Marduk T-Shirt Men's Room Incident 
It's funny how in these times postmodern, in which the concept of "genius" applied to an artist almost has disappeared along with the confidence that art can conjure up any more than entertainment, people at the same time be so generous with the word "genius" Charly García
is a genius
every time you pull a musical fart that does not offend too pituitary-or every time you take a throw and behaves like a 16 year old Brazilian-vodka past;
MIA toils and degrades a colossal riff Clash
and is a genius
;
Yayo Poronga grabs against a Bolivian girl, in a country where the Bolivians are continuously discriminated in the most abject, screaming "this is for you", and is a genius
.
However I do not believe in total emptying of the word "genius", because I believe in total emptying of art as a form of human exchange, and therefore I can easily use the term for a composer repetitive pedantic, overly prolific and technically limited, but that between right and wrong, can from time to time, fortunately more and more frequently, to evoke the language of his time and condense the confusion of this world polyphonic disintegrated in a sensitive, that empathy does not depend on the most obvious but more subtle. This is called
genius John Darnielle, leader and essentially only member of the band The Mountain Goats
. Darnielle
I discovered while almost everyone about eight years ago with the song
' The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton ', a folk song that would not out of place in
The Frewheelin 'Bob Dylan if not that is recorded with a tape in a cassette tape (which is perfectly audible hum), and if it were not for the folk heroes of the song are a couple of teenage metalheads who after having been despised and plan some kind of hopeless sinister revenge, never explicit in the letter- and culminates in an oddly festive "
Hail Satan! ."
A song so good that inevitably reduced in comparison to almost any other of the dozens of thronged his compositions too many albums. Graphomaniac Syndrome victim of Robert Pollard
, Darnielle seemed willing to break a record number of issues published, forgetting the fundamental principle that art is both a process of creation and selection. To make matters worse by appealing to a lo-fi sound
that instead of providing different textures had become only a more snobbery.
When I was losing interest in Darnielle, the incredibly hostile-but-sweet and powerful song
' No Children', present in his first record in a decent studio - Tallahassee
(2002) - reminded me that the guy was really serious, but that record concept that revolves around self-destructive relationship of a couple I found also a negative characteristic of the composer care too much literary craft of writing workshop, which was a vocabulary-rich songs and original in theme and development, but too cerebral and self-conscious of its "artistic." In short: amazing, but not in the best sense of the adjective. Darnielle I got bored and stopped paying attention for some years. One day I was intrigued to see what he was that kind of admired that some issues and I got an album called The Sunset Tree
, but did not listen and left him lost somewhere on my hard drive.
this summer for the first time I bought an MP3 player, a sort of I-Pod
Samsung I decided to fill the disk had not yet had time to listen, and take him
Punta Rubia along with a good collection CDs. This selection, in which he records
AC Newman, Antony & the Johnsons
and The Beta
Band - ended up being one of the sets of songs that I heard more and better in the last ten years, and he went into the best possible environments: on the bus to La Pedrera. Among the records was, of course, that
The Sunset Tree, I decided to listen after disappointment with the overrated and inconsequential
bladders Animal Collective, knowing that at least I would find well-composed songs. I started listening to The Sunset Tree
shortly after crossing the boundary between Maldonado and Rocha, and finished it shortly before reaching Punta Rubia. There was a very different musically disk overwritten
Tallahassee, and many of the flaws were still there Darnielle lyric (
i was seventeen years young ), but it was a fucking masterpiece and one of the disks full of strong emotions
I have ever heard.
Then I would learn, but not really surprised me because you can not write well about something not lived, that the disc was part of a trilogy of concept albums and largely autobiographical (Darnielle to Tallahassee
claimed that all their songs were about characters who were totally estranged), a trilogy that began with a series of portraits of friends amphetamine in Portland,
We Shall All Be Healed (2004)-a very attractive disc, and culminating with the disappointing and tearful description of her marital breakup
Get Lonely (2006), perhaps his worst album.
