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{"id":362,"date":"2011-06-28T00:06:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-28T00:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2011\/06\/362\/"},"modified":"2011-06-28T00:06:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-28T00:06:00","slug":"362","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2011\/06\/362.html","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

IF MY HEART WERE A HOUSE YOU\u2019D BE FROM A BROKEN HOME BY NOW<\/span>: The Mountain Goats, redux. I\u2019ll catch up with myself in the next post. (Really!)<\/p>\n

All Hail West Texas<\/span>: Yes, I know I already talked about this disc. I have a lot of feelings, okay?<\/p>\n

This is an album about the American experience as, above all else, transience. Post-office boxes in towns we don\u2019t live in anymore. I wonder how much this contributes to our obsession with marriage\u2013cf. Andrew Cherlin on European obsession with birthrates rather than marriage, for example. Home is anywhere you<\/span> hang your head. Home is anywhere you hang my effigy.<\/p>\n

The standard, effective guitar chords often serve in place of rhyme\u2013a way of making simplicity seem more than sincerism. The chords make the songs rhyme in your heart, if you\u2019re an American raised on the \u201cthree chords and a hope\u201d of rock\u2019n\u2019roll.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlues in Dallas\u201d is a 25-cent hymn on a jukebox heard from the bottom of a bottle. \u201cWill I see you there\/When that final trumpet blows?\/Will I see you there\/When that final trumpet blows?\/If I don\u2019t see you there\/I will run\/a comb through my hair\/and I will wait.\/I will wait.\/I will wait.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd night\u2026 night comes to Texas.\u201d (last song on this album, quiet, shaky)<\/p>\n

Tallahassee<\/span>: \u201cMoon stuttering in the sky like film stuck in a projector\u201d\u2013this is the exact kind of expressionist metaphor which will always<\/span> work for me. Art is more real, in our experience of life, than the raw experience itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I hand you a drink of the lovely little thing\/On which our survival depends.\/People say friends don\u2019t destroy one another.\/What do they know about friends?\u201d<\/p>\n

I got really into Elvis Costello because of his lyrics. I don\u2019t know if that can happen with the MG (this<\/a> is how it really happened for me) but maybe if I quote the lyrics enough you can find out for yourself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe House that Dripped Blood\u201d: the whole first verse<\/a> is amazing, and that killing harmonica whine at the end just makes it. Dostoevsky had a spider the size of a marriage; this song has a mosquito.<\/p>\n

\u201cthe cellar door is an open throat\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cdig up the laughing photographs\u201d\u2013wow, this really is a horror movie of a song. I bet this house has laughing windows, too.<\/p>\n

And then that IV needle of a harmonica, which carries you all the way into the vein.<\/p>\n

I hope I\u2019ve already made clear what I think of \u201cNo Children.\u201d<\/a> It\u2019s like getting punched in the face by all the girlfriends you never even got the chance to disappoint. It\u2019s what dripped into Loki\u2019s face all those years in the cave with Sigyn. It\u2019s like if the present and future and subjunctive tense ganged up on the past and beat it up in an alley and stole its lunch money\u2013and then spent the money proving it right.<\/p>\n

Oh hey, I seem to have crossed \u201cThis Year\u201d with \u201cOld College Try\u201d even though they\u2019re basically opposites. Story of my life! \u201cThings will shortly get completely out of hand.\u201d Wow, the contrast between the easy chords and bass and synth\/organ here vs. the brutal, hope-in-a-hopeless-world lyrics really hit me in a part of my 1980s day-glo heart which will always be badly bruised. Fans of Diamanda Galas\u2019s poppier, more fluorescent songs might like this.<\/p>\n

\u201cOceanographer\u2019s Choice\u201d: Disorienting, bitter, catchy, poppy, self-lacerating. Are we totally sure this isn\u2019t an \u201980s MTV hit with the synth stripped out? \u2026Seriously, not sure I could love this more unless it somehow incorporated the Reagan-era \u201cit\u2019s happy hour in America!\u201d day-glo swizzle-stick aesthetic.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd night comes to Tallahassee.\u201d (not the last song, but ferocious and vengeful)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"