If you’re sad because you miss someone, but you’re also really hungry:
a) if the person is probably dead: Seeing Daylight
b) if you’re still pretty numb about the whole situation: Alpha Omega
c) if you have a sweet tooth: Jam Eater Blues
If you haven’t had sex in a really long time:
a) if you then have sex: How to Embrace a Swamp Creature
b) if you will probably never have sex again: Autoclave
If you really shouldn’t have had sex with the person you just had sex with: Golden Jackal Song
If the person you’re in love with is a real pill:
a) if you’re feeling pissed about it: Pseudothyrum Song
b) if you don’t really care: Orange Ball of Love
c) if you like Greek mythology: Deianara Crush
If you’re in a mutually destructive relationship and it’s making you sad:
a) if you’re in the bathroom: Have to Explode
b) if you’re in the living room/bedroom: Game Shows Touch Our Lives
If you’re in a mutually destructive relationship and it’s making you angry:
a) if you like rhymes: Baboon
b) if you’re in Florida: Alpha Sun Hat
c) if you’re in Florida and also drunk on a bus: See America Right
d) if you’re in a car: Scotch Grove
If you’re in a mutually destructive relationship and it’s making you passive-aggressive: Spilling Toward Alpha
If you’re in a mutually destructive relationship and it’s making you horny: Oceanographer’s Choice
If you’re in a mutually destructive relationship and you feel like you have to honor that: Old College Try, Alpha Rats Nest
If you’re in a mutually destructive relationship and you don’t give one good goddamn: No Children
If you’re fucking tired of hearing from this person who doesn’t love you anymore. If they’re so fucking sure they don’t love you, why do they keep sending you fucking postcards?: Source Decay
If you have literally no idea how to take care of babies:
a) immediately after birth: San Bernardino
b) some days later: Pink and Blue
If you’re pretty sure your only meaningful interactions these days are with wild animals, and that doesn’t bother you as much as it should: Snow Owl
If you’re in love with someone who is in a relationship with someone else: Standard Bitter Love Song #8
If you and the person you love are both in relationships with other people:
a) if you’re sad about it: So Desperate
b) if you’re happy about it: Alibi
c) if you’re in denial about it: Going to Maine
If you’re in love with someone and it feels absolutely terrible:
a) if you’re unable to talk about it: Alpha in Tauris
b) if you have a child: Poltergeist
c) if you’re in a car: West Country Dream
d) if you like Soviet-era geopolitical similes: International Small Arms Traffic Blues
If you’re in love with someone and miserable for other reasons:
a) if you feel that you will never be entirely comfortable with anyone: Riches and Wonders
b) if you sometimes go for walks by yourself late at night: Moon over Goldsboro
If you’re in love with someone and it feels OK, but you’re pretty sure it’s going to get worse from here:
a) if you’re still trying to have a good time: First Few Desperate Hours
b) if you’re pre-emptively having a very bad time: Letter from a Motel
c) if you like ominous imagery: Tallahassee
d) if you like references to Aristotelian poetics and you’re in a car: The Recognition Scene
If you’re in love with someone and the shit is juuuuust about to hit the fan:
a) if you’re impatient for it to do so: Alphonse Mambo
b) if the other person doesn’t know yet: It’s All Here in Brownsville
c) if the other person doesn’t know yet and also you’re in the shower: Shower
d) if the other person knew first and you wish they would just come out with it already: New Britain
e) if you’re in a car: Horseradish Road
If you’re in love with someone and it feels great, but that’s mostly because you’re a teenager and you don’t have a lot else to feel good about:
a) if your partner is slightly exploitative: Dinu Lipatti’s Bones
b) if your partner is slightly criminal-minded: Attention All Pickpockets
c) if your home life is very bad: Broom People
d) if there are UFOs: Tulsa Imperative
e) if you’re high on pills and you’re in a car: Dilaudid
If you’re in love with someone and it’s actually making you happy:
a) if you’re in a pretty quiet mood and it’s raining: There Will Be No Divorce
b) if you’ve got a motorcycle: Jenny
c) if you romanticize the Old World: Flight 717: Going to Denmark
d) if you romanticize the New World: Going to Mexico
e) if you’re in a car and the relationship is going to last: Twin Human Highway Flares
