Tomorrow is a tremendous day of new album releases, seeing over 20 musicians releasing new CD’s. One of these musicians is John Darnielle and his Mountain Goats, who I recently saw perform at Ithaca College. His new album is named “The Life of the World to Come” and each song is cleverly named after a Bible passage. This will be Darnielle’s 17th album. 17th! You can see why he is running out of song titles. To celebrate tomorrow’s release I thought we could look at one particular Mountain Goat’s song that is sticking out in my head this morning entitled, “Autoclave,” off of Darnielle’s last album Heretic Pride released in 2008.
The Life of the World to Come
Darnielle’s style is infectious. His odd, mountain goat-like voice takes some getting used to but after a song or two your are hooked. His folk backing and tremendous lyrical ability makes his songs even more approachable. This is how I fell into the Mountain Goats trap. Watching “Moral Orel” on Adult Swim, I watched one of the more depressing episodes of any show I have ever seen, which used The Mountain Goats’ “No Children,” as its backing track. “No Children,” an equally gnarled song.
Wrong Mountain Goat. But, it is pretty cute
Yet, today, we will discuss “Autoclave,” which uses an extension of Darnielle’s normal folk style for the music while pouring on the listener lyrics like:
“Hand me your hand, let me look in your eyes
As my last chance to feel human begins to vaporize
Maybe it’s the heat in here, maybe it’s the pressure
You ought to head for the exits, the sooner the better”
To understand this song which states that his heart is an autoclave one must know what an autoclave is. An autoclave is a device used to sterilize equipment and supplies by subjecting them to high pressure steam at temperatures over 121 degrees Celsius. What does this have to do with the song? Well, look at the lyrics above. Vaporize, heat, pressure; choice words with a lot of meaning. By saying that his heart is an autoclave he means that no person can spend any time in his heart for there is just to much heat in there. Yet, for some semi-optimism out of this song you can look at how some bacteria can survive in an autoclave. Okay, maybe that does not help.
Take a listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sskFjbHu_W0
Okay, now we got the right ones
The Music Court 
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