I Am a Broken Man and I Will Never Laugh Again the Mountain Goats

John Darnielle performs with The Mountain Goats at a 2015 concert in Birmingham, Ala. David A. Smith/Getty Images hide caption

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David A. Smith/Getty Images

John Darnielle performs with The Mount Goats at a 2015 concert in Birmingham, Ala.

David A. Smith/Getty Images

This story is part of American Canticle, a yearlong serial on songs that rouse, unite, celebrate and call to activeness. Find more at NPR.org/Anthem .

The first time you lot hear information technology, you lot're stunned: "I hope you die." You wonder if you heard right, and a moment after you get your answer: "I promise we both die." Released in 2002 on the album Tallahassee, "No Children" is maybe the best-known, most indelible song by The Mountain Goats, the prolific songwriting projection of author and musician John Darnielle for over 25 years. Simply more than that, it has found a place in recent history equally an anthem to dysfunction, able to unite listeners in a sentiment that makes you gasp and laugh all at once.

Upwards to the early on 2000s, The Mount Goats' music was the definition of a cult taste: A nasally voice and bare acoustic guitar, often recorded on a department-store boombox, which wrapped Darnielle's lonely characters in a blanket of record hiss. Tallahassee was a turning point: Tracked top to bottom in a real studio, with a dedicated backing "band" in multi-instrumentalist Peter Hughes, and released by the storied British indie 4AD. It even had a divers narrative arc, tracing the crumbling marriage of an addict couple, whose story had been hinted at in songs scattered over The Mountain Goats' offset decade.

When I reached Darnielle at a studio in Durham, North.C., where he lives with his family unit, he said the programme was to give these damaged characters the broad stage they seemed to exist yearning for. "I would really dwell on their desolation," he explained, "and have them celebrating the difficult, ugly parts of the time before divorce." With a tinkling piano riff and a bobbing rhythm, "No Children" announces itself every bit the centerpiece of that story, equally one grapheme simultaneously vents frustration, admits defeat and revels in failure, all from the very offset lines: "I hope that our few remaining friends give up on trying to relieve united states of america / I promise we come up with a fail-rubber plot to piss off the dumb few that forgave u.s.a.."

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Though the band rarely performed it at kickoff, requests from fans helped plough it into a live staple. Within a few years it had become something more. Search for live recordings and you lot'll hear entire rooms shouting its searing chorus. Poll the fanbase and, amazingly, you lot'll find couples who claim it as "our song." Lyric tattoos are not unheard of. Joseph Fink, creator of the powerhouse podcast Welcome to Night Vale and a Mountain Goats superfan, says the song finds its power equally a vessel for catharsis: "I suffer from anxiety, and one of the virtually helpful things I've learned is that if you fight feet, if you start to experience yourself going into a panic attack and you effort to stop information technology, that makes it worse," he explains. "['No Children'] is a vocal that says, 'No, I simply want to stay in this painful moment. I merely want to experience this painful moment, and accept joy in how dark we can brand this moment.' "

In the years since Tallahassee, Darnielle's life has changed. His band has swelled to a iv-slice, with a well-received album every twelvemonth or 2 similar clockwork. He's published a handful of novels, been interviewed by Terry Gross and Marc Maron, had a beer named in his accolade. He has two children. More than recently he's been the subject of Fink's latest podcast, I Just Listen to the Mount Goats, on which the two dissect his work song past song. But even now, he admits he's never created anything quite similar "No Children" — a breakup vocal so nighttime information technology's funny, in whose jagged refrain y'all can't help just hear a piddling of yourself at your very worst.

As role of NPR'south American Anthem series, I asked John Darnielle to explain just where "No Children" came from — and what information technology's been like to sentinel a generation of fans elevate and embrace it as anthemic.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Daoud Tyler-Ameen: Can we start with what "canticle" ways to you? The American Canticle series has a working definition : "a rousing or uplifting song identified with a particular group, trunk, or cause." Only in the music manufacture, it's too kind of a buzzword.