f) if you’re in a car and it isn’t: Alpha Incipiens
If you’re not really in love anymore, at least not in a way that an impartial observer would recognize
a) if your job gives you lots of vacation time: The Mess Inside
b) if you spend all your money on ephemeral goods: Fault Lines
c) if you blame your partner for the whole situation: Standard Bitter Love Song #4
d) if your partner smokes: Orange Ball of Hate
If you’re just straight-up in a car:
a) if it’s hot with heat: The Car Song
b) if it’s hot with hatred: Family Happiness
c) if you’re in New York: Going to Port Washington
If you and the person you’re in love with are separated by a large quantity of land/water:
a) if they’re farther north than you: New Star Song
b) if they’re farther south than you: Noctifer Birmingham
c) if you’re sad about it: Raja Vocative
d) if you’re sad about it and interested in Aztec mythology: Quetzalcoatl Eats Plums
e) if you’re resigned to it: Dutch Orchestra Blues
f) if you’re resigned to it and don’t like crows: Distant Stations
g) if you’re fabulously, cartoonishly lonely: Any Available Surface
If you and the person you’re in love with are separated, period:
a) if it just happened: Woke Up New
b) if it happened an embarrassingly long time ago: Half Dead
c) if it happened in a parking lot: Somebody Else’s Parking Lot in Sebastopol
d) if you’re very bitter about it: Standard Bitter Love Song #1
e) if you’re very bitter about it and have a gun: Black Molly
f) if your sadness feels like such a permanent and physical presence that you’re thinking maybe you should start introducing it at parties, like, “Hi, I’m John, this is my sadness, nice to meet you”: Waving at You
g) if they owe you an improbably large sum of money: Alpha Desperation March
If your actual relationship status is unclear, but you think everything might eventually be OK:
a) if this is because you are aware of the transience of both pain and happiness: We Were Patriots
b) if it’s because you’ve just had a tulip-related moment of catharsis: Minnesota
c) if there are dogs nearby: Weekend in Western Illinois
Tags: emma stanford, john darnielle, love, misery, mountain goats, nicole’s favourite band
Related Posts
Literary Trysts It Gives Me Great Joy To Think About: Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman
Best Line Readings From When Harry Met Sally
The Saddest Endings of Hans Christian Andersen Stories
What We Talk About: THE AUTHORITATIVE CUT
A Very Excellent Sad Song About December
“Leader of the Pack,” The Shangri-Las
am i still allowed to read the toast if i’ve never knowingly listened to this band
You have until the end of the business day to rectify the situation, please go listen to \”This Year,\” the video is on YouTube.
Alright fine
*listens*
yeah, it’s good. It’s a bit folk-rock crossed with britpop which is cool.
Good, you passed the first test. It’s a slippery slope from here…
“The Sunset Tree” and “Tallahassee” are my 2 favorite albums, personally. Both are really personal, and pretty cohesive. “Sunset Tree” is pretty heavily about childhood abuse and dealing with the aftermath of that and has some AMAZING songs. “This Year”, as already recommended, is fantastic and sometimes I just lie on the floor and listen to it on repeat. If you think an album about living with abuse sounds too negative, be aware that it’s also about healing and forgiving (as much as possible) and surviving. “Tallahassee” is pretty much a novel in album form, with each song being a chapter.
I have never not cried while listening to This Year. It is so tied in my mind to a specific time in my life when I thought I would never get my ish together and while I was not dealing with an abusive situation personally, the song became a general rallying cry to help me work through things. So much love for John Darnielle!
I know it’s really over used, but the song is so FIERCE. It’s so much about survival and clinging on to hope in its own dark way, and stubbornly refusing to give in to both life and destructive impulses. Ahhhh it’s so great. I like to pair it with Flogging Molly’s “Worst Day Since Yesterday” and “Every Dog Has Its Day”
I keep thinking I should listen to more of the Mountain Goats, but then I just end up listening to “This Year” twenty times in a row.
You can make it past this stage. We’re here to help you.
Where to begin? This is where I am right now. Occasional yelling rendition of “No Children” also happens from time to time.
