February 20 - Against Agamemnon

One of the profound joins of any era of the mountain Goats is the joyful song with the horrifying lyrics. On its surface, Against Agamemnon sounds like a joyful jangly pastoral, something with a countryside setting and abstract description. And then, as so often happens especially in early Mountain Goats, the context begins to assert itself, and this becomes a song about the madness of Ajax.

John returns over and again to the classical period, especially to the the mythology of Greece, and as I've moved through his early songs I've frequently wondered why. I have an idea although it's drawn from my own suspicions more than anything that has been backed up by his words. I think that there's something in the mania of the gods that is truly intoxicating, the idea of these astonishing powerful beings that embody the nature of the world, encountering humanity, and having an instinct only of "we have got to fuck with them". It's a view of the gods that is in some ways utterly alien to modern monotheism or even to modern poly and pantheism. The gods that sent Ajax mad, that cursed Arachne, that did the thousand cruel and strange and curious things of Greek and Roman mythology, aren't stewards of the earth or of humanity. They're not concerned with our activities until such a point as we unwisely attract their attention. They are instead the elemental and fundamental powers of the earth and they care for you no more than a hurricane cared for a boat it sweeps up.

It's strange and daunting to write from the perspective of the insect, the tiny thing trodden on by the passage of gods that at very best do not give a shit that you are there. And if you're very unlucky will drive you mad just to see what happens next.