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        <title><![CDATA[ Miscellany - pckt ]]></title>
        <link><![CDATA[ https://miscellany.pckt.blog ]]></link>
        <description><![CDATA[  ]]></description>
        <language>en</language>
        <pubDate>Sun, 10 May 2026 03:33:22 +0000</pubDate>

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                <title>I worked out what I&#039;m going to do with this</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/i-worked-out-what-im-going-to-do-with-this-hejt4ef</link>
                <description><![CDATA[So I&#039;m compulsive about signing up for new things and then not using them. Over the more than two decades that blogging has been a thing I&#039;ve probably made more than twenty and not used them because there&#039;s something terrifying about the blank feed that could be anything. I always want it to be Important. And in my brain the barrier between Important and Pretentious is at best semipermeable. I always work better with a structure or a challenge than without one, so I&#039;m going to steal a challenge ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">i-worked-out-what-im-going-to-do-with-this-hejt4ef</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 09 Jan 2026 19:24:49 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 9 - Alpha Rats Nest</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-9-alpha-rats-nest-exf848c</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Sometimes things creep up on you. They become true over a course of enough time that by the time you realise it you&#039;re realising what has happened not what is happening. So it is with this song and the realisation that Mountain Goats have gone from being a band of inscrutable, impenetrable lyrics to being a band of equally inscrutable but deeply accessible lyrics. This joyful bitter song is just as much of an expression of poisoned joy as the rest of this concept album, bus its odd wordplay seem...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-9-alpha-rats-nest-exf848c</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 09 May 2026 22:01:24 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 8 - See America Right</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-8-see-america-right-d1rv23r</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Your love is like a cyclone in a swamp is one of the lines of all time. This is an intense song of chaos, in the intense part of a relationship going bad. John&#039;s alpha couple have many twists and turns on their way to purgatory, but this one is particularly atmospheric. We don&#039;t know why the narrator was in jail, or where he and his co-conspirator in this doomed relationship will go next. All we can say is that they bring their own chaos with them, and the two forms of chaos they bring are at wa...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-8-see-america-right-d1rv23r</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2026 22:23:23 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 7 - Oceanographer&#039;s Choice</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-7-oceanographers-choice-ge7k55y</link>
                <description><![CDATA[A driving bop, full of energy. Starts with stabbing Superman with a broadsword and goes up from there. This is full of energy, admittedly dark energy, and is a packed fantasia of fraught things happening to fraught people. It&#039;s also... and even as I type this I&#039;m not sure exactly how I mean this... it&#039;s also one of the most normal songs that I&#039;ve heard from the Mountain Goats so far. Not in a negative sense. In more of a sense that this sounds like something that was professionally recorded in a...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-7-oceanographers-choice-ge7k55y</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2026 22:16:44 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 6 - The House That Dripped Blood</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-6-the-house-that-dripped-blood-47f3a1t</link>
                <description><![CDATA[There is something delightfully sleazy about the instrumentation of this song. I&#039;m getting a strong dose of PJ Harvey. More than that, this is a song with swagger in a way that feels new to Mountain Goats songs. The wild harmonica at the end gives this is feeling of a barely-inside house in the swamp. And in this house we see not people but the remnants of their movement. This is a home that has seen a marriage tear itself apart violently, has seen it recently. The passion and blood are still in...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-6-the-house-that-dripped-blood-47f3a1t</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2026 22:09:12 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 5th - Southwood Plantation Road</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-5th-southwood-plantation-road-zcw0dj6</link>
                <description><![CDATA[A secret small love of mine: songs where someone sings la la la la We&#039;re wandering still further into Tallahassee, reaching what might be thought of as an upswing in the dysfunctional relationship that is this couple. There is happiness here, albeit a desperate happiness kicking to stay afloat. I am not gonna lose you, we are gonna stay married is a line not of affirmation but of a death grip on what it thinks joy is. And so the weird pop of this journey into one of the first fully orchestrated ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-5th-southwood-plantation-road-zcw0dj6</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 05 May 2026 22:18:49 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 4 - First Few Desperate hours</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-4-first-few-desperate-hours-d16g23r</link>