Oh man I made a perfect Intro to the Mountain Goats mix for my boyfriend and converted him after three years of him saying “I think the guy has a weird voice, I don’t like them.” I HAVE EXPERIENCE IN THIS FIELD. I will return with the track list.
The first four songs of All Hail West Texas are a perfect little set of perfectness:
The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton
Fall of the Star High School Running Back
Color In Your Cheeks
Jenny
HAAAAIL SATAN. HAAAAIL SATAN TONIGHT.
I need your help! I had never even heard of the Mountain Goats and then I saw John Darnielle live this past fall at an event I went to for the comedy. I liked it in theory but was severely bummed out. Does that just come with the territory?
Some of his songs are less depressing than others. You might like “Lovecraft in Brooklyn,” “Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton,” “This Year,” “Dance Music,” “Pink and Blue.”
A little bit, but if there was ever a common theme running through all tMG songs it would be triumph in adversity. The people in the songs are in bad situations most of the time, true, but the songs themselves are anthems to help them (and probably you) out of those situations. Brigidkeely’s song recommendations are good, but I would emphasise ‘Jenny’ as one of the most joyful. Check it out!
I mean this with every fiber of my being and without a shred of hyperbole: Jenny is the single best love song I have ever heard, full stop. I don’t want to start quoting favorite lines from my favorite Mountain Goats songs because I will NEVER STOP but ahhhhhh: “And you pointed your headlamp toward the horizon/We were the one thing in the galaxy god didn’t have his eyes on”
I can’t, I can’t even.
I think a lot of it is more cathartic than outright gloomy-weepy-sad. I get this really acute wistful-angry-triumphant vibe going. That’s fun. And then there ARE some songs that are just plain fun. Or songs that are so awesomely melodramatic that it’s more like watching a movie about these crazy terrible characters. Like Breaking Bad!!!
Southwood Plantation Road!
Everyone already made such great suggestions! All the important stuff seems to have been covered, so here are a few of my favorite live performances. John Darnielle always has the best stories.
The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton. Heartbreaking and beautiful and funny.
No Children
Cubs in Five
Obligatory: the best cover of The Sign that you’ve ever heard, and ever will hear
I probably shouldn’t include two performances of Best Ever Band, but here’s an extra one anyway, because I like the intro and the performance is so good. The entire building is singing along for the whole song, and then there’s this perfect moment near the end where everyone takes a collective breath and it’s dead silent and the world stops and then everyone belts out “HAIL SATAN” at the top of their fucking lungs and it’s amazing.
I love this:
“I hold with the Gnostics, who say there are two Satans. And one can’t help you, and he’s bad. And he’s the cause of illness and disease and pain. And the other is He That Resists. And He That Stands Against those who would hold you back, and the pain that would keep you from advancing. And that is who we will now worship.”
Ack IntenseDebate is doing the stupid thing so I’m not commenting under my actual profile but I’M BACK and here is the playlist that converted the naysayer. Tried and true. It leaves out many many things but is brief as to not be overwhelming. http://rd.io/x/QQ4h7TMvnPQ/
I mean, I could, but this stage is also pretty great. (TWIN HIGH MAINTENANCE MACHIIIIINES)
best line best sonnnnnggg
The best song for when you’re curled up on the floor crying. Allegedly.
Oh good, I’m not alone.
ALLEGEDLY.
I LOVE THE MOUNTAIN GOATS
YES
YES TO THIS
If you were an angsty teen who grew up 40 miles from Atlanta and you’re in a car: “Going to Georgia”
Still an obligatory listen every time I leave the state and then go home again
Ditto.
I was introduced to the Mountain Goats about ten years ago when I realized that the Atom and his Package song “Going to Georgia” was actually a cover (and I think AahP covered a few other MG songs but I can’t recall which ones, now) and I figured I should go check out the source band and BOY am I glad I did. MOUNTAIN GOATS FOREVER!
HAIL SATAN
Also recommend “International Small Arms Traffic Blues” if you’re in love with someone but you know you can’t commit right now and you’re about to leave on a six-month trip around the world but you’re still sleeping together and you really hope it works out but you know you can’t guarantee that and you can’t make him wait so you break it off and you’re both heartbroken but know it’s for the best.
