This is NOT what I was expecting when I saw the clip heading from Colbert:
"The Mountain Goats perform 'Psalms 40:2' from the new album, "'The Life of the World to Come.'"
I was just interested that another group (besides the obvious..hello?) had a song on that Psalm..
But it sounded like it would be pretty southern gospel/Gaitheresque..
Not quite my cup of crack.
But how about this lyric:
left that place in ruin
drunk on the Spirit and high on fumes
checked into a Red Roof inn
stayed up for several hours and then slept like infants
in the burning fuselage of my days
Let my mouth be ever fresh with praise
That's Psalm 40:2, isn't it?
And note: every song on the current album is titled by just a Scripture reference
(except for the last song, which adds a bit: "Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace") and the lyrics are well..
check this link...pomo midrash.
(Here's a Pitchfork article:
"The Story Behind the Mountain Goats' Biblical New LP"
And if you think this album might be their token Godhaunted album, here's BeliefNet's take on the previous release.
Who ARE these guys?
Well, like the Violet Burning, it turns out to be one guy (John Darnielle) and the latest players who rally around his genius and accompany his prayers.
Here's the psalm:
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Mountain Goats - Psalms 40:2 | ||||
| ||||
Some great quotes of course, about the Bible etc. in the interview, especially the grand biblical tradition of "cheerful desolation" and 'shaking your fist at God""
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| John Darnielle | ||||
| ||||
(I can't always get the embed code from Colbert's site to work, but I lifted it from this site.
Full episode here , interview and song 14:39ff)
By the way, when is Colbert going to have the other Psalm 40 band on his show? It's obvious.
Psalms 40:2
pull off the highway in missouri
although our hearts were heavy laden
made for the chapel with some spray paint for all the things we held in secret
lord life up these lifeless bones
light cascading through the windows
all the rainbows heavy tones
he has fixed his sign in the sky
he has raised me from the pit and set me high
left that place in ruin
drunk on the Spirit and high on fumes
checked into a red roof inn
stayed up for several hours and then slept like infants
in the burning fuselage of my days
let my mouth be ever fresh with praise
he has fixed his sign in the sky
he has raised me from the pit and set me high
each morning new
each day shot through
with all the sharp small shards of shrapnel
that seem to burst out of me and you
head down toward kansas
we will get there when we get there don't your worry
feel bad about the things we do along the way
but not really that bad
we inhaled the frozen air
Lord send me a mechanic
if i'm not beyond repair
he has fixed his sign in the sky
he has raised me from the pit and he will set me high
I like being around it. I like being able to catch some of the energy, whatever I can or can't believe. I think there's something to be said for it. Despite the fact that most Christian denominations, politically, are about twenty million miles from where I want to be. ....If you're into music, you're into religion, somehow or another. Religion, that's the bloodline of music. The whole reason, I'm pretty sure, we have music on notation is to preserve chant-- to transcribe what was going on, which we're singing in order to describe the experience the divine. So there is that connection, which is part of the big appeal, to me, of churches-- that there's always something musical going on in there. That is making what to me is a pretty obvious connection between whatever we want to call divine and music, which seems permanently and inextricably bound.
-John Darnielle
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Hey, thanks for engaging the conversation!