A clock-measured 2:00AM won't appear longer than neighboring hours; but in practice, it's the one with power to grow, to stretch and loop, ignited by small bad thoughts. It's waker's choice - need to mow the lawn, leave her, tell them all the truth? Sift it through. Gather up records & vices for the dark duration, but be careful when pleading for passage; heed instead this Zopilote Machine warning: there are worse things to lose than sleep.
Because when the fucking sun comes up, yeah, morning sounds alot like "Alpha Incipiens." This is John Darnielle's Southern California, but it's yours, too, when you've felt how the daylight you sought turns a sudden broomstick to your windpipe. The first Mountain Goats LP tells only of daytime's beating and bleaching, pounding it out in strident strums. Christ, the things that make hearts bleat for shade. Now 14 years old, Zopilote Machine suggests it was the songwriter's gift from the get-go to tell the tiny torturing truths of waking life. No more of this coffee house crap about night-blossoming pain, Darnielle can't give day that kind of break, and why should he? What's day ever really done for you?
On this early album, the sun and its high-noon companions (say the Zopilote itself, a desert vulture) blasts into all of the cracks that the Mountain Goats will later probe with defter fingers. The furnace of "Orange Ball of Love" and "Orange Ball of Hate" melts and halts and shines down on the powerlessness of youth, the ticking clock ugliness of intimacy, and the shuddering loss of both. It's all here, but the knowing's just the half; Darnielle's whole, forgiving truth, is that the humans in this muck aren't the pieces, they're the paste. The LP and those to follow show us the authentic specifics of this sun-lit world, and we're the best of it - showing up to these dawns, fighting towards twilight, and carrying one another home.
My Trusted MOGs
"the most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it's you"
:-)
My Trusted MOGs
Artfully done, n. Same with the album, I'd surmise.
My Trusted MOGs
Every night I yearn for night to never end. I know this cannot be, but I believe in my ability to carry the night forward if only within myself. This never works, however. But I soon pledge myself to the task again.
My Trusted MOGs
I'm with you - I never believe things will get better in the day time. Only thing the light does is take away all the good hiding places.
My Trusted MOGs
Have you ever noticed that the sun can be observed with your naked but at dusk or dawn? Staring at our life-giving star is risking blindness. That is why we find comfort in night time because then we can dream of our star.