Pop music often functions in obfuscation or immediately relatable surface emotion. Songs will be built, edited and orchestrated to reach your consumer soul and wring free a buck for the single, or fifteen for the album, and its catchy hook will visit you at work, while you absent-mindedly create spreadsheets or make copies of charts. “Young girl, get out of my mind!” Humming, you will smile and – ahhh – remember when? It’s effective and effecting - it gets its job done.The Mountain Goats’ “The Mess Inside,” is a lone voice and guitar, poorly recorded; four snapshots from road trips that John Darnielle took with his lover as their relationship unraveled. They are vacation slides from the slow decent, pocked by the claws that fought against the unforgiving tide. Each ends with the same straight, maddeningly sane assessment of the situation. No fog or clever wordplay; it’s too earnest and specific to be relatable.
A time may come, though, like it did for me, when you are teetering on the edge of thirty, whiskey-drunk at 4 in the morning on a work night, stumbling into your house for a nightcap. You may grab a fresh can of Pabst, un-pause your shuffling iPod and flop down on the couch to pack yourself a bowl, while you rock out to “Shame on a Nigga.” As you’re lighting that bowl, your iPod may shuffle on over to “The Mess Inside,” you may sit back and listen. The fourth time “I wanted you to love me like you used to do” is sung will – will – break you down to each individual letter of your genetic code. You will be an overgrown orphan, blubbering, howling and smacking yourself in the face to make it stop.
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