js_thrill | This Year 365 songs: January 9th (Reply)

January 9th's song is Solomon Revisited Revisited (a song whose title was apparently wrong on the tape sleeve, per the annotations, and thus also on the youtube video):

Watch on YouTube

The annotations for this song include a poem by a polish poet (Miron Białoszewski) which Darnielle explains as informing the poetics of Mountain Goats writing. This song really dovetails perfectly with him relating the influence of this poem, which I will reproduce here (Darnielle includes the full text, but I found it online here):

And Even, Even If They Take My Stove Away…

My Inexhaustible Ode to Joy

I have a stove
similar to a triumphal arch!

They take away my stove
similar to a triumphal arch!!

Give me back my stove
similar to a triumphal arch!!!

They took it away.
What remains is

a grey
naked
hole.

And this is enough for me;
grey naked hole
grey naked hole.
greynakedhole.

I don't know that too much needs to be said, listening to even just this one song, and looking at this poem, you can see how there was clear influence.

The other thing that is striking about this song is the thematic element of music as refuge. Two different tracks on Sunset Tree have this as an explicit element:

Dance Music
alright I'm on johnson avenue in san luis obispo
and I'm five years old or six maybe.
and indications there's something wrong with our new house
trip down the wire twice daily
I'm in the living room watching the watergate hearings
while my step father yells at my mother.
launches a glass across the room, straight at her head
and I dash upstairs to take cover.
lean in close to my little record player on the floor.
so this is what the volume knob's for.

I listen to dance music.
dance music

[song continues]

Hast Thou Considered The Tetrapod

you are sleeping off your demons
when I come home.
spittle bubbling on your lips,
fine white foam

I am young and I am good.
it's a hot southern california day.
if I wake you up, there will be hell to pay.

and alone in my room,
I am the last of a lost civilization.
and I vanish into the dark
and rise above my station. rise above my station.

but I do wake you up, and when I do
you blaze down the hall and you scream.
I'm in my room with the headphones on
deep in the dream chamber.
and then I'm awake and I'm guarding my face,
hoping you don't break my stereo.
because it's the one thing that I couldn't live without
and so I think about that and then I sorta black out.

held under these smothering waves
by your strong and thick veined hand,
but one of these days I'm going to wriggle up on dry land.

I am sure if I went through I could find less explicit references as well (or other equally clear references that aren't just the first two that jump to my head). Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton, for example, also falls under this thematic umbrella (I'll stop reproducing lyrics here, but you get the idea). So, this song (which is perfectly good as far as this stretch of early Goats goes), is both structurally and thematically, a sort of interesting keystone sort of piece.