#alpha gelida

[solomon-revisited]

""Alpha Gelida" [...] feels on the page like it belongs more to the setting-poems-to-music moment of just a year or two earlier, but for me it's a moment worth marking: It's a song, not a poem. It is an expression that has found the right skin within which to live and breathe. It's also not a love song, which sets it apart from many of its bedmates in this series early on. We see more of the internal life of the house here. It's jagged."

-- JD in 'This Year: 365 songs annotated', 2025.

[mountaingoatslastlineaday]

Let me break their jaws with my bare fingers

[mountaingoatsfirstlineaday]

popcorn was snapping in the hot oil on the kitchen stove

[onemountaingoatssongaday]

Alpha Gelida

Popcorn was snapping in the hot oil on the kitchen stove And the sky through the kitchen window was cold and poised and threatening Heard your voice come lilting through the wall I heard your voice come sailing from the other room

Let the young lions come Let me break their jaws Let the young lions come out Let me break their jaws with my bare fingers

Coffee was dripping through the paper filter cone The hip scent of it nearly knocked me out I heard your voice come lilting through the back of the refrigerator Heard your voice come breaking through the wall

Let the young lions come out Let me talk them out of it Let the young lions come Let me break their jaws with my bare fingers

from Taking the Dative (1994)

"...I don't quite get what is going on in this song. Most of the time I have a pretty good idea of what's going on with the people, and I don't really know what is behind the refrigerator in this song. I will someday find out." 

- 2012-06-28 - Swedish American Hall - San Francisco, CA

[tmg-lyrics-daily]

The sky through the kitchen window was cold and poised and threatening.

[ifitkillsme-thisyear]

“I heard your voice come lilting through the back of the refrigerator I heard your voice come breaking through the wall”

Back to the beginning with the start of this new month, and back to Alpha with this song as Darnielle describes the Alpha Couple as “eternally divorcing,” always at the edge of the abyss together, but never quite able to take that final plunge to the end. Perhaps that’s why the narrator can’t escape this voice, it can be heard all through the house, and while sometimes it is “lilting,” sometimes that voice demands to be heard; the narrator might break the jaws of lions, but the voice can break walls. Each side of this couple gives as good as they get; some couples are like that, they’ll spend years tearing each other down with hardly any concern to their surroundings. There are a lot of couples who should have divorced a lot sooner than they eventually did; thanks Ma and Pa for finally divorcing like two years ago, probably should have happened in like 2020 (or earlier) though tbh.

[the-songs-of-my-life]

The Mountain Goats - Alpha Gelida

Popcorn was snapping in the hot oil on the kitchen stove. And the sky through the kitchen window was cold and poised and threatening. Heard your voice come lilting through the wall. I heard your voice come sailing from the other room.

Let the young lions come. Let me break their jaws. Let the young lions come out. Let me break their jaws with my bare fingers.

Coffee was dripping through the paper filter cone. The hip scent of it nearly knocked me out. I heard your voice come lilting through the back of the refrigerator. I heard your voice come breaking through the wall.

Let the young lions come out. Let me talk them out of it. Let the young lions come. Let me break their jaws with my bare fingers.

[emotionallaborunion]

Visit Original Link

359. Alpha Gelida

LET THE YOUNG LIONS COME

LET ME BREAK THEIR JAWS

Like Lion’s Teeth, this song appears to reference Psalms 58:6 ("Break the teeth in their mouths, O God; LORD, tear out the fangs of those lions!"

2014-06-13 - Bottom of the Hill - San Francisco, CA