Which is really strange, as its predecessor, the aforementioned
The Sunset Tree is the best thing ever made and possibly the best you will make. An album that in many of his subjects is his adolescence under the oppression of a brutal and unsympathetic stepfather, who busts involuntarily wake tubal get home ('
Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod ') and daydreaming to kill a shotgun in his mouth ("Lion's Teeth
'), which contains a number of songs quite touching, full of rage and love barely contained. An album that brings a smile to the face terrorist hear Darnielle singing the verses brutal warriors '
Up the Wolves' (
'm gonna bribe the Officials, I'm gonna kill all the judge / It's gonna take you people years to recover from all of the damage / Our mother has-been absent / Ever Since We found Rome / But There's gonna be a party When the Wolf Comes Home ) or that fills you with indefinable sadness to the shadowy hopes of lovers of '
Dinu Lipatti's Bones . "
In particular, suppose that for reasons both personal and for the qualities of the song disarmed me, almost literally, with the last track, "Pale Green Things
', which evokes in its report to the son of a bitch by her stepfather but can not remember more than a few rare moments until tender and pitiful in the horse racing. At a time Darnielle said his sister called it a night at 3 am and quietly sings "
She told me how you'd Died at last " and immediately repeated his voice cracking on "
at last! "with a class of pain relief and pain that only someone who has lived with the hatred of a family member can not choose to understand.
(
heard that "at last" and down the bus, with the case of the guitar on his back and a bag hanging from each shoulder, down the street from Wonderland and seeing how far the deep blue ocean on a sunny day. Heard nothing more than the distant growl of the Atlantic and the restless buzz of cicadas. I lit a joint he had in his shirt pocket, "I only smoke in the summer, and went to the store to find the keys to the ranch. A little before arriving I had to stop to wipe my face, because I was soaking in something that was not sweat. But I felt good, very good, finally .
was summer and it was a sunny day full of expectations .)
The rear disc, Get
Lonely would be even more cathartic but too self-centered, cerebral and complainant to be really exciting, and far more melodic poor (although the sound production is virtually identical). After this avalanche autobiographical, Darnielle, luckily without leaving the good sound and good musical-traveling companions returned to their various subjects
lo-fi records with Heretic Pride, an album that takes its name from a Aura Noir theme
-a band of
Norwegian black metal-and returning to resume their usual obsessions: extreme metal imagery, historical figures of reggae, references writers of subgenres, romances complicated and violent feelings. A great album with the best drummers in the world - Jon Wurster
- which crowned him with American criticism as official poet laureate of rock today, and in which there are at least three songs master, the great individualist vision arrogantly religious theme that gives it its name, the ominous '
Michael Myers Resplendent ' and what is possibly one of his songs more profound and moving: '
Marduk T-Shirt Men's Room Incident ':
Slump Up Against the sink Hair plastered to her
cheeks Marduk t-shirt sticking to her skin Refugee from a disco in old east Berlin weightless formless blameless nameless Stray syllables were gurgling From her throat one at a time Face hidden from my view I let myself imagine she was you Only weightless, formless, blameless, nameless And when I washed my hands I ran the water hotter than I could stand Half rising to a crouch Sinking back down
to the floor when you're walking keep your head low Try not to leave traces When You Go Stay weightless, formless , blameless, nameless 
From
disc liner notes, in which Darnielle describes various features of the inspiration of the issues, this song just say that it came from a vision , an image that does not give more information. Which is right for you is one of their songs more elliptical, and that however, is both clear and open, polysemic.
The
Marduk t-shirt mentioned since the title refers to one of the most brutal and yet clownish black bands
(or where appropriate, with a lot of death
)
Scandinavian metal. Formed with the express intention of being a group brutally offensive and blasphemous, the Marduk became notorious from their first album, called Fuck Me Jesus
and whose cover displayed a picture of a woman self-sodomized with a crucifix. Material
hardcore, say. In any case
Marduk Swedes have always been something of a joke, far from the musical quality bands like Ulver
,
Emperor or Enslaved
, it was always Marduk musical barbarism and utter darkness, in some ways closer to what's abnormal and
or
Gorgoroth Dark Funeral , but with the grotesque stage Cradle of Filth's
and a sense of subtlety worthy of
Gwar (but without humor). However, they were-and are-a very popular band in the huge European market for extreme metal.