                <description><![CDATA[It continues to interest me how much more complete Tallahassee feels as a sound for a band than the previous Mountain Goats albums, and band is the word here. There are at maximum three instruments playing at the same time here, not counting John&#039;s voice, and yet the sound is rich, deep, and complex. This is a song about the past catching up with you. Not in the sense of old decisions haunting you, or things you&#039;ve done biting you in the ass, or even people seeing reprisal for past actions, but ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-4-first-few-desperate-hours-d16g23r</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 04 May 2026 21:37:34 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 3 - Tallahassee</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-3-tallahassee-f9dfhyp</link>
                <description><![CDATA[In retrospect this song is a thumping great mission statement. It&#039;s the first track on one of the two most pivotal Mountain Goats albums, with All Hail West Texas being the perfection of the Guitar and buzzing tape recorder era, and Tallahassee being the start of the full band and instrumentation era. And, let&#039;s be entirely clear about this, it&#039;s gorgeous. It&#039;s a quiet overture to an album about two people poisoning each other&#039;s lives. There&#039;s a tension in the soft bassline that gives the whole ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-3-tallahassee-f9dfhyp</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 03 May 2026 22:00:09 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 2 - Old College Try</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-2-old-college-try-hs2wt4e</link>
                <description><![CDATA[All right folks, it&#039;s taken us four months but we&#039;ve reached Tallahassee. And we&#039;re starting off with one of the most genuinely wonderful songs on this album. An ode to exhausted but still kicking love. Toxic, poisoned, bleeding, but still real and powerful. And my god, is the instrumentation of this utterly beautiful. The keyboard and the organs and the duochrome of the album cover. There&#039;s something sacred about this sound. It&#039;s weird because so many other versions of this theme highlight the ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-2-old-college-try-hs2wt4e</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 02 May 2026 21:49:21 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>May 1 - Twelve Hands High</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/may-1-twelve-hands-high-6gv1kgj</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Technically this isn&#039;t a Mountain Goats song. It&#039;s instead a song by The Extra Glenns, a band consisting of John Darnielle and Franklin Bruno. But what it actually is is a lovely bop with some honky tonk piano and delightful guitars. As for the narrative of this song, it&#039;s an age old story we&#039;ve all experienced. Just the moment in a tense and destructive relationship where a horse unexpectedly bursts through the wall into your house and crushes you. We&#039;ve heard this story a thousand times of cou...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">may-1-twelve-hands-high-6gv1kgj</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 01 May 2026 22:08:55 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 30 - Soft Targets</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-30-soft-targets-ym7ze17</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Well, it&#039;s the end of the month, so it&#039;s time for rarities and miscellany, and a soft-voice John song of tragic domesticity is exactly what we asked for. There&#039;s something so unsettlingly real about the moments of doomed relationships that John captures in songs like this. Two people cursed to be in love, bound by the fact that leaving is worse, somehow the worst thing in each other&#039;s life but still there because every other alternative is worse. There is nobody innocent here is one hell of a li...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-30-soft-targets-ym7ze17</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 30 Apr 2026 21:55:38 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 29 - Insurance Fraud #2</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-29-insurance-fraud-2-d1nr23r</link>
                <description><![CDATA[My Don&#039;t commit insurance fraud, it&#039;s not worth it song has people asking a lot of questions already answered by the song. In all seriousness, this is a delightful, ominous song about love burning down, which is a common theme in this era of Mountain Goats. It&#039;s a song that reassures and unsettles at the same time, and provides a soundtrack to love getting dangerous.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-29-insurance-fraud-2-d1nr23r</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 21:37:45 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 28 - Indonesia</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-28-indonesia-sbc3z85</link>
                <description><![CDATA[The summer came in carrying spring in its mouth is an incredible first line, and the rest of the song follows as poetic metaphor that starts from love but soars into something elemental. There&#039;s an interesting thing happening with John&#039;s lyrics as time goes by. His content isn&#039;t getting more simple, he still writes complicated and layered metaphor and delights in wordplay, but he&#039;s found a level of wry accessibility that he hadn&#039;t worked out yet in his earlier songs. The emotions aren&#039;t simpler ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-28-indonesia-sbc3z85</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 21:51:11 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 27 - Absolute Lithops Effect</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-27-absolute-lithops-effect-wug464p</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I don&#039;t know, man. I think I&#039;m tired. A long stretch of days, some good, some bad, with today as a good one that wore me out. It&#039;s meant when I came to my Mountain Goats song at the end of today it played over me and i didn&#039;t have much to say. It&#039;s nice. I think we all could use a little tender mercy. but I think I&#039;m failing it. maybe I come back to it later.