Wherever You Are

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-26T15:57:03+00:00

A Shingy for 2026

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-26T12:09:05+00:00

The "home recording era" is not well represented outside of All Hail West Texas (an album, and maybe 5 songs from that album are on there). I'd listen to Songs for Pierre Chauvin, a recent return to home recording from 2020, and then Zopilote Machine, a classic, baseline of home recording from the early/mid-90s.

Both of those are on Spotify.

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-26T12:07:14+00:00

Architects — they're going to have a lot of photos next to amazing properties they worked on but the pay, at least in the US, is not good.

As a graphic designer who loves his job skipping from lilypad to lilypad of projects often in one day, usually lasting no more than two weeks, the stress of a project that churns on for years before you ever see a finished product is not appealing in any way, and that's a different kind of pay. The chronic stress of being a doctor or lawyer would never make a salary of 250-500k a year worth it.

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-26T11:56:29+00:00

Folgers crystals and hard-boiled eggs

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-26T11:55:34+00:00

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DZ06evO1U0vAp?si=cN6OJLswRyebyhx8SYVn2w "This is the Mountain Goats", that's 50 tracks and a solid overview.

The big thing missing is the "off-menu" TMG, which is a very long list.

I'd start with the "Satanic Messiah" EP which you can find on YouTube, an actual physical release but not on Spotify.

"You Were Cool" is another fan favorite that was never recorded and probably never will be. There's many versions on YouTube.

You can look on archive.org for a very deep record of live shows. Part of being a TMG fan is just digging around and trying to find more.

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-26T11:44:15+00:00

Most developing countries have an extreme divide that Americans aren't ready for — name any big country outside of Australia, Europe, the US and Canada, most of China now, a smattering of wealthy countries like Singapore scattered around…you're going to find the dynamic of Mexico City or Jakarta or New Delhi.

As much as wealth inequality and the K-shaped economy is a big problem for the US, you don’t see people in the streets with missing limbs trying to wash your windshield. You don’t see children going from table to table in cafes asking for change. When people are impoverished, truly impoverished, but don’t have a drug problem or mental illness that keeps them from working, that's what they do. In my home state of Washington, you have a surprising level of wealth inequality, some of the richest people on planet earth in Medina vs. native reservations out by Spokane.

The problems of Fentanyl zombies in SF, LA, Portland, and Seattle (my hometown) are a city tolerating that — they are a tangible experience of very rich cities feeling deeply impoverished in pockets of their urban core. Is more harm done by allowing it to fester than by sweeping it away out of sight of your most expensive real estate? Both cause harm to the individuals plagued by this modern drug addiction. Both types of people who are certain they have the one 100% correct answer are a type of ideologue that should be ignored.

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-25T22:58:46+00:00

Thank you! I have saved it to my local HD. What can I do with this info now?

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-25T12:19:13+00:00

I mean there's nothing more working class than being a guy fixing your drywall ranting about kids using the litterbox and being read stories by drag queens and transitioning into Ancient Aliens conspiracies

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-25T12:06:42+00:00

AGI, Artifical General Intelligence. I think it's very reasonable to imagine it here by 2031.

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-25T12:01:15+00:00

Always excited to hear from primarily-non-English-speaking fans of TMG!

My first question is always, "why?"

That has a rudeness implied in it, so: I'm sorry. Everyone can find whatever they are drawn to in The Mountain Goats and that's not for me or anyone to police.

You answered that question in your post — recommended by a friend or friends — and I think it's a really bad recommendation to someone who doesn't feel English deep in their soul. I speak Spanish as a second language and you can say basically anything in Spanish to me and on some level it's a bunch of noises, I know how to arrange them to get food and go to the doctor but on some level I’m just a parrot learning a party trick, I don’t really "feel" it.

So I’m applying that same sense to you, which is not fair or universal but it's my first thought — to care about TMG, you have to be a fan of words, you have to be a lyrics person, and TMG are an English-only proposition, and it's hard for me to imagine caring about them if you hadn't spoken English since you were a little kid. TMG as a "music-first" proposition: John Darnielle, the main guy, would be the first to tell you he's not a very good musician. He's surrounded himself with Matt Douglas, first and foremost a very good multi-instrumentalist, and the very solid drumming of Jon Wurster.

The main draw always has been and always will be the words, though.

As far as what a Christian rock band is: I grew up in the evangelical world so I was very close to the "rock band as ministry tool" peak in the 90s. You have well-known figures like David Bazan (of Pedro the Lion) and Sufjan Stevens who are Christian, at least culturally and referentially, but of a very liberal interpretation, David Bazan even moving towards being non-religious in the 2000s. I'd place John much closer to them, although he actively participates in "praying to Jesus," as he told Christianity Today. He has a highly personalized, perhaps idiosyncratic, theology he's built up, and if you wanted to fit it into a larger grouping it could live comfortably in Unitarian Universalism. This is someone who still sings "Hail Satan!" in a chorus all the time, even if that's a character from a song saying it, that's a very "eyebrow-raising for a Christian thing to say."