John Darnielle: Sure. If I were to open Spotify I suspect I would be able to detect a playlist chosen "Anthemic Indie." That's a whole separate genre at this point — and it means that it'south mastered very hot and that someone says "whoa-oh, whoa-oh" at some indicate, which is non anthemic. The notion of the anthemic predates that, and information technology'southward a weird hijacking of the concept.

An canticle stands in for something. It's like a flag: It's allegorical, but it'due south emblematic in sound rather than in vision. If we have an anthem, and then nosotros can lock into the same feeling and the same shared set of ideas about something. I mean, this is not actually what happens: If we all sing the national canticle together, we probably take unlike feelings nigh information technology. But the idea is that anthems are sort of a shared codex for sentiment, that people can sing together.

Which may not have been what you had in mind when you wrote "No Children" sixteen years ago, but I would argue it fits that definition today. Tell me how that song, and the album Tallahassee , came virtually.

When 4AD got in touch on with me in 2000, they asked — as labels who are getting ready to pay for a studio budget do — "What would you lot want to exercise with your album?" And I wanted to come up with a pitch that would encourage them to want to sign the states, because we'd been trying to get a little more widely known. And I said, "Well, I have these characters I telephone call the Blastoff Couple."

I was sort of following poets that I liked who accept characters that they render to once again and again, specially John Berryman. I besides was rooting this in the fact that, for the people I grew up with in Southern California, divorce was a more mutual reality when we were children than it was for people elsewhere in the country. If I knew somebody whose parents divorced when they were 14 or fifteen I would call up, "They should accept gotten it out of the way when you were younger, so you wouldn't call back as well." So I was sort of delving into my thoughts and feelings virtually that, building characters, and having many alternate timelines for them. Sometimes they say they take children, sometimes they don't. I spent, six, 7, eight months writing the songs, looking at old notebooks, trying to find what the thread would be.

"Taking a geographical" is a term from recovery where you lot think, if I go somewhere else, possibly that will fix my problem. Which, of course — if you are an alcoholic in Claremont, you will too exist an alcoholic in Portland. The phrase in recovery is you lot can't run away from yourself. And I idea, "Well, I should become them to Florida." They were trying to run as far away from California, where they were from, equally they could — and the idea was, they get to Florida and run out of land, and so they set up in Tallahassee. Midway through the writing, I'm thinking virtually what defines their life down there, and I thought, "Practise they have kids or non?" At this point I had enough of the new songs to get, "No. Nether no circumstances do you put children in these people's lives." I was working with children at the time, so I knew more most children than I had when I was writing the original songs 5 or six years earlier.

What kind of work were you doing?

I was a counselor for Lutheran Social Services at a placement for kids who, for any reason, weren't with their parents. This wasn't a locked facility — our kids went to school, and nosotros would take intendance of them in the forenoon and the afternoon — it was the ability to provide structure and care and love. We talked openly about, "Love these kids as hard as yous can, because a lot of them haven't had that."

Then "No Children" is set up within both of those things. I'm caring a lot well-nigh children — that's where the title comes from. And I'm feeling some of my characters' glee. But I'm also placing myself in a position of judgment, trying to make sure that the fact that these are not people you lot desire to exist around is clear.

Sure. Although you chose to be around them for "six, seven, eight months," equally you lot said.

And for the residual of my life! I have them inside me. But that's the balance. We love the Wicked Witch of the West, but she lights people on fire. That's the tension of grapheme, in general: We want a identify to safely indulge parts of ourselves that we would never in our lives, or hope not to. I'm always dwelling on that tension, because I think you get the better version of information technology if y'all're conscious of the harm these people do.

The present-solar day Mountain Goats, clockwise from lesser: John Darnielle, Jon Wurster, Peter Hughes, Matt Douglas. Jeremy Thou. Lange/Jeremy M. Lange hide explanation

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Jeremy M. Lange/Jeremy M. Lange

The present-day Mountain Goats, clockwise from lesser: John Darnielle, Jon Wurster, Peter Hughes, Matt Douglas.

Jeremy Thou. Lange/Jeremy M. Lange

I oasis't gotten to do it in a long time, because this song has moved through the world and become amend known — merely every bit a fan, for the first few years after Tallahassee came out, information technology was fun to play this vocal for a friend for the first fourth dimension and watch their face up change. The severity of information technology doesn't hit you right away.