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-27-absolute-lithops-effect-wug464p</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:26:50 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 26 - Yoga</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-26-yoga-6ggbkgj</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Hearing full or even partial band Mountain Goats from this period (this is another Devil in the Shortwave track) is a really interesting experience, because it feels like watching something emerge. This is true nowhere more than in this track, which starts off with simple guitar and strings and builds upwards through increased chaotic instrumentation. I love the lyrical delicacy here, starting with a small moment of conflict in miniature (it was lovely, it was awful, it was that kind of feeling)...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-26-yoga-6ggbkgj</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 26 Apr 2026 22:05:56 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 25th - Jeff Davis County Blues</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-25th-jeff-davis-county-blues-2880bg2</link>
                <description><![CDATA[There&#039;s something especially American about the aimless road trip, the small towns flitted through when you&#039;re going not towards but away, places that must have their own life but which you only experience as lonely and quiet stops on the way towards you don&#039;t know what. One of the things that I&#039;m not sure many people from my own country fully appreciate about America, even if they intellectually know it, is how much of it is the empty spaces between points. You read books on trips like this, yo...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-25th-jeff-davis-county-blues-2880bg2</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 25 Apr 2026 22:31:42 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 24 - Store</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-24-store-pqq8fky</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I&#039;m not sure if this is the happiest song about getting a bloody injury, but the only competition I can think is Me And You Against The World by Space, and that&#039;s far less of a rousing folk ballad. This is a song about revelation at the wrong moment. The joy of knowing and the horror of knowing it&#039;s too late. May we find what we&#039;re looking for in time and without this much blood.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-24-store-pqq8fky</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 24 Apr 2026 22:18:12 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 23 - Color In Your Cheeks</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-23-color-in-your-cheeks-544yv73</link>
                <description><![CDATA[God, I needed this today. One of my favourite Mountain Goats songs for years. The best happy songs are the ones that don&#039;t bullshit you. They don&#039;t pretend that everything&#039;s good, or that evil doesn&#039;t exist. What they tell you is that the world is fucked but that sometimes there&#039;s help. You&#039;re running from something, here&#039;s somewhere to hide. You&#039;re broken, here&#039;s a place to hold your pieces while you work out how the fuck they fit together again. This is a song of dirty hope. Hope with broken n...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-23-color-in-your-cheeks-544yv73</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 23 Apr 2026 21:09:09 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 22 - World Cylinder</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-22-world-cylinder-rv5duz7</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is a goodbye. The last song on an EP about last songs. It&#039;s someone not saying what&#039;s happening, but not saying it more blatantly than just saying it. One of the most common sentiments of my life - and one of the ones that gets me twisted around myself the most - is there&#039;s so much to do. It&#039;s not wrong, but it is self defeating. You&#039;ll never do everything, and yet I watch frustrated as my perception of my inaction lets things float past undone. Maybe the insertion of a final, unmovable dea...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-22-world-cylinder-rv5duz7</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 22 Apr 2026 22:17:14 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 21 - Burned My Tongue</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-21-burned-my-tongue-pqt1fky</link>
                <description><![CDATA[An honest to goodness blues song beginning with the words woke up this morning. This has a wonderful smoky uneasy tone to it of someone fundamentally uncomfortable in the world. Trying to live like they know they&#039;re supposed to live and finding at each point they are the wrong shape for live. It&#039;s gorgeous, awkward, and just a little incredibly angry.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-21-burned-my-tongue-pqt1fky</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 22:16:07 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 20 - Hotel Road</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-20-hotel-road-54y5v73</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I take back any smack I have talked about previous loud tape recorders. And with that momentary swipe I will sit and just listen to this absolutely lovely relaxing beach song. Simple pastoral lyrics of going back to places filled with ghosts. This is a song about endings, of going back, and the simple act of forgiveness that is returning. There are places I&#039;ll never go back to through circumstances. There are places I&#039;ll never go back to out of choice. But perhaps the most damning are the places...