One Song By The Mountain Goats Every Day

The Mountain Goats: Going to Tennessee

Album: Why You All So Thief? (1994)

Baseball season will be starting soon
But we have no baseball team here
I’ve got a house right on the river
I can see Arkansas from where I am

The dogs are gathered
And the birds are chattering
And the sun is setting on Memphis
And the sun is setting on Memphis

Medicine bottle collection on the windowsill
Shakes when the cars go past on Interstate 55
You are standing above me
You’ve washed your face with that apricot scrub again
I’m glad I am alive
And your skin is warming up
And my skin is warming up
And the sun is setting on Memphis
And the sun is setting on Memphis

The Mountain Goats: Korean Bird Painting

Album: New Asian Cinema (1998)

Yesterday I put in a good five hours
Talking to the statues
Chased your memory all around the room
Didn’t manage to catch you
But I cleaned out the savings account
Blew everything I had on flowers
Covered up the furniture in carnations
Rolled around for hours

There are those of you who got the wrong idea right now
But man, you should’ve seen me when I got through
Indistinguishable from a fourth century Briton
Waiting on the couch for you
I put all the extras on the credit card
Bubbles of the galaxy and mylar balloons
Everything we’d saved up in one room at the same time
Cartoon stars, crescent moons
Thank you notes, get well cards
Condolences, congratulations
Bright colors, cues and signals
Reminders and reverberations

The Mountain Goats: There Will Be No Divorce

Album: The Coroner’s Gambit (2000)

The rain fell all night and it kept me awake
It was still falling by morning
It was hard to take
And you were sleeping on the floor
Breathing free and even
If I ever want to drive myself insane
All I have to do is watch you breathing
And at 5 AM I turned the radio on
And an old man’s voice sang a short sweet song
And then the static roared again hungry for blood
I heard the rain falling from the rain spout
Down down into the sweet wet mud
And you punched out all the windows
And the wind began to wail
And you gathered your hair behind your head
Like god was gonna catch you by the ponytail
And then the old voice crackled through the static
And I felt young and alive
And the hair stood up on the back of my neck
We were rising from the grave, yeah yeah

The Mountain Goats: Palmcorder Yajna

Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

Holt Boulevard
Between Gary and White
Hooked up with some friends at the Travelodge
Set ourselves up for the night

Carpenter ants in the dresser
Flies in the screen
It will be too late by the time we learn
What these cryptic symbols mean

And I dreamt of a house
Haunted by all you tweakers with your hands out
And the headstones climbed up the hills
And the headstones climbed up the hills

Send somebody out for soda
Comb through the carpet for clues
Reflective tape on our sweatpants
Big holes in our shoes
Every couple minutes someone says he can’t stand it any more
Laugh lines on our faces
Scale maps of the ocean floor

And I dreamt of a camera
Pointing out from inside the televsion
And the aperture yawning and blinking
And the headstones climbed up the hills

If anybody comes to see me
Tell them they just missed me by a minute
If anybody comes into our room while we’re asleep
I hope they incinerate everybody in it

And I dreamt of a factory
Where they manufactured what I needed
Using shiny new machines
And the headstones climbed up the hills

The Mountain Goats: Twin Human Highway Flares

Album: Full Force Galesburg (1997)

You turned to me and asked me if I’d always be your boy
As we drove across the river into Western Illinois
And on the railroad bridge, half a mile of solid steel
Wheels were spitting out sparks, scraping at the rails
Wind in your hair all right
Sunset spilling through the rear window
Your white t-shirt hugging your shoulders, beaded with sweat
On the day that I become so forgetful
That all of this melts away
I will burn all the calendars that counted the years down
To such a worthless day

As we walked across the parking lot toward the motel office
We were walking with a benediction on us
Light was everywhere, the building stood against the sky
Like a monument to desperation two floors high
A mile and a half from the river
We went back to the car to get our overnight bags
Sunset spilling through your earrings, all over your body
When we shut the motel room door behind us we knew we’d hit the motherlode
On the day that I forget you I hope my heart explodes

The Mountain Goats: Going to Japan

Album: Hot Garden Stomp (1993)

There’s a North wind coming in 
And there’s a West wind coming in 
And there’s an East wind coming in 
And there’s a strong wind blowing in from the South 
And there’s a sweet metallic taste in my mouth 
There’s a dead feeling lingering over the wind

And there’s a one-way ticket in my hot little hand 
And I’m kissing your eyelids and I’m going to Japan

There’s life and liberty on my tongue 
And there’s a dead silence where the wind chimes hung 
And on some mountain somewhere in the world it’s snowing 
But here in the fields there’s not a thing growing
Maybe next year, ya know, there is a way of knowing
There’s wind coming in from all directions
There’s a coat on my shoulders, midnight connections

And I’m kissing you and leaving you behind in the sand
I’m holding you a while and then I’m going to Japan

The Mountain Goats: Fault Lines

Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

Down here where the heat’s so fine
I’ll drink to your health and you drink to mine
As we try to make the money we scored out in Vegas hold out for a while
We drink vodka from Russia
We got chocolates from Belgium
We have our strawberries flown in from England
But none of the money we spend seems to do us much good in the end
I got a cracked engine block, both of us do
Got a house, the jewels, the Italian racecar
They don’t make us feel better about who we are
I got termites in the framework, so do you

Down here where the watermelon grows so sweet
Where I worship the ground underneath of your feet
We are experts in the art of frivilous spending
It’s gone on like this for three years I guess
And we’re drunk all the time and our lives are a mess
And the deathless love we swore to protect with our bodies
Is stumbling across its bleak ending
But none of the rage in our eyes seems to finish it off where it lies
I got sugar in the fuel lines, both of us do
Yeah the fights and the lies that we both love to tell
Fail to send our love to its reward down in Hell
I got pudding for a backbone, but so do you
La la la La, hey hey