The reference to such a brutal band is ambivalent: on one hand Darnielle is a leading consumer of extreme metal, which may not be noticeable in their music but that in addition to prove that it is a thin type-nourished references many of his songs. Since its successful
' The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton ', it is usual that has references to rock groups of this subculture in his songs, particularly in the dark Satanic Messiah EP
-published simultaneously
Heretic Pride , at 666 copies sold for $ 6.66, "in which there is even a (good) song called 'Live
Sarcophagus', which owes its name to a rather obscure Brazilian metal band. Not only that: Darnielle wrote an entire book on the third disc
Black Sabbath, Master of Reality
. That is, not just pose and is not ironic.
But you also have to consider two things beyond Darnielle possible interest in the genre: the inclusion of these names and references in contrast to the smooth sound and musical economy of the topics that mention and also provide a cultural framework and Instant age. The metal, beyond some media and artists, as Darnielle himself, "I have made a renewed coolness under
, is music of people who fell from the train of fashion, who are terrified by the limits of maturity and obscured by the inadequacy of the youth, the disenfranchised generation. Music sweep is denigrated as immature, even while the largest supplier of musical virtuosos, is music of people of simple feelings and Manichean. And music is generally of late adolescents and lower-middle class, children of alcoholics and people in poorly constructed housing complexes.
There is no musical or lyrical brutality (at least explicitly) in '
Marduk T-Shirt Men's Room Incident . " On the contrary, like '
Dinu Lipatti's Bones ' or '
In Corolla ', features Darnielle exploring the edges softer and delicate his sometimes irritating nasal voice, seeking absolute intimacy with the listener and radiating sadness unfathomable. Accompaniment Music is minimal and subtle issue: just a blur of guitar arpeggio that at some point is underscored by a light string arrangement, and in the choruses, a trembling female chorus, even weaker than the desolate lead singer. Is in any case, a beautiful song that conveys the fragile melancholy of the best songs of Cocteau Twins
or Nick Drake ,
and a first listen might confunidrse with an ethereal theme of unrequited love. But in the hands of a lyricist as Darnielle, obviously that would not be so easy.
never very clear what is being described in this song: you know you are in a men's bathroom and there is a girl collapsed-either alcohol, drugs or his usual mix-soaked and with enormous difficulties in entering the lavatario or getting off the ground. No one knows what happened but without any direct reference, all connote some sort of sexual contact between the girl and the narrator. Beyond the description of his posture, his hair stuck to my face and shirt of Marduk, do not know much about the girl turned and just referred to as a "refugee from a disk of old East Berlin." The shirt of a metal band, the apparent poisoning, and why not blame the omnipresent narrator, suggests the idea that this is a very young girl, but also could simply be a good example of that kind of woman who is qualified and sums and simplifying the derogatory term of "busted." But she does not speak, so we know little about their feelings and intentions.
do know enough about the feelings of the narrator of the song and apparent participant in the above actions to the lyrics of the theme features or borders. And what I feel is, apparently, a huge fault: do not know what did and did not know under what circumstances, but there is an absolute repentance. Rather disastrous condition of the girl could involve some type of abuse or dishonest advantage of the situation, but there is a couplet ("the dark side in my eyes / let me imagine it was you") that do not fit at all. Rather, it gives the impression of a fleeting infidelity, or simply a sexual relationship haunted by the horror of sex. A fleeting erotic encounter, seen through the distorting lens and lucidly post-coital depression, in that when the blood returns from the posh to the brain, bypassing the heart. And the narrator's reaction is simply a request that the girl is completely gone.
