Not sure how I missed it, but a couple weeks ago, Pitchfork posted an interview with John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, where he spoke about their upcoming, highly biblical new record The Life Of The World To Come. Well, add Darnielle to the list of churchgoing indie-rock royalty (top of that list being Stuart Murdoch of Belle & Sebastian). The interview is really fascinating and doesn’t pull any punches, so I’d recommend you read the entire thing. Probably the most-Mbird moment comes when Darnielle talks about his new song “Psalm 40:2”. Wowza:
Pitchfork: “Psalms 40:2” quotes the Bible verse in its chorus. But the verses of the song seem to be– I couldn’t tell if it was crime spree or just a really seedy road trip.
JD: Well, you know. I don’t want to say it is this or that, but both of those are in the right neighborhood.
Pitchfork: How does the sentiment of the chorus relate to the story of the verses?
JD: There’s a number of different ways of feeling holy and connected with God. One way you can get really close to God is to sin as hard as you can. Because there’s only one person, in theory, who can save you from that. His whole job, in a sense, is to absolve you of sin, to forgive you of sin…
So these people [in the song] are doing some bad things and one of them, the one who sins, is sort of experiencing a connection to God in the depths of his degradation– which I think is almost a universal experience. When do you cry out to the God you don’t believe in? When you hit bottom. That’s the moment at which you are going to sort of know Him best…. [I’m] saying that your ideas of God will come to rest upon you in your moment of profoundest degradation, which is kind of what that song is about.
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2 responses to “John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats on Psalm 40:2”
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Really good stuff!
I am flying from Boston to LA in November to catch a Mountain Goats show, and everything I keep seeing about this new album continues to confirm that this is an excellent plan… thanks for the heads up.