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-20-hotel-road-54y5v73</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 20 Apr 2026 22:19:07 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 19 - Jenny</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-19-jenny-zc2udj6</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is the musical equivalent of the moment in a sitcom where someone walks in and everyone applauds. Jenny is a huge figure in the shared fiction that is Mountain Goats songs, a figure of wildness and adoration and chaos and trouble and so much more, and hearing this second song to mention her is like reaching solid ground where the sand underfood it warm and still wet but solid. So, aside from its status as mythology, how is this song? Great, basically. An ode of love and trouble with some re...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-19-jenny-zc2udj6</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 19 Apr 2026 22:15:16 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 18 - Trans-Jordanian Blues</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-18-trans-jordanian-blues-9d90s7z</link>
                <description><![CDATA[There&#039;s something about a rowdy, revolutionary church song that reaches even to those who were never part of the congregation. I never had a faith to lose, I hnever had a church to find to be rotten, I never had this as a structure to be moved on from. And yet I find myself moved by this both in terms of dancing slightly in my seat and in terms of feeling the intense frustration of the hermit-crab shell of religion getting too constricting for the growing creature of faith. These are weird times...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-18-trans-jordanian-blues-9d90s7z</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 18 Apr 2026 22:58:42 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 17 - Riches and Wonders</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-17-riches-and-wonders-yayhe17</link>
                <description><![CDATA[You&#039;re taking a nap in the middle of the day with the person you love. The two of you snuggled. Maybe cats but not necessarily cats. And you&#039;re warm and you&#039;re content and you&#039;ve perhaps been apart but are now together. And for a fleeting moment, almost to brief to really register, you think that actually it would be okay if this was it. If everything faded and went now and that was that. And that&#039;s not what this song is about, but that is where my mind went. One of the curiosities of the happie...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-17-riches-and-wonders-yayhe17</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 17 Apr 2026 23:14:38 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 16 - Fault Lines</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-16-fault-lines-qztf9a9</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is one of the purest folk songs from this period of the Mountain Goats. It&#039;s an ode to useless material worth and poisoned love: two people who depend on each other to the point where it&#039;s making both of them sick and preventing either of them from leaving. The songs of this period feel like seeds that have been planted and will flourish as time goes on. The lyrical complexity and emotional simplicity sketch a design that later albums will fill in using watercolours, and from these jolly an...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-16-fault-lines-qztf9a9</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2026 21:35:58 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 15 - Straight Six</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-15-straight-six-4xe5a1t</link>
                <description><![CDATA[The blurred space between song and poem and fiction sketch is the place where the Mountain Goats live best, and this song is a wonderful example of this, acting as a crack we can look through to see the two occupants of this car in the dark as it rides through the dark of the city. This is our first sight of Jenny, who will become a recurring character to the point of getting her own album, but here she has more name than she does character, and more name than our unnamed narrator. This is a pov...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-15-straight-six-4xe5a1t</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2026 21:29:44 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 14 - Balance</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-14-balance-4xyga1t</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Simple but very strong chord progression on this one, which puts me in mind (in feel and lyrical content) of Dilaudid from The Sunset Tree, which feels like a song that will come from this at some point. Mountain Goats songs about relationships crumbling aren&#039;t rare, but this is one of the earliest about a relationship that is simultaneously bad and self perpetuating. It feels like the people trapped in this particular mess of a relationship are going to make it but don&#039;t actually want to. And t...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-14-balance-4xyga1t</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 14 Apr 2026 22:29:00 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 13 - Fall of the Star High School Running Back</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-13-fall-of-the-star-high-school-running-back-wr8u64p</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is an interesting song because it sneaks up on you in a way. The story of a high school sport&#039;s star&#039;s fall from grace is fertile and oft visited territory, and I felt like I could hear the line about blowing out his knee before I heard the line about blowing out his knee. But then we get, well, interesting. John is, unsurprisingly, an explicitly political writer when the occasion calls for it, and the second half of this song that deals with the hunger of the prison industrial complex when...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-13-fall-of-the-star-high-school-running-back-wr8u64p</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 13 Apr 2026 21:51:04 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 12 - The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-12-the-best-ever-death-metal-band-in-denton-6u8qkgj</link>