there anything similar in the apparent contrast between the sweetness of the music and the most misogynistic of his plea that reminds me of one of the best songs of the Rolling Stones
'
Backstreet Girl. " It
- Mick Jagger among his period as macho as a lyricist, "I pray to a girl who has obviously had some sort of affair that does not follow, do not try to be anything important for him not to bother his wife, who is not part of their world and to be limited simply to be his "girl back street," a concept that is not equivalent to the proud man
back door of sodomized Willie Dixon, entertainment but you have to hide fault for not being sufficiently presentable to the official image of the singer. But despite the repellent that is the central concept of the song, there is a strange tenderness in "Backstreet Girl" that goes beyond nice melody, and that comes from the weakness with which Jagger sings, much more attuned to appeal that order. At first listen to the narrator seems a scoundrel, but we do not know the terms in which the ratio was raised, and all we saw Fatal Attraction
know how expensive it can sometimes become a volatile time.
(
After the last sentence should be a smiley doing a wink, especially after mentioning a film as repellent as above, but I guess everyone, men and women have gone through that experience very uncomfortable and sometimes frightening of when an encounter occasional sexual manslaughter is perceived by the other person as something else, and that perception-in this society in which romantic love partner is fully inflated and seems to justify more intrusive behavior, gives, or seems to give a kind the right to interfere in our lives to an extent far greater than a simple powder should be allowed. Love-word that is often referred to simply neurotic obsession, "is supposedly a fascination with a person who should show through in the constant desire of happiness of the same, but often becomes an excuse for trouble, destruction, of torture. Love is a word that defines mismatch two diametrically opposed reactions to the same person that called both a covenant between two or more adults and taking solitary individual and the right to that covenant. )
I said earlier that there was (or rather, I did not think there is very difficult to say anything before so open songs like this) abuse in the tense, somewhat dreamlike lyncheano of this song. But everything is relative in the world of guilt
Andrea Dworkin, one of the extreme feminists who inadvertently ended up discrediting the concept of feminism, argued that heterosexual sex was always a violation, the mere concept of penetration was synonymous abuse, invasion, suggesting that homosexual sex was only worth for women. Ignoring the essential stupidity of the concept and taking it to a more sensible, we must recognize that in a society in which sex remains deeply blamed, especially for women, taking an active role, which has culturally physiognomy is essentially a man may be seen as an act of courage in almost military terms, ie in terms of what matters is only the winner (male orgasm). But there are sensitive people who can not abstract from the merengue of responsibility and guilt that means dealing with an idealized damn act simultaneously especially when there is social and individual assumption of being in charge of decisions.
One woman, the Uruguayan writer
Armonia Somers said something interesting to wonder which may have happened to someone who has not lived it, in one of his best stories, Sommers takes pity on men, noting that while women do not know what to do with virginity, once lost and lose it forever, men to be virgins again whenever you are sexually for the first time with a woman. Whenever simultaneous assume the responsibilities of erection and the pleasure of others. There is some truth in that.
In any case, the narrator of this song (Darnielle is it?, he is often separated from the first person in his compositions, but given the paucity of sexual references in his numerous songs and his Catholic background would guess that is not someone who is comfortable with sexual or that it considers the most natural thing in the world) you wash your hands with the hottest water you can bear. Clearly not as innocent and not feel guilty. But wash your hands, a symbolic act as hygienic as lazy old man after Pontius Pilate called
, with the hottest water you can bear. Is punished lightly. At the same time exempt from any blame on the girl (
blameless ), in fact, exempt from any human interference in his life: he asks to remain weightless, formless, blameless, nameless. To enter in the box of what we wanted, but no traces deeply (do not want to do) in our lives.
Somehow it seems that this is not one of those stories that we have men, even among men, but Darnielle's seeping into a song, this form of expression with which the ancient troubadours trying to seduce the ladies and which their modern heirs try to prove they are better people than others, because he knows that it is sensitive material
, uncharted and possibly ineffable. Has not nothing to do with the confessional, but with poetic mapping uncharted territory for the song. A desolate and sordid yet is represented in terms of beauty for the simple recognition of his deep humanity
. That is a quality perhaps not geniuses, as qualified above Darnielle, but brave composers more interested in expressing that seduce.
