{"id":41249,"date":"2008-12-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-04T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/the-sunset-tree\/"},"modified":"2008-12-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-04T00:00:00","slug":"the-sunset-tree","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/the-sunset-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sunset Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before 2006\u2019s revelatory Get Lonely, <\/i>the Mountain Goats (led by the ever-brilliant John Darnielle) examined a different sort of dissolution than the aftermath of a wrenching breakup; instead, The Sunset Tree, <\/i>released in 2005, explores in vivid, pitch-perfect detail Darnielle\u2019s childhood, namely his relationship with his abusive stepfather (the album itself is dedicated to the man who \u201cmade it possible,\u201d followed by an afterword, Never lose hope.) <\/i>It\u2019s somber stuff throughout, but Darnielle wrestles with the beast of his past with a stunning clarity.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

But for all of his devastation here, the instrumentation is surprisingly punchy; it\u2019s never too in your face<\/st1:personname>, but there\u2019s a resolute sense of life simmering beneath the patchwork of memories, whether it\u2019s in the quick-flickering acoustic guitar and lush piano chords of opener \u201cYou Or Your Memory\u201d or Darnielle\u2019s crisp vocals lifting clear above the low, crunching guitar riff on \u201cBroom People.\u201d \u00a0As always, both cuts are jammed full of striking imagery, such as \u201cBroom People,\u201d which finds the narrator holed up in the unattached spare room, \u201cwhite carpet piled high with pet hair \/ half-eaten gallons of ice cream in the freezer\u201d as he \u201cwrites down good reasons to freeze to death in my spiral ring notebook,\u201d all the while imagining the girl who takes him out of it all, who makes him feel thriving again: \u201cBut in the long tresses of your hair \/ I am a babbling brook.\u201d <\/o:p><\/p>\n

But it\u2019s the next three tracks that take the disc to new heights. \u201cNext Year\u201d finds the narrator proclaiming, \u201cI am going to make it through this year if it kills me,\u201d and matched with energetic guitars and some well-place<\/st1:personname>d harmonies, this track is triumphant and breathless. The standout, tightly-coiled \u201cDilaudid\u201d comes next, all churning nervousness and achingly lovely, precise imagery throughout. \u201cIf we live to see the other side of this \/ I will remember your kiss, so do it with your mouth open \/ And take your foot off the brake, for Christ\u2019s sake,\u201d Darnielle sputters out, the strings backing him ratcheting towards the song\u2019s close. Meanwhile, the two-minute \u201cDance Music\u201d initially feels a little throwaway after the one-two punch of the previous cuts, but the sheer jauntiness in the face<\/st1:personname> of stuff like \u201cYou\u2019re the last best thing I got going \/ But then the special secret sickness starts to eat through you \/ What am I supposed to do?\u201d makes this one another triumph.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

The sole issue with The Sunset Tree <\/i>is that it can feel patchwork-y at times — which does make sense, seeing as that its capturing memories and mood more than it\u2019s trying to tell a linear story, but it doesn\u2019t make for the most unified listen. Some songs get lost in the shuffle, buried behind some better-sketched moments. \u201cUp The Wolves\u201d feels like it\u2019s missing the raw nerves of previous material, while \u201cDinu Lipatti\u2019s Bones\u201d is a lo-fi mumble centered around the image of the narrator hiding away in a house built out of Dinu Lipatti\u2019s bones (Lipatti was a Romanian pianist whose career was ended by Hodgkin\u2019s disease when he was 33), but it is too obtuse to really resonate as much.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Next up, though, the throbbing, vicious energy of \u201cLion\u2019s Teeth\u201d reclaims the lost momentum, fueled by alternately sawing and soaring strings, machine-like drums, and the apropos metaphor of the narrator yanking a tooth out of the lion\u2019s mouth: \u201cThere\u2019s no good way to end this, anyone can see \/ There\u2019s this great big you, and little old me \/ And we hold on \/ For dear life, we hold on.\u201d <\/o:p><\/p>\n

The next few tracks see things spiraling out of control, full of nervous guitars and wailing vocals (\u201cMagpie\u201d) and haunting scenes of his stepfather\u2019s reckless rage (\u201cHast Thou Considered The Tetrapod\u201d). But where The Sunset Tree <\/i>finally ends up is a more subdued, resigned place<\/st1:personname>. First comes the cool, calm \u201cLove Love Love\u201d with its spare accompaniment and the lovely sentiment, \u201d Some things you\u2019ll do for money and some you\u2019ll do for fun \/ But the things you do for love are going to come back to you one by one.\u201d Closer \u201cPale Green Things\u201d follows, finding Darnielle and his stepfather one last time watching horses race<\/st1:personname>, the memory he returns to \u201clike a living Chinese finger trap.\u201d It\u2019s a stunning end, providing a fitting narrative arc and, above all, some sense of resolution. Memory lives on and never fades, as Darnielle depicts throughout this moving, haunting disc, but there is still a sense of reckoning here, of moving beyond and above it all and emerging — finally — triumphant.<\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":29650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8237],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-41249","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-the-mountain-goats","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41249"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}