Now Here We Are Thirty Years Later

You will always have been here once. Today's epilogue episode is about commemoration, legacy, and staying warm inside the ripple. The song is John Darnielle's elegy for David Berman, 'Arguing With the Ghost of Peter Laughner About His Coney Island Baby Review.' Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thirtyyearslater.substa...

Held to my vision all these days. Today's episode is about hateful instruments, careers in lo-fi, and things coming to an end. It's 2020 and the song is 'Getting Into Knives.' Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2020-getting-into-knives 

There's gonna come a day when you feel better. Today's episode is about a strong homemade edible, meeting the President of Ireland, and making the art you love your own. It's 2019 and the song is 'Up The Wolves,'  live at the Shepherd's Bush Empire, London, on 15th November 2019.  Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thi...

Now I have everything I need. Today's episode is about self-reference, expanding ambition, and being further along in your own timeline. It's 2018 and the song is 'Younger.'  Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2018-younger 

It'll take twenty years for the toxins to flush. Today's episode is about looking back at a lost age, earnestness and foolishness, and things which dim and flicker but won't stay dead. It's 2017 and the song is 'Stench of the Unburied.'  Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2017-stench-of-...

This was my last and best idea. Today's episode is about work songs, desperation, and what an ageing wrestler can do when he can't see his way clear to a change in perspective. It's 2016 and the song is 'Blood Capsules.'  Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2016-blood-capsules

A sort of unrestrained fantasia. Today's episode is about the public and the private, rituals of humiliation, and Roland Barthes' 'The World of Wrestling.' It's 2015 and the song is 'Unmasked!'  Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thirtyyearslater.substack.com/p/2015-unmasked 

New creatures with new hearts. Today's episode is about Ozzy Osbourne and the joy and shock of playing music all around the world when you never expected to make it beyond Birmingham. It's 2014 and the song is 'Song for Black Sabbath's Second North American Tour.'  Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings: https://thirtyyearslater.su...

Clean slate. It's 2013, and I'm all over the place. Here are some Onegin stanzas. You can also read this episode at  thirtyyearslater.substack.com . Unusually it doesn't have any references, but I'm drawing on Stanley Mitchell's Penguin translation of Pushkin's  Eugene Onegin  throughout.

Feast when you can. Today's episode is about the feasts in the books I've been reading, and the famine happening in the real world right now, spotlighting a poem by Hanan Al-Kafarna. It's centred around a walk through Portland in 2022 in the footsteps of our song for 2012: 'Steal Smoked Fish.' Substack version of the episode, featuring links and references for all quotations and archive recordings...

Only one kick drum. Today's episode is about ambiguous imperatives, glowing alien rocks, universal feelings, Universal Monsters, haunting presences in the background, and a group of British and American twenty-something getting drunk in a series of French apartments. It's 2011, and the song is 'Beautiful Gas Mask.' * 'The Sink' - Chapter One of my Nantes-set novel, published by the Irish lit magaz...

It's good to be young, but let's not kid ourselves. Today's episode is about songs and sonnets, the nuts and bolts of versification, and the dramas of archival preservation: nearly-lost media, and media that I'm happy has been lost entirely. It's 2010, and the song is 'You Were Cool.' My Jenny From Thebes review for PopMatters: http://popmatters.com/mountain-goats-jenny-from-thebes Substack versio...

Sin as hard as you can. Today's episode is about Shane MacGowan, growing up Catholic in England in the 90s, knocking a few teacups off the shelves, and 'the life of the spirit' in John Darnielle's work from 'Stable Boy Song' to 'Satanic Messiah.' It's 2009, and the song is 'Psalms 40:2.'

Well, they come and pull me from my house. Today’s episode is about ‘Heretic Pride,’ monsters, pagans, ghost cowboys, how a comprehensive knowledge of unreleased Mountain Goats lyrics might come in handy when you least expect it, and a ‘large, eclectic crowd of gay people’ at the City Nightclub in 1986, enjoying ‘the best sound system in Portland & possibly the entire PNW.’ Show notes A lot of...