That is my favourite band and this is my favourite post and I want to print copies to hand out at parties and in waiting rooms. THANK YOU EMMA STANFORD AND THE TOAST
It is telling and sad that my favourite Mountain Goats song is Autoclave.
maybe it just means you really like cellos.
I do also love cellos.
THIS IS AMAZING.
I would like to add Stars Fell on Alabama and Cubs in Five, but I’m not feeling very clever
Man I love Cubs in Five but I’m never sure if the narrator’s feeling wistful or just really trying to hurt the person he’s talking to. It works pretty well either way.
The best spontaneous car singing of my life was my friend Jeremy’s bachelor trip. We did this Napa wine tasting road trip and my OTHER friend Jeremy and I were all “let’s get some Mountain Goats happening” and then we sang, hm, 20% of the catalog? It was a perfect day.
The answer is “All of them.”
Oh my god this list makes me so happy. I am going to make a playlist based upon it RIGHT NOW.
The first time I heard The Mountain Goats was at a meeting of my pretentious college literary society, when my friend Walt basically did the Garden State/Shins thing and handed me his headphones for “Going to Georgia.” Which John Darnielle doesn’t play any more, because he now finds it misogynist, because he’s perfect, but it pretty much changed my life.
Fuck I love John Darnielle. His Twitter is the best.
His Tumblr’s pretty damn good, too. If you are a Tumblr type of person.
My first The Mountain Goats experience was listening to a Yo Yo A Go Go live comp where John plays “Raid On Entebbe,” but opens it up with lyrics from Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You,” and at the end he says, “My name is John and I am The Mountain Goats.”
But my BEST The Mountain Goats experience was seeing them play in Kentucky & at the end they did Nothing Painted Blue’s “Houseguest” as an encore (I always appreciate when they incorporate Nothing Painted Blue songs!) I’m not sure that any Mountain Goats experience I will ever have will equal the memory of watching John Darnielle crowdsurf while shouting, “It’s just a tendency I have when certain people refuse me love.”
One of the best musical experiences I’ve ever had was hearing them play California Song at FYF Fest a few years ago. Hearing the whole crowd sing “I’ve got joy joy joy in my soul tonight” as the sun was setting, and the trains were going by juuust close enough to hear them but not enough to be a bother, made this California kid so happy.
They were then followed by, of all bands, Sleep. Who are wonderful also, mind you, but it was a weird transition.
My first time with tMG: International Small Arms Traffic Blues. I thought it was beautiful and funny. Basically, if you think that kind of thing is amusing, none of the Mountain Goats stuff is depressing.
Also, JD is perfect and he’s a feminist and he regularly tweets about prochoice stuff and popcorn, which is all I want in a twitter.
my first tmg experience was when i downloaded three songs of off kazaa (don’t live like me kids)(lol 2005) — “cotton”, “love love love”, and fatefully “no children”. and all those songs are great but “no children” is the one that stuck with me and it’s the one i found myself angrily singing while going through one of the roughest year of my life.
i know a lot of people love their songs about fucked up romantic relationships, but i like the songs about mental illness or drug abuse best.
for everyone all into tmg: check out their new album, transcendental youth! fun fact: i am basically incapable of listening to “until i am whole” without crying.
If you and the person you’re in love with are separated, period:
a) if it just happened: Woke Up New
Alternately, “If you want to have your entire soul destroyed, period”.
Ugh, I have to go now and will be gone most of the day, but I also have to comment that my mom emailed me because she was literally listening to The Mountain Goats when she went on The Toast and saw this piece.
A single tear of joyful appreciation for a mother who is a Mountain Goats fan
Man, I can’t even imagine what it must be like to have a mama who’s a MG fan. It sounds amazing.
ASDFHGKLASHK INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT TOAST POST.
Six months ago I made the transition from No Children to Autoclave, which is an improvement, but is it, really?
Also: If you are ever involved in a production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”, No Children needs to seep into your soul and live there for the length of the rehearsal, the production, and years later. You must belt it at the top of your lungs at the cast party, you and the entire cast and everyone even remotely involved in the production. It is essential.
But perhaps most importantly – If this is the “relationship edition, WILL THERE BE OTHER EDITIONS?! PLEASE SAY YES.