Right, because of the melody.

And the arrangement! Most of your recordings up to that betoken had simply been guitar and voice — but and so here comes this barreling, erstwhile-fourth dimension saloon piano.

Well, that's Franklin Bruno; I can't accept credit for that. He came in around day three or 4 and started laying downwardly stuff on the nuts that nosotros'd put down, and that piano was his contribution. It's not an indispensable role of the song — we exercise it with only guitar and bass, or I do it with merely guitar — but it is absolutely function of the song'southward identity.

Did it change things in terms of thinking nearly how you were going to perform information technology, given that the live ring back then was but you and a bass player? Did you accept a moment when you heard information technology where you lot were similar, "Ugh, that'south so good. Why are you making things difficult for me, Franklin?"

Well, hither's the thing. I thought it was really good, [only] I said, "We're not gonna play that one alive. Information technology doesn't really lend itself." I don't remember playing it more than in one case or twice on that tour. I mean, I kinda wanted to — merely you know, the album hadn't exactly blown up the world. If y'all look at our fix lists from that tour, you lot'd probably express mirth at how little we're trying to sell the record. According to setlist.fm, in 2002 information technology was played twice. [In 2003] it was played six times — and 2003 was a large touring year. In 2005, eight times. And that'due south when we actually started striking it difficult. Information technology becomes a staple around 2007.

And by and then you've added Jon Wurster on drums — who people might also know from the band Superchunk .

And in one case Jon got in, [nosotros saw] the possibility for opening information technology upwards live. The beat is in 6/8 — bum, budduh-bum-bum, budduh-bum-bum. It's got a chantey feel to it. When you hear that with the drums, information technology actually does encourage you lot to sort of raise your drinking glass and sing along.

So tell me what happened, in terms of reception, when you did start to perform it.

I knew that people liked it. During the days of the smaller tours, playing to 60, seventy, 80 people, I remember specific people coming up to request it, who were already quite drunk. We were playing in places that didn't have dressing rooms at the time, so I'd be hanging out at the bar. And somebody would come — it'd be a man and a woman, and they'd both exist pretty into their cups — and they'd say, "Hey, you lot gonna play 'No Children' tonight? That's our song!" I have a counselor in me, and I'k a caring person, so I want to get, "I hope information technology really isn't. If that's your song, information technology won't be your vocal together for long." I would feel kind of over-concerned.

And yet, pretty presently information technology becomes a sing-along moment in your set. I've heard live bootlegs where the whole room is shouting and then loud that I can barely hear you lot.

[Laughing] I know. It's awesome.

Does that still happen?

Oh, yep. It tin exist whole festivals. Information technology's a approving. The beginning time that happened, actually, was when I was sick at a bear witness at [the Bay Area venue] The Bottom of the Colina. If you're in an indie rock band and you go sick, mostly you don't want to abolish. People have been planning on it, people are looking forward to having a skilful time in the midst of their piece of work week. Also, we don't have a impale fee: If nosotros don't bear witness up, none of us get paid that dark.

Mind: No Children Live At Lesser Of The Colina, 2006

I call back I had gone to a song doctor at UCSF to get some steroids, but they don't kicking in right away. I had very little voice left, and I recollect people yelling for "No Children." I had put together a set with quieter songs. I was like, "This is a vocal that I can't really do for you tonight. You guys should sing information technology." And they did. And I could hear this glee. When I'm playing sick I'm worried I'm going to mess up my phonation — that's a constant stress. This cheered me up. It felt really good to hear.

It seems to me that in the early part of your career, yous knew you were doing something a lilliputian esoteric. In that location's not a lot of rousing choruses congenital to transcend infinite and fourth dimension on the early cassette recordings; information technology'southward very much similar, "This is a guy in a room doing a purposefully weird matter." Did information technology surprise you to detect you could write a song that a roomful of voices could inhabit?

