This one is personal. If I had my own band or wrote/performed my own songs this is what I would sound like, this is what I would be writing about (maybe add in some Strat-O-Matic songs). John Darnielle created the Mountain Goats concept first as an expression of himself but now it's evolved into a full band. Darnielle writes about many interesting and obtuse subjects often autobiographical. He's made albums about his experiences growing up in an abusive/neglectful home and his adolescent survival (The Sunset Tree-2005), an album I consider a master class in the use of dissociation and fantasy as survival skills for teenage boys. Now he has written an ode to 1970's Texas circuit wrestling. Of course this is deeper than just wrestling, though many of the characters (Chavo Guerrero and King Kong Brody) are real but this is using wrestling also as a metaphor about life-death and basically being in uncomfortable life places. As silly as wrestling is, I look at the world we live and this vast need to escape and of all things wrestling holds up pretty well. Wrestling isn't subtle, the characters are broad and good/evil are clearly marked. For a large % of the population this is a pretty harmless place to hide for a few hours and have something -even if fake represent a world that is clear where someone can represent YOU and maybe even win,
"I need justice in my life, here it comes", " You let me down but Chavo never did". Then you can go back into a world that will not play fair and screw you every day but no one is left to actually represent you. It's simple but it needs to be for some. Think about the Republican debates- c'mon isn't WWE truer and better skilled, what someone could do with a foreign object in those debates.
The Legend of Chavo Guerrero
Foreign Object
Darnielle is also a writer and published Wolf In White Van last year which won a major book award.
Wolf in White Van is the first novel by the American author and singer-songwriter John Darnielle. Wolf in White Van tells the story of Sean Phillips, a reclusive game designer whose face has been severely disfigured. One reviewer characterizes Sean as someone "steeped in video games, bad sci-fi movies, and Conan the Barbarian comic books". The plot, which is told non-chronologically, alternates between Sean's childhood, adolescence, and adulthood to describe the circumstances surrounding the incident that disfigured him. A fictional play-by-mail role-playing game called Trace Italian figures prominently in the novel. The play by mail feature especially struck a note reflecting a 70's thing for those of us who partook. I am reading the book currently and see a lot of the same themes as his music.
Here's a video which gives some more insights into Darnielle as he talks about "Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan" This may not make anyone else's top 10 20 30 whatever but I really connect with his music and it scares me that I hear character thoughts that feels like deja vu. The Sunset Tree is in my opinion the best capture of child abuse dynamics I've experienced and many of his songs-reflections are quite funny because the truth often is in reflection.
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