1. This is going to be key in creating my Mountain Goats play list for every occasion.
2. I thought John Darnielle wrote this and freaked out (unclear why I believed this).
3. Everyone please look at the Taylor Swift/the Mountain Goats conceptual mixtape: http://johndarnielle.tumblr.com/post/68584827372/…
Gonna go put “was once mistaken for John Darnielle” on my resume.
WHY DOES EVERYONE LIKE THIS BAND SO MUCH
also why can’t I comment as me on my grandma’s computer
BECAUSE THEY SPEAK TO MY SOUL.
Also, speaking of computer troubles, is there any way to get that greyfaced comment I made up there linked to my actual account? My work computer was being wonky and I thought y’all changed the comment format, but nope, just shitty computer. Help, please?
No.
🙁
We really can’t, though! We don’t own intensedebate or wordpress commenting systems, so if you logged in under the wrong account, there’s nothing we can do for you. BUT WE STILL LOVE YOU.
Mallory this song has a throne of human skulls in it.
Like, no pressure, you do you, but: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ-2kbculaI
The only Mountain Goats album I have heard so far is The Life of the World to Come, and none of those songs appear to be on here, so I’ll just keep listening to “Genesis 3:23” over and over.
That album is pretty different from some of the other stuff, but it’s all good! I think The Life of the World to Come is on the more sad and slow side than the fast and angry. Theory for why none of it is on this list: it’s impossible to remember the names of any of the songs unless you’re real into the bible.
I’m really into the bible and I still can’t remember. However, looking up the stories those songs are about and then listening to the songs makes them even better. biblegateway.com works great for this.
WHY AM I JUST NOW HEARING ABOUT THE MOUNTAIN GOATS.
I just started listening and I already love this shit. Where the hell have I been, seriously?
Fully played No Children to the fifteen-year old girls to whom I was teaching a poetry unit in English. “Tell me what poetic devices are being used in this song!” I said brightly.
Hooked ’em all.
Do you think that John Darnielle going HAIL SATAN and Jeff Mangum going I LOVE YOU JEEEEZUS CRIIIIIST would create some sort of indie music paradox if they did it at the same time in the same place?
That is the secret code that ends the universe.
Years and years and YEARS ago, I had a subscription to… Rhapsody? yahoo music? Something. It was before Pandora really took off, but was basically pandora but not as good. I’d make various stations and they’d suggest music for me.
“No Children” came on one day, and it changed my life.
The Mountain Goats is incredible and John Darnielel really seems like a good and thoughtful person. “Sunset Tree” mirrors a lot of my earlier life in a lot of ways (I didn’t have a car or drink alcohol, though– I’ve always been a shitty rebel) and there’s just so much really honest emotion in all the music.
Haha Pink and Blue. That baby is too young for solids, John!
I first heard The Mountain Goats on a semi-date, driving around one of the amazing cemeteries in the outskirts of Chicago, with a guy who gave me train hobo-ing advice. It seems almost too apt.
Ohh, thank you Toast! The Mountain Goats have soundtracked everything in my life since I first heard them in 2002.
Everything on “We Shall All Be Healed” wrecks and then rebuilds me, and I never fully appreciated Tallahassee until I got divorced but it is a masterpiece, and I sing Color in your Cheeks to my kiddo every day when we’re on the train. When I start she hunkers down against me and says “cozy.”
I try to see him every time he comes to Chicago and I am NEVER disappointed.
How can it be that I have never heard of the Mountain Goats? Have my children been keeping them a secret because they want their own secret music? Must investigate. Thanks, Toast!
The first Mountain Goats show I went to featured the canonical list of mainly straight ladies I have ever had a complicated fling with. All of whom had spite with one another. Spent twenty minutes standing in an awkward triangulation to any of them trying not to notice the glaring, biked home in the dark in an April snowstorm.
Curiously, I have never been able to really get into the music. BUT I SHALL NOW TRY.
You lived one of their songs instead.
I will check out Mountain Goats by the end of the week, but does anyone else who hasn’t heard their music secretly hope it’s a band of actual mountain goats?
Have I got a tumblr for you: Mountain Goats Singing the Mountain Goats! (Not mine, just lovely, and I have reblogged 75% of them.)
