Tallahassee

Mountain Goats | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 5, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: 4ad / Ada
• ASIN: B00006YXH6
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,723 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #54 in Music > Alternative Rock > American Alternative > General

Track Listings

1. Tallahassee

2. First Few Desperate Hours

3. Southwood Plantation Road

4. Game Shows Touch Our Lives

5. The House That Dripped Blood

6. Idylls Of The King

7. No Children

8. See America Right

9. Peacocks

10. International Small Arm14. Alpha Rats Traffic Blues

11. Have To Explode

12. Old College Try

13. Oceanographer

Editorial Reviews

John Darnielle's songs have always dwelled on one or a combination of five subjects, relationship conflicts, flood, water, pre-Colombian Mexico mythology and talking animals. This record conjures paranoid visions of a couple permanently on the cusp of divorce who have remained drunk for so long, they're not sure of much else beyond the mutually destructive urge that holds their house together. Digipak. 4AD. 2002.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Darkly Beautiful Gem, February 7, 2004

By 

Mark Brumfield (St. Louis MO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tallahassee (Audio CD)

This CD is simply beautiful. Not since Lisa Germano's Excerpts from a Love Circus has an album been so perfect in it's entirety. The songwriting is a wonderland of dark and beautiful poetry backed by music that ranges from simple elegance to out and out rockers. This is a polished piece of art and I think the music benefits greatly from the somewhat fuller production without losing it's low-fi appeal. My favorite Mountain Goats CD so far even though I have barely scratched the surface of MGs material that is available. This is a great place to start exploring the Mountain Goats musical landscape..

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not his best, but WOW!, May 21, 2003

By 

Scanningtext2002 (Alabama) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tallahassee (Audio CD)

I've been a Mountain Goats fan for a few years now and have grown to love the buzzy drone of John Darnielle's tape recorder at the beginning and end of each song. His previous recordings sound as if they are recorded in a bedroom on equipment he found abandoned in an alley, but combined with John's honest and wry vocals the rawness really works. Alas, this album was obviously recorded in a studio by people who knew what they were doing. This sound isn't what I would describe as lush, but most tracks have several instruments and the music has a fuller, more polished sound. As an earlier reviewer noted, this requires some mental gear shifting if you are a fan of this bands earlier albums.

That said, after a few listens, this album really grew on me. The song "See America Right" has moved up the top of my rather competitive list of favorite Mountain Goats songs. It has all of the best aspects of his song writing--a character who has lost control, a road trip, quirky details, and chilling honesty. "My love is like a dark cloud full of rain that's always right there up above you." And, this song especially is one that really works with the bigger, fuller sound. I always have trouble describing to my friends the genre filled by the Mountain Goats, but this song is ROCK my friends, driving, intense, angry, the sort of music you just have to damage your hearing with by playing at maximum volumn. So you'll be deaf at 40. Sacrifices must be made for music this good.

All that said, if you've never listened to a Mountain Goats album before, hunt down Sweden or Full Force Gailsburg first. I own, Lord, eight Mountain Goat albums now? Nine? It's all good, but some is more good than others.

34 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tallahassee, October 4, 2005

By 

Ravensir - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tallahassee (Audio CD)

Since 1992, John Darnielle has been creating lo-fi plot-centered music as the Mountain Goats.

Darnielle's style has always been to tell stories through song. We're not talking anything like a musical here, nothing quite so coherent as Rent. He tells his stories as a booze-hound trying to recall what he did last night, through a series of clipped, vague, and often unclear flashbacks. Most often, Darnielle lays out his stories through a series of first person stream-of-thought narrations by one or more of the albums characters. This being said, the word `narration' does not fully convey what Darnielle accomplishes through this. The result he has achieved time and time again is an experience akin to watching a person's life through their own eyes during periodic installations of their existence. Frequent listeners may expose themselves to the risk of becoming attached to the characters, who are, perhaps without exception, tragic figures in some fashion. If you want an album with a happy ending, you might try sending John Darnielle some prozac, but for the moment you're out of luck.

Tallahassee, like its predecessors, is as much a story as it is music. Given this fairly unique brand of story telling, listeners who just throw the CD on for background music, or listen distractedly, may find the album very dissatisfactory. Few emotionally powerful stories can be appreciated by half-hearted attention, and Tallahassee is no different.

Focusing on the characters that make up the "Alpha Couple", an unhappy couple who have been the subject of many previous songs, the picture painted throughout this album is of a hopelessly broken marriage, and the couple struggling desperately to fix it. Don't worry, I won't leave you in suspense: they fail utterly in every aspect, save that they manage not to murder each other. But through their failure the listener is made to experience the full spectrum of crippling emotions both high and low that such a failing marriage entails. There are also several good doses of dark humor at its darkest to keep the mood nice and light for the listener.

By the climax of the album, Oceanographer's Choice, there is little doubt left that the aching love the characters feel for one another comes incredibly close to matching the depth of their hatred. Those who, like myself, are familiar with Edward Albee's play, `Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' may see strong similarities between the Alpha Couple and George and Martha. Those who aren't may just find themselves kind of depressed.

Below, written in a format that behooves a writer, I have reviewed the album track by track, judging each with a thumbs up or thumbs down as I see fit. For those of you who are lazy and just want advice as to which songs they ought most to seek, this is my advice: listening to a track outside the context of the album is much like watching only a scene from a movie. It would be incomplete, and thus give the listener a very incomplete appreciation. This is not recommended. But, if you simply must taste of the album's wares before committing yourself, I would recommend Tallahassee or Game Shows Touch Our Lives. That being said, on with the track-by-track review!