I would say no. At that place'due south a song on the starting time Mount Goats tape called "Solomon Revisited Revisited," whose chorus was "I've got a radio." It was a perverse, anti-anthemic thought, this song nearly a guy who has fled to the woods to recover from some romantic wrong, but he's insisting that everything is fine considering he's got a radio. To me, that remains one of our most anthemic songs. We opened for Sebadoh in '94 at The Roxy in Los Angeles, and I was absolutely business firm that nosotros had to play that song and so I could make as many people as possible say, "I've got a radio." It's funny to me to have people singing a line that is not something you'd expect to hear them sing.

But the notion that I could sing something that became more mostly anthemic, [yes]. Because "No Children" is 1 of those songs that people who don't intendance about The Mountain Goats still hear and like and go into. That band is fine, but they have that one song I love where he says, "I hope y'all die." "I've got a radio" is never going to reach a broader audience. "I hope yous die" reaches an audience of people who didn't know they needed information technology.

It'south found its way to a lot of other musicians, too. Julien Baker , a really wonderful immature songwriter, covered it live this spring, which was caught on video .

Oh, it was the best version. It was the all-time version.

Tell me why.

Well, a cover should unearth something in the song that the original performer failed to unearth. There was a profound tenderness in that version, and it made me feel sad for the characters. To unearth that note with such force, as she did, with such clarity and such patience, is the matter.

Tallahassee is not a patient anthology. "No Children" lands with the riff, and the first thing y'all hear is me at full pitch: "Permit'south become this vocal done on the first day of tracking so I can become 100 percent of my voice on it." Her song merely sort of bleeds into the room. It resolves from a fingerpicked style, that I wouldn't be capable of playing. It lets the melody amble in. My version hammers you lot with a bunch of words. Her version lets the words bear their ain weight, so by the time that y'all get to the punchline, you wish them well. You want them to become better.

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It's been a minute since this song came out — more 15 years. In that time, the linguistic communication and understanding around mental wellness and counseling and back up has inverse a trivial bit. Has that inverse the way that you think about writing troubled characters? Does it make a difference that people today are ever and so slightly more willing to talk about things like therapy and recovery in public? Because the thing about the Alpha Couple is that they seem so utterly beyond help.

I mean, I think I've grown over fourth dimension. I have a broader palette to draw from. But for these characters, what makes them good, if they're good at all, is how unapologetic they are in their disease. They don't make whatsoever apologies for who they are. If they care well-nigh the people they injure, it's in the privacy of their hearts. And I think that'south good: It's kind of dishonest to one's characters to force them all to have some redemptive note.

But that is the surprise to me with these characters: Many people are perfectly happy for this unredeemed, self-destructive couple to be in their own black pigsty of self-detest. It's sort of this darkness that eventually glows with its ain power. Which, I doubtable, if yous've always dwelled on some resentment long enough, y'all know that they all do take their ain little glow. In a song, or in a painting, that's the correct place to sit with that — situated in a safe identify, where it won't really hurt anybody.

All these years later, do you imagine a vocal similar "No Children" as for somebody? In that location are sure kinds of songwriters who do a lot of preamble when they perform, and they'll say things like, "This song is for anyone who'southward been in an calumniating relationship and decided enough was enough." Practice you lot think about it that way?

On given nights. I don't think of a vocal every bit being possessed for all time, considering it doesn't have a text. There's a recording, only songs live in operation, correct? When y'all play information technology, you can modify information technology, or it can be a unlike audience, or yous can be be playing information technology for a different reason. On a miraculous night, where it'south visible that you're going somewhere with it that is new to you, the audition and you can meet on that ground: They tin can connect to that and exist co-authors in that moment.

But with "No Children," given that the song's been around for a little while, we're besides sharing the story of the song, something that nosotros've sung many times in many different moods. People who have been to lots of shows are re-engaging a procedure of performance with me. That'due south what makes an anthem, is that we're all sharing it. The person singing the anthem is not just singing information technology; they're encouraging someone else to sing along. I don't say to sing forth, because I don't take to — information technology just happens. And that moment of the erasure of the cocky of the performer, that is what the real joy of performance can come to be about.

Kristy Guilbault provided production back up for this story. Special thanks to Chris Bellew for the use of his recording of The Mount Goats' 2006 Bottom of the Hill performance of "No Children."

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2018/10/10/653349496/the-mountain-goats-american-anthem-no-children-dysfunction

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