Thank you for bringing to this wonderful thing to light (goats shouting “HAIL SATAN”, this is what the internet was born to do).
You’re welcome! Don’t miss Damn These Vampires goat, the poor thing. (Hail Satan goat is definitely my other favourite.)
Oh Damn These Vampires goat, I know exactly how you feel!
I may have made the “If we never make it back to California, I want you to know I love you” one the desktop picture on my work computer *awaits concerned questions from co-workers*
LOVE. Not just because of his songs (which are awesome) but because he’s also got excellent taste in music and will write at length about his loves, for example, Ignition:
http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedController…
I know he’s just quoting the bible at this point, but the way he sings “God does not need Israel, God could make children from stones” in Cobra Tattoo was the source of actual religious breaking-through for me when that album came out. (Ugh.)
My Mountain Goats problem is that once I start listening to one album, I cannot listen to anything else for weeks. So I’m clicking away from this article before I give in!
My god, I am a person who until now has only ever listened to This Year (overandoverandoveragain), and now I’ve heard Woke Up New and am crying on the floor. Thanks for the life changing moment.
I have loved, for a long time, the Mountain Goats as I love very few artists, and coincidentally my custom “I AM GOING TO MAKE IT THROUGH THIS YEAR IF IT KILLS ME” bracelet just arrived this week. Cheating that it’s already December, I know.
Also, I hope y’all have read this interview, which is hilarious and lovely. http://pitchfork.com/features/situation-critical/…
Also also, I had occasion to discover:
If you’re stuck in the hospital with inexplicable sudden-onset inability to walk, wondering if which of your other faculties might be next to go:
also Going to Port Washington (oddly enough)
(I’m ok now guys)
First, this cover of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is the best cover of any Christmas song, ever.
http://www.avclub.com/video/the-mountain-goats-co…
Second, during a bad year my now-husband, then-fiance used to listlessly quote “No Children” back and forth when we were too depressed to formulate our own arguements. (My husband is perfect.)
Grievous omission of Going to Georgia. I know JD doesn’t play it anymore but it’s so good to sing along to. Especially because it gives you something most Mountain Goats songs don’t, which is a repeating chorus.
Also, who are my mega fans who want to show me their favorite unreleased tracks? My contribution: Carmen Cicero.
I was just saying to my friends this week after the Cucumber Bandersnatch article that I was becoming neurotically convinced that The Toast was secretly being curated just for me. This magnificent article is not helping me overcome this delusion. BLESS EVERYTHING, ESPECIALLY THE MOUNTAIN GOATS.
I saw them at Sasquatch a couple of years back, before I knew much beyond Tallahassee, and let me tell you, screaming along to “No Children” at full volume with a few hundred others was a damn near religious experience. And now I know a lot more, and sitting quietly with my headphones is just the same. John Darnielle is an incredible person.
Mallory this song has a throne of human skulls in it.
Like, no pressure, you do you, but: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ-2kbculaI
Oh Damn These Vampires goat, I know exactly how you feel!
I may have made the "If we never make it back to California, I want you to know I love you" one the desktop picture on my work computer *awaits concerned questions from co-workers*
What does it say about me that I only know about this band because of Moral Orel?
The Sunset Tree was my biking music to and from therapy 3 times a week the year after my ptsd shitty father induced mental breakdown and it’s only tonight that I read the god damn wikipedia page and lyrics and realized that it’s about growing up with an abusive step father. I’m incredibly daft and not one to listen to lyrics, picked it for “This Year” and the fact that it was a nice peddling tempo and the album took about as long as my ride to Berkeley.
The Sunset Tree was my biking music to and from therapy 3 times a week the year after my ptsd shitty father induced mental breakdown and it's only tonight that I read the god damn wikipedia page and lyrics and realized that it's about growing up with an abusive step father. I'm incredibly daft and not one to listen to lyrics, picked it for "This Year" and the fact that it was a nice peddling tempo and the album took about as long as my ride to Berkeley.
as a capricorn i feel i am required to love the mountain goats. my first exposure was also “going to georgia” and i will love scream-crying along to that song for the rest of my natural life.
My love for this piece is like the border between Greece and Albania
hahaha this is awesome