we still have our fingernails

elian | he/they tmg sideblog

[emohorseboy]

what do you mean more new mountain goats music??? never kill yourself

[effervescent-fool]

i've hired him to stare at you

[warrenzevonofficial]

[mothersandtruckersofthejury]

I made a graphic in Word to explain my experience with the 2025 Mountain Goats concept album, Through the Fire Across From Peter Balkan

[wolfbane-blooms]

[poorest-meow-meow-contest]

Round Zero (Qualifiers) - Poll 25

Who is the poorest little meow meow?

Hamlet - Hamlet

Pink Diamond aka Rose Quartz - Steven Universe

Kaladin Stormblessed - The Stormlight Archive

The Director - Red vs Blue

154 - Global Examination

John Doe - Malevolent

Jay Gatsby - The Great Gatsby

Pippin - Lord of the Rings

Phillip Wittebane - The Owl House

John Darnielle - Real Life Musician

Remaining time: 1 day 32 minutes

[unloneliest]

terribly difficult poll to vote in as the guy who submitted both hamlet and john darnielle, but—i have to confess. it is my firm belief that the guy the phrase "poor little meow meow" originated about and john darnielle are the only two poor little meow meows in existence.

traits of the original poor little meow meow, suga from bts:

musician

characterized as catlike

included an audio sample of infamous cult leader jim jones (of the jonestown massacre, from which we get the phrase "don't drink the kool-aid") in a song

john darnielle is:

1. a musician

2. characterized as catlike by himself & by fans

(john darnielle's twitter, @goingtothebes)

3. included an audio sample of infamous cult leader jim jones (of the jonestown massacre, from which we get the phrase "don't drink the kool-aid") in the song going to kansas as released on the hound chronicles in 1992.

(an alternate version of going to kansas which does not include the sample was released on nothing for juice in 1996. that's the version most people will be familiar with—it is streamable and the hound chronicles is not. going to kansas is not the only alternate recording that was included on nothing for juice and both re-releases have different instrumental backing if i remember correctly).

so by definition. unless there's a third person who hits all of these criteria, john darnielle is one of only two poor little meow meows in the world.

thank you for coming to my ted talk.

[jennyfromthebes]

i know we talk about crowdsing no children all the time and it is fantastic and I do love it but ever since I heard the woke up new 06-15-2014 bottom of the hill crowdsing I've wanted nothing so bad as that. it's a song about being profoundly lost and lonely in such a specific way that you can't imagine what tomorrow looks like and you feel like nobody else could ever understand it. and the crowd sang it together. so many people all together alone but mostly just together no one voice distinct in collective anon, this piercing individual loneliness cried out by so many; and I sang, oh, what do I do, what do I do, what do I do? what do I do without you?

[jennyfromthebes]

Visit Original Link

Woke Up New - the Mountain Goats 2014-06-15 at Bottom of the Hill

[iwrotemrtambourineman]

kind of obsessed with this song because it makes absolutely no sense to me like okay a guy is in a bank line, broke, with blood capsules in his mouth. What the fuck is he actually doing? How does he make money off of this? Then I checked the big tmg book looking for answers and john darnielle basically has the exact same take away I did so at least we are confused together

[iwrotemrtambourineman]

[iwrotemrtambourineman]

yeah yeah yeah yeah. Yeah.

[highendphaserz-blog]

“This here album track, anyway, is called “Cry for Judas,” it is about survival but that’s kind of an oversimplification, it’s also about building a vehicle from the defeated pieces of the thing you survived and piloting that vehicle through the cosmos, it’s kind of complicated but people who know what I’m talking about will kind of intuitively get the idea and the rest of you will I hope be able to get a sense of it through the song.”

— John Darnielle, July 2012

[johndarnielle]

that single piano note at the beginning of Lakeside View has given me so, so much peace and comfort in the times I need it most, I cannot even. please pass on my regards to whoever proposed that, I thank them profusely

Well thank you so much! The way we usually work in the studio means that that wasn’t necessarily going to happen - I lost the ability to write musical notation (I could re-learn it I’m sure but it’d be a slog) when I stopped studying piano formally when I was young, so when I play in the studio, I’m playing from my own charts, which are chord names written in sequence on the cards they use in comic-book bags. Every take’s a little different, especially as a session progress - I’ll throw in different beginnings or whatever to keep myself anchored in the moment. (I envy the steely discipline and spiritual presence of session musicians who don’t need any of this romantic hoo-hah and who just keep playing until the producers get what they want.) I think that was a third or fourth take - or possibly a revisiting of one we hadn’t been able to nail the day before - and since the song starts with unaccompanied piano & voice waiting for the band to drop in, I had leisure to start it however I wanted. So I hit that note and it just sorta went I AM HERE, LISTEN TO ME and held it & I think the vibe of it translated to Peter & Jon too (the instrumental is live, I’m pretty sure the vocal is too on that one) and we got a take we liked.

So nobody proposed it – it was spontaneous – so according to me God gets the credit but if that’s not yr deal you can credit the band for delivering such a great take that the one with the opening note got the nod! 

[johndarnielle]

What is "the mountain goats" aesthetic?

to honor the pterodactyl and exalt its bones

[nerteragranadensis]

if you're not aware, internet archive has over 400 live recordings of The Mountain Goats in concert going back to like 2005. these are all free to listen to and download. I could probably spend the rest of my life just listening to The Mountain Goats live in concert. if it weren't for the horrors

[transfemmbeatrice]

“I discovered that if Mountain Goats songs teach you anything, it’s not pessimism or bitterness or melodrama; it’s loyalty. Not to the people you’ve loved, exactly, but to the fact that you did love them. Maybe you don’t anymore, but that doesn’t invalidate the choices you made when you did. If you listen to enough Mountain Goats songs you learn that there is a kind of dignity in honoring feelings you no longer have. John Darnielle’s people fall out of love, yes, but they never forget that they were in it. Which is, I suppose, why people love the Mountain Goats so shamelessly. That’s a feeling, after all, and we honor it, along with the sadness that made it possible. If we are very lucky, we grow out of that sadness eventually. But the songs remain, along with our Pavlovian responses to them, as relics of former selves that—as John Darnielle is constantly reminding us—we need to respect.”

— Emma Stanford, Let Us Consider The Mountain Goats (via notsoterriblymisanthropic)

[bestgoats]

This guy is always going to places, can't wait for his next album that's just Arrived at *all those places*

the track listing for John Darnielle's 23rd studio album includes instant hits such as:

Got to Dallas and It's Not That Great

All the Stuff I Wanted to Do in Miami Turned Out to Be Really Expensive So I Didn't

Was Anyone Gonna Tell Me There's No Actual Buffalo in Buffalo?

Queens is Pretty Good, I Was Right About This One

[linguistics-and-lesbianism]

every mountain goats song john darnielle says “ok imagine this extremely specific situation no one on earth has ever experienced. ok now feel an intense sense of connection to it” and i say “aye aye thank you mr darnielle sir”

[mountaingoatslastlineaday]

And you can’t tell me what my spirit tells me isn’t true, can you?