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The Mountain Goats Get Lonely Released in 2006 8.4/10 Styles Singer/Songwriter Song Highlights Maybe Sprout Wings Moon Over Goldsboro Woke Up New |
Get Lonely is John Darnielle's 14th album as The Mountain Goats, and his followup to last years critically acclaimed The Sunset Tree. In my review of The Sunset Tree, I mentioned that the overly-lush and polished production resulted in an album that felt too-often insincere, putting me at serious odds with the rest of the music-reviewing world. The album proved to be a slow grower, and I find these days that I am significantly more fond of it, but the instrumentation still doesn't sound quite right to me. It wasn't so much that I wanted Darnielle to stick to being lo-fi (I love Tallahassee and We Shall All Be Healed), but moreso that I wanted instrumentation and production that wasn't such a blatant lunge for the heartstrings. With that in mind, I was delighted to find that Get Lonely is an extremely sparse and modest affair. The very basic instrumentation, which is dominated by acoustic guitar along with some non-intrusive piano and strings, makes for a fitting backdrop to Darnielle's most recent set of story-songs. Get Lonely is, as one would assume from its title, a breakup album, complete with a predictably somber, reflective mood running throughout its 12 pieces. Darnielle has written about relationships several times in the past, most notably on Tallahasse and The Coroner's Gambit, but those albums were always firmly rooted within the time that the characters were still together (albeit barely so at times). By contract, Get Lonely is a truly desolate affair, as Darnielle's lead-character finds himself in the fallout of a clearly not-so-pleasant separation. Get Lonely reveals one of Darnielle's greatest strengths - his ability to focus on the most truly personal aspects of getting over a breakup. There isn't a single track on the album in which he belts out universal themes of heartache and betrayal and so-forth, only quiet moments in which he notes the littlest things that have the biggest impact. The best examples can be found in the lyrics to the album's first single "Woke Up New" - "On the morning when I woke up without you for the first time, I felt free and I felt lonely and I felt scared. And I began to talk to myself almost immediately, not being used to being the only person there." Later in the song he starts blending the bleak with the humourous, singing "The first time I made coffee for just myself, I made too much of it. But I drank it all just 'cause you hate it when I let things go to waste" The sentiments are simplistic enough, but combined with Darnielle's shaky delivery and beautiful instrumentation, they become crushingly poignant. The feelings of isolation, loss and puzzlement are all there, but it's the way in which they are mixed with his half-smiling observations of the seemingly mundane that make the songs on Get Lonely get right under your skin. The album reaches a devestating conclusion with "In Corolla," a suicide song which is made particularly affecting (or perhaps harrowing) by its total absense of drama - its lyrics feature little more than sorrowful resignation on the part of the protagonist, praying for the wellbeing of his friends as his car slips under the surface of the water. It's an undoubtably powerful piece of music, and one which some listeners may even find difficult to listen to. There will be people who complain that Get Lonely is too pesemistic to enjoy, and it's true that there's rarely more than a faint spark of hope to be discovered. That being said, whether any apparent lack of optimism acts as a detterent depends completely on the individual mood of the listener. There can be little doubt that this is not an album for all occasions, but there's even less doubt that, as a break-up album, Get Lonely is a great achievement. Few albums are as emotionally powerful as this. |