SOMEDAY ALL THIS WILL BE PICTURESQUE RUINS: Final Mountain Goats post (for now).

First, some links from others. Light on Dark Water talks about the gallows humor of Tallahassee.

AM suggests that Goats fans check out Wovenhand, and offers this ferocious, Soviet-surrealism video as evidence. (He says it “would fit well with your ‘so far from God so far from the United States’ tag.”) Well worth your time. I haven’t read this interview yet.

And both CR and HEAR pointed me toward this video of Darnielle covering Ace of Base. Awesome. I love watching people love things.

And now some short notes on albums.

We Shall All Be Healed: This grew on me. (Like a fungus, yes, I know.) At first it’s scraps and postcards and bad broken memories from a really unpleasant time of life, a friend handcuffed to a hospital bed; and then it sort of comes together into the getting-clean album, cotton balls in the top drawer. The persistent punishment of not being trusted. There’s a lot of resignation to consequences (“You’re gonna do what you want to do, no matter what I ask of you,” which works both ways, from the addict to the cop or from the lover to the addict). Man, this guy really tries hard to hope in a hard-up world.

The Life of the World to Come: Another entry in the death-haunted art of friendship, with song titles from Scripture, sometimes comforting and sometimes… the other things that Scripture is. “And if my prayer go unanswered, that’s okay” reminded me of the Weakerthans’ “I want to call requests down heating vents/and hear them answered with a whispered ‘no’,” and in general I could just point you to my Weakerthans review piece instead of writing about this album.

The title of the last song pretty much says it all: “Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace.”

All Eternals Deck: “Estate Sale Sign”: Yeah, if you liked Everything Must Go you might check this one out too. Similar metaphor, similar meaning, similarly awesome, with the urgency acknowledged rather than denied as long as possible.

“The Autopsy Garland”: “Deco cufflinks and cognac by the glass,” REALLY nice use of hard consonants. “You don’t want to see these guys without their masks on. Or their gloves.”

I know the title of this song is the reason I had this thought, but it’s still true: Fans of the MGs should read Kathy Shaidle’s poetry.

I pose before a lined and numbered wall,
my head like shot-glassed whisky.