#how about bleed out and jenny from thebes

[antirepurp]

another joy of the mountain goats is that 80% of the time i can say a blorbo would listen to them and wouldn't even be that far off with how many different styles their discography covers

[gideonisms]

Tbh dark in here is the ideal mountain goats album because you can either listen to it and really connect with the despair OR in a better mood it can just be a crazy series of adventures that happened to some guys! CANNOT say the same about ie transcendental youth which you basically have to listen to in the worst year of your life or beat the champ, which is a great time with only minor notes of dread and nostalgia. Idk I just think dark in here hits the sweet spot of that post-goths vibe where it's moody and atmospheric with a real sense of pathos but it's fundamentally a set of sff stories about some characters

[andie-platonically]

Fantasy High characters as songs by The Mountain Goats

1. Kristen Applebees - Before I Got There

“And the tapestry above / Torn down, trampled then re-hung / Now illegible forever / An oracle with no tongue/ All of this, all of this / All of this before I got there”

I think this song so perfectly mirrors Kristen’s relationship with both Cassandra and Ankarna. Like, both of them had been corrupted and used to further other people’s evil plans with no regard to their original followers’ intent. Until Kristen arrived. Until she lovingly restored them to their original forms with such respect to why they were created, and her compassion is one of my favorite things about her character.

2. Riz Gukgak - Ground Level

“You can light a cigarette / against the cooktop if you need to / feel the heat against your forehead / let it bleed through / you’re never gonna get by / on three hours of sleep a night / unless you absolutely have to / and then you get by alright.”

I almost picked Bones Don’t Rust, which you should also add to your Riz character playlist but I went with this one instead. We see Riz take up smoking in Junior Year, we see him not sleeping and overworking himself throughout the series, and I think a lot of that does come from a place of going beyond his breaking point, steadfastly refusing to break, and thinking that means he’s okay.

3. Fabian Seacaster - Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome / Great Pirates

I’m cheating and giving Fabian two songs because he changes so much throughout the series. Here’s the first one:

“Stay independent, make adjustments as needed / it’s losers all the way down, you stay undefeated / wage wars, get rich, die handsome.”

I think this song is peak Fabian from Freshman Year. It references motorcycle riding, the narrator genuinely thinks he’s such hot shit, and I mean like, come on. Wage wars, get rich, die handsome. It’s literally perfect. But Fabian grows. He changes. So here’s the second song I picked for him:

“On the morning when I stop looking back / I’ll be up to see the sunrise in deep, bruise black / And bright, blood red / And pale desert rose / And several other colors like those / great pirates, testing the waves.”

Okay, so obviously it was fun to use a Mountain Goats song with pirates in it, but also, I interpret this song as being about moving on from your past and looking towards an uncertain future. So much of Fabian’s arc has been him figuring out who he is beyond his dad’s legacy, and so I think this song works really well with that. (I probably could have picked any Jenny from Thebes song and it would have a lot of those themes, but come on, pirates!)

4. Fig Faeth - Cry for Judas

“Speed up to the precipice / and then slam on the breaks / some people crash two or three times / And then learn from their mistakes / But we are the ones who don’t slow down at all / and there’s nobody there to catch us when we fall.”

I think Fig’s self destructive tendencies are more evident early on in the series (see: all her affairs with middle-aged men) but honestly, the way she puts herself on the front lines again and again for her friends is just as destructive imo. Also, this song gives such difficult child-energy, and I think sometimes this is how Sandralynn sees her. This kid who didn’t deal with her curse because it didn’t seem important when her friends had other things going on. This kid who skips her classes, is straight-edge except for drugs. This kid who was knocked unconscious in her first combat and wanted everyone to think she spent the whole time fighting.

5. Adaine Abernant - Up the Wolves

“I’m gonna get myself in fighting trim / scope out every angle of unfair advantage / I’m gonna bribe the officials, I’m gonna kill all the judges / It’s gonna take you people years to recover from all of the damage.”

Trigger warning to those who need it: Sunset Tree is about abuse, which is obviously quite prevalent in Adaine’s arc Freshman/Sophomore Year. It was between this and Lion’s Teeth. What I like about this song for Adaine is that it is tragic, of course it’s tragic, but it also shows her rage, not just for herself but for Aelwyn too. This is a girl who took what her parents did to her and said that’s not fair and punched her dad so hard in the face that he died. I also think that given how Adaine’s relationship with her mother is so much more complicated, the other parts of this song work well with that.

6. Gorgug Thistlespring - The Slow Parts on Death Metal Albums

“Drive home alone and listen to the slow parts / In a new universe / trying to find the mask that still fits me / shaking the curse.”

I’m gonna be so real, I really struggled with this one because I just don’t relate to Gorgug as much, but I’m so infatuated with the idea that he listens to the slow parts of death metal albums, and I do think that this song, to me, fits the fact that Gorgug doesn’t really fit the roles anyone expects from him. He’s not just a mindless raging half-orc, he’s also kind and shy and gentle and loving. But he does have a lot of rage and he reacts violently at times and his parents love him but they don’t always know what to do with that.

Bonus song! Jawbone - Midland

“Come and stay with me as long as you like / I live outside of town where the straight highway curves / three years I lived next door to the airport / so nothing you can say to me can get on my nerves.”

Jawbone collects fucked up teens like pokemon cards, so I every time I hear this song I think of him. Also, the way the narrator of this song gives the subject time and space to go through things and assures them that yeah, I’ll still be here, is so very Jawbone-coded imo. Also, later in the song, he says “stay till you can grieve like normal people do / I’ve got room, room in my house for you.” Like, every line of this song is just so Jawbone I need y’all to understand.

Bonus song #2! The Bad Kids - When a Powerful Animal Comes

“Speak in gestures only we can understand / we’ve made mistakes / everyone spots their own mess / when the dawn breaks / we get so exhausted / lost kids, just wasted / sleep in short shifts then rise to our feet / life is short and life is hard and life is sweet.”

This song is the most Bad Kids shit I’ve ever heard in my life. If it’s not in your Bad Kids playlist, you gotta add it now and Weary Adventures by Skull Puppies haha anyway It’s just literally so perfect. It’s just these kids with the weight of the world on their shoulders, so fucking tired of saving the world. It’s literally the overall arc of Junior Year!

[vivalasestrellas]

I think Jenny From Thebes is a fitting follow up to Bleed Out. Not because of Jenny lore or anything like that. But the songs on Bleed Out (to me) have a theme of fighting hard, living fast, and doing the dirty work you need to do while the songs Jenny From Thebes feel like they're more about the personal effects of that life: how relationships can be forged, changed, lost, and remembered as a result.

[lesbianlanval]

the thing about jenny from thebes that really strikes me (one of the many things) is how different a lot of the authorial voice really feels from john darnielle's usual writing, especially the more recent albums. it's just different. calmer, better at seeing the big picture and accepting fate. which you can contrast to all these narrators who desire revenge no matter the consequences. jenny does what she does (including killing a man and hiding the body) for her own inscrutable pre-meditated reasons, and then quietly disappears, never to be seen again. no blaze of glory. she (or someone close to her) sees the future: she knew and accepted what was going to happen. could you imagine any of the narrator characters from bleed out or dark in here or getting into knives doing the same? it's like she possessed john darnielle