be unremarkable for most people. But Leeds was my first aspirational place — I’m from Wakefield, the next city over, so it had a tangible glamour. It wasn’t London, or even Manchester, but bands came from there, and it had a bigger Topshop, and people I could make friends with who didn’t go to my school. My view of the world widened eventually and I moved away when I was 19, but lots of people didn’t, or moved and came back. “Everybody tests the membrane but no one pushes through.” One of my best friends just bought a house in the suburbs. When we meet up, we talk a little bit about where we used to go out drinking and dancing and watching bands, about The Cockpit where we saw Sleater-Kinney and LCD Soundsystem and countless other less cool bands when we were teenagers (it’s since closed down, boarded up and unused for a couple of years now). There’s nostalgia, of course, but mostly we just talk about how we live now. That cliché of slipping back into the conversation, life going on, people leaving then coming back then leaving again. The constant of your first chosen home, that was also the chosen home of your friends, that you made together and can come back to. Bringing the stories and the personality traits and the belongings you’ve found in the world back to the place that will always be there, like Andrew Eldritch returning with his army backpack. Collecting meaning like dust.
[7]