Tallahassee: The album begins with the appropriately titled song Tallahassee. Using lyrics loaded with poetic description (one of Darnielle's specialties), the song that sets the albums opening scene feels almost cinematic. "Window facing an ill-kept front yard / Plums on the tree heavy with nectar / Prayers to summon the destroying angel / Moon stuttering in the sky like film stuck in a projector". Put to relaxing, if ever-so-slightly nervous guitars, the mood of this song can hardly be defied by an attentive listener. Weariness is not an emotion often expressed in any opening, but if I had to pick, that would be the emotion this song best conveys. Not the weariness of any thing in particular, but an overall weariness of life, the sort that comes only after being stressed so much for so long, until one has no more stress to muster. The sort of emotional surrender through which one can actually come out the other side and appreciate the beauty of everything. This song, as with the rest of the album, is told through the narrative of the Alpha Male. Thumbs up

First Few Desperate Hours: The slight nervousness of the first song segways into significantly more intense guitar strumming. "Bad luck comes in from Tampa." the song begins, and this becomes something of choral line. "Bad luck comes in from Tampa/ on the back of a truck / doing 90 down the interstate". As the song progresses, nervousness is clearly the mood of the day, as the characters uncomfortably await the cryptically vague "bad luck" to arrive. Unfortunately, if the listener is like me, they might find the music just slightly too monotonous, and the lyrics just a little too vague to convey the anxiety the characters are feeling. There are some beautiful lyrics, and with time this song has grown on me, but I don't think it's quite what it could have been. Thumbs Down.

Southwood Plantation Road: The song is almost deceptively upbeat in its music, and Darnielle's guitar perfectly accents his lyrics and the overall content of the song. On an almost cheerful tone, the listener is given a taste of how life in the house of the Alpha Couple is going. "I am not gonna lose you / we are going to stay married" Darnielle cheerfully but forcefully insists "On Southwood Plantation Road. Where the dead will walk again / put on their Sunday best / and mingle with unsuspecting Christian men". Both the overarching feel and concept of the album are captured quite well in this song. Love, optimism, pessimism, frustration, and dark humor are all expressed in the same breath by John Darnielle's peppy, upbeat voice. Thumbs Up

Game Shows Touch Our Lives: Set to music so soft and deep that I have always found it hard not to lose myself in it, Game Shows Touch Our Lives is without a doubt my favorite song on the album. It is beyond the limited ability of my ears to distinguish every instrument being played. Whatever the combination, it compliments Darnielle's vocals, which in and of itself could not have been done any better, with absolute perfection. "Shadows crawled across the living room's length / I held onto you with a desperate strength / with everything / everything in me". In my opinion, Darnielle's greatest strength as a performer is his ability to express the sincerity of his lyrics, and there is no better example than this song, in which the main character (the male of the Alpha Couple) expresses his deep desire for everything to simply be okay. "Carried you up the stairs that night / (All of this could be yours, if the price is right) /I heard cars headed down to Oblivion from up on the expressway". Thumbs Up

The House That Dripped Blood: Set to some heated guitar and some of the best use of the harmonica I've experienced, The House That Dripped Blood relates, through a narrator that sounds as if he is trying very hard not to panic, that there are some buried secrets in the house that the Alpha couple can never allow to be exposed. Again, this is done cryptically enough to annoy me somewhat as a listener, as the lyrics never directly mention what is hidden there. The music, however, is most enjoyable, as are the vocals if one can get beyond wondering what their exact meaning is. Thumbs Up

Idylls of the King: A slow pacing, pleasant strumming of guitar, and decent assortment of subtly and not-so-subtly inserted instruments all give this song potential that just never comes together quite right, at least for this listener. The song seems without much direction, both mood and melody-wise, and Darnielle's gentle but cheerful voice just never seems particularly engaged in the songs content. Thumbs Down

No Children: Lyrically, I'm not sure I believe a human being is capable of disliking this song. The guitar and keyboard seem designed mostly as a pretty-sounding drone to augment the lyrics, but they do that quite effectively. The lyrics are so bittersweet and contradictory as to make the song quite funny. "I hope our few remaining friends give up trying to save us / I hope we come up with a failsafe plot to piss off the dumb few that forgave us" for instance, and such lines as "I hope I lie and tell everyone that you were a good wife / And I hope you die / I hope we both die" sent some of the comically mixed messages the Alpha male sincerely feels. Honestly, the lyrics of the song are great in their entirety. There's not a single line that I don't love. The monotonous music makes the song wear on you after a few listens, but the lyrics make those first few times absolutely golden. Thumbs Up.

See America Right: This song is essentially John Darnielle's experiment in rap. To some drums and guitar he shouts his story of the Alpha male's bad day of car accidents and alcohol withdrawal. The contrast of this song with everything on the CD is more than a little disconcerting to the ear, and outside the context of this album I'm not sure I'd listen to it. However, within the context of the CD, I think it works rather well. The song essentially portrays the Alpha Male finally cracking, while allowing the listener some well needed venting. Thumbs Up

Peacocks: Peacocks is a soft melodious tune with some very pretty guitar work, and it conveys quite well the situation the lyrics paint, in which the Alpha male steps outside one day to find, without explanation, a peacock in his front yard. The utter confusion and befuddlement of the character comes quite well through the gentle, serene music. I'm not sure how well it fits with the rest of the album, but I'm quite fond of it. Thumbs Up

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