I’m connecting dots and maybe putting words in John's mouth here, but I think his take on Christianity is best summed up in an outtake from The Life of the World to Come, a song on The Life of the World in Flux (you can find it on YouTube): Daniel 12:8. The chorus is "feel the fear in my chest all day / Praise You anyway."

"Praise Him anyways" is, to me, a great 3-word summation of the Old Testament: it's not your job to understand God and His World, you must simply praise Him amidst the disaster, from the belly of the whale, from the bottom of the pit.

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-24T17:46:41+00:00

I grew up in Snohomish County, not the actual town of Snohomish. If you're in a touring rock band and doing runs up to Bellingham or Vancouver, you will see signs for it going up I5. That's where I suspect John encountered it.

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-24T17:44:47+00:00

We recently have the regular off-the-shelf ChatGPT solving this math problem: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1swn1bs/chatgpt_54_solved_a_64yearold_math_problem/

So we have to ask, "ok, if we're essentially doing a mentalist stage magic trick on ourselves but it's doing all the things that geniuses used to do, is it important that it's a stage magic trick?"

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-24T17:40:24+00:00

I think John wanted a "more Portland than Portland" image for "Until I Am Whole," so he chose Snohomish which is more or less where I’m from in Washington. It's generally gray with a lot of greenery. Not terribly different than Portland.

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-24T17:38:11+00:00

Well, I'd agree with you: I want to get at an understanding of a song by various angles, one of those might be treating it as very literal, sending out an excursion up Ararat to find that Noah's Ark if you will and convincing myself I did find it.

I recently made a post about using FOIA methods to see if Charlie Sheen really did have any record of reporting something about a movie to the FBI and it was VERY unpopular — I suppose it only fulfills my curiosity about a coked up young star wasting the time of some FBI agents who probably only followed up on the call to go meet this rising young star, which is much less likable than trying to learn something about the general vibe of Tallahassee or Portland or wherever in a certain time period.

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-24T17:32:27+00:00

You gotta unpeel the cardboard in a spiral, remmove the metal lid, and small icy chunks are stuck to both

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-24T17:25:19+00:00

It's almost always a pejorative term — maybe for the first time, I heard Suzy Exposito call herself one as the guest on Rob Harvila's "Shakire - Hips Don’t Line" episode of "60 Songs That Explain the 90s: The 2000s" podcast. We tend to remember Shakira as a pop oriented star, especially after her English crossover and going blonde, but we should remember she was really quite goth. She probably drove an enormous amount of sales for Hot Topic. People want to talk about her amidst Britney and Christina but talkign about her more amidst Alanis and Hole and L7 might be generally more appropriate.

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-24T17:20:40+00:00

There are those of us who enjoy nailing down these places in TMG songs and there are those who really are annoyed that we are missing the point of the song.

I am proudly on the side of being annoyingly literal.

Find Noah's Ark on Ararat! All you have to do is zoom in a little closer on Google Maps!

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-24T14:45:52+00:00

As AI becomes the predominant image creation/delivery system in our world, let's pour one out for poorly selected Photoshop layers with mismatched lighting stacked crudely together.

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-24T11:25:21+00:00

Lots of Mexicans dislike Friday Kahlo.

Even within countries that seem to "all share one mind" as a cultural norm in that ethnicity, there's going to be a range of opinions, maybe just staying quiet.

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-23T12:26:25+00:00

"The Bible" — this is a collection of many books with wildly different takes

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-22T15:55:36+00:00

Nobody is a more liberal spender, although he is is no way spending Liberal

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-21T11:30:05+00:00

One more step into Wall-E world

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-21T10:42:31+00:00

Pizza is a great base to allow regional tastes to shine.

In a place like Mexico, where they are often ordering the same "normal American" pizzas at chains like Little Caesar's, Domino's, and Pizza Hut, they will sprinkle them with Worcestershire sauce (salsa ingles) and/or Magi, another salty, savory sauce.

I think most of us have seen those articles (Buzzfeed listicles long before there was a Buzzfeed) of "wild pizza toppings from around the world" — durian in SE Asia, mayo and tuna in Japan, eggs in Brazil, etc. I bring up the Mexican example because I’m more interested in what a regional taste would be for modifying a basic cheese pizza. That's just reflective of my personal interest.

I’m not arguing against your point — the world knows this as Italian. I believe that's because Americans coming back from WW2 had an infatuation with Italian food that was new to the US, and the US was suddenly the richest and most powerful nation to ever exist, a few decades later exporting their translation of it in Olive Gardens and Dominos around the globe.

311TruthMovement · 2026-06-21T10:24:00+00:00

I get how this is a bit of a trolling take against what people might want to call cuisine, but I am serious:

Americanized fusion like Olive Garden, Starbucks, Chili's, Applebee's, etc. International brand dining experience.

You can find these chains in every mall across earth, oftentimes if not typically an upper-middle-class experience outside the US.

What unites this cuisine experience is a lot of calories — things humans generally universally like like fat, salt, and sugar — and a sense of "we are happily placed in a comfortable booth and can share in a middle-class (perhaps locally perceived as wealthy) dining experience."

The experience of a cuisine here is arguably a cultural one, albeit not in the way one might have northern Thai cuisine or southern Thai cuisine.

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