Max Brod Hate Club. Today’s episode is about ‘From TG&Y,’ 2007, writer’s archives, the Mountain Goats fan forums, copying mean lyrics onto your school planner, and how to move a craftsman bungalow down the Santa Fe railroad in the dead of night. Show notesInterviews:Bill Meyer, ‘Goat Ease,’ Puncture, 1994: http://web.archive.org/web/19990427042719/http://mb1.musicblvd.com/cgi-bin/tw/2881458573...

What does loneliness sound like? How do you sing it? How do you sing for it? After all, the loneliest people in the whole wide world - as John Darnielle sings on the 2012 Mountain Goats track ‘ Harlem Roulette ’ - are the ones you’re never going to see again. From context, it seems likely that Darnielle means the dead. The song explores the last night of the young singer Frankie Lymon, who found f...

Deep in the dream chamber. Today's episode is about 2005, the year I discovered The Sunset Tree: an album that changed my life. It also takes in Keats, Walter Benjamin, amateur Shakespeare productions in Rutland, and the Venerable Bede. Show notes Interviews: Puncture interview with Bill Meyer, 1994: http://web.archive.org/web/19990427042719/http://mb1.musicblvd.com/cgi-bin/tw/288145857327820_105_...

45 minutes in the pews, praying the Rosary. Today's episode is about 'Against Pollution,' Catholicism, ammonites, and spiritual 2004. Show notes Interviews Casual Magic podcast interview on John’s Hare Krishna years with Shivam Bhatt: https://casualmagic.libsyn.com/casual-magic-episode-31-mountain-goats Live shows Live at The 40 Watt Club, Athens, GA, on 2006-08-10: https://archive.org/details/tmg...

Where they manufactured what I needed. The show is back with a double episode about 'Palmcorder Yajna,' 'Devil House,' a folder full of MSN Messenger chatlogs two decades old, and the unique awfulness of being 13 and online in West Deeping in 2003. *** Show notes Books Devil House, by John Darnielle. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022. Interviews Believer interview with Daniel Handler, 2004: https://...

Oh Christ, it's those awful Alpha people again. The final instalment in this season is a double episode on 'No Children,' taking in the Offspring, the difference between a divorce and burning a house down, and the things we can't let go of until they let go of us. Show notes 06/22/13 Live show at Bottletree in Birmingham, AL, with banter leading up to ‘Alpha Chum Gatherer’: https://archive.org/det...

I want to go home, but I am home. Today's episode is about 2001, and the song 'Riches and Wonders.' It looks at millennial housing insecurity, playground insults, bad landlords, and the predations of the Colo mice. Show notes 06-17-2007 Zoop live set, featuring ‘Cobscook Bay’ and ‘Leaving Home’: https://archive.org/details/tmg2007-06-17.Zoop 09-08-2021 City Winery, NYC live banter before ‘Genesis...

I put the pieces all together, but I don't know what they mean. It's the year 2000, I'm writing mean things about my classmates in a homemade newspaper, and you're falling off that cliff somewhere in California, which I've never seen. Today's episode looks at 'Cobscook Bay,' Robert Aickman, and Rozz Williams, and has a content note for suicidal ideation. Show notes John’s introductory comments bef...

It's 1999, and John Darnielle is trying something new. Today's episode looks at 'You're in Maya,' taking in twin high maintenance machines, bad dreams about driving, language loss, and 'the Lord Śrī Krishna’s grace.' 1/27/99 live set at the Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, NC, featuring the first known performance of ‘You’re in Maya’: https://archive.org/details/tmg1999-01-27.aud.128mp3/tmg1999-01-27t07....

You must try to lead a good life. What that means will depend on your, and John Darnielle's, opinion on the following: St. Augustine, the distribution of prasadam at a Krishna-catered wedding, the history of diet culture, and those magnificent peanuts from Singapore. Show notes The Annotated Mountain Goats page, gathering many of John’s own reflections on ‘Golden Boy’: http://web.archive.org/web/2...

Arguing with the Twitter avatar of Paste's Matt Mitchell about his 'Full Force Galesburg' review. This episode runs from Antigone to Otis the Aardvark, by way of Roman re-enactors and the Romantic sublime, as I try to make sense of the snapshots of a 90s childhood. Show notes Matt Mitchell’s thoughtful and not actually objectionable ranking of the studio albums for Paste: https://www.pastemagazine...