                <description><![CDATA[OK, so we&#039;ve started to hit the songs that I can hear without listening to them. There&#039;s something simple and wonderful about this song, which is a simple yarn about rebellion and friendship and passion and repression and Satan, and that would be enough for it to be a small delight, but there are lines in this that are stamped through me like the words of power on a golem&#039;s forehead. When you punish somebody for dreaming their dream, don&#039;t expect them to thank or forgive you.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-12-the-best-ever-death-metal-band-in-denton-6u8qkgj</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 12 Apr 2026 22:34:52 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 11 - The Coroner&#039;s Gambit</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-11-the-coroners-gambit-tsjfqge</link>
                <description><![CDATA[And our trilogy of death continues from a different point of view. This is a tremendously lively song for what it represents, with a beat that put me in mind of the best of early Billy Bragg, and the same combination of strumming energy and considered thought. I don&#039;t know other minds enough to know if it makes me incredibly normal or incredibly strange that I can&#039;t imagine the point where not existing would appeal. Like, I get it intellectually. Enough pain, enough distress, enough of the world...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-11-the-coroners-gambit-tsjfqge</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 11 Apr 2026 22:41:04 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 10 - Shadow Song</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-10-shadow-song-h90at4e</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is clearly a season of partings, of people going ahead, leaving, whether they mean to or not. When you go (voluntarily or involuntarily) you take parts of people with you. Those parts don&#039;t always last, and it&#039;s not actually a bad thing necessarily that they don&#039;t. But sometimes when you go you go in hope that people will follow. And sometimes when they bid you to save them a place they do so knowing they may not And what matters is not whether the covenant is fulfilled but that it meant en...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-10-shadow-song-h90at4e</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 10 Apr 2026 22:16:49 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 9 - Bluejays and Cardinals</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-9-bluejays-and-cardinals-pt7sfky</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is a song aimed at the heavens, under the joyfully lamenting hope that that&#039;s where its intended audience is. There&#039;s something hard to process about songs for people who aren&#039;t necessarily in a position to hear them. Words that you want to elevate beyond the material, but which will fall mostly on the ears of others. I&#039;ve been thinking a lot lately about goodbyes, both the spiritual kind and the material. They&#039;re almost always for the person saying goodbye, not the person leaving. I was sa...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-9-bluejays-and-cardinals-pt7sfky</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:07:25 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 8 - There Will Be No Divorce</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-8-there-will-be-no-divorce-qz079a9</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Well, the world continued. And so did we. And this is a simple song about small moments of love. If you&#039;ve ever been awake late at night past the time when the person you love is awake, and you&#039;ve looked over and listened to the sound of their breathing, and loved that sound, because it was from them and because it was keeping them alive, you will know the feeling of this song. Small moments of observing in the quiet lovely dark. Of thinking how lucky we are that we get this. All of this.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-8-there-will-be-no-divorce-qz079a9</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 08 Apr 2026 21:46:27 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 7 - We Were Patriots</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-7-we-were-patriots-s2pgz85</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I don&#039;t know if I have anything to say about this song today. I&#039;m in a place of horror. I hope that at some point I look back and see what a silly thing this was to be horrified by, but right now the situation with Iran has me feeling entirely hopeless and the concept of patriots fills me with revulsion. I&#039;m sorry, John, your song deserves better than this.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-7-we-were-patriots-s2pgz85</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 07 Apr 2026 21:31:14 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 5th - Onions</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-5th-onions-1wsw8wv</link>
                <description><![CDATA[It&#039;s been spring already for either a month or about 2 weeks depending on where you start (I, a weirdo, think it&#039;s spring from March the first). Long enough for things to start waking up. My lilac tree, planted to replace the one the gardeners killed, is growing for the first time. There&#039;s asparagus shooting up in places we thought were just dead soil, and here we have a thick and loamy song of growth and rebirth. John didn&#039;t calculate for this to come out on Easter Sunday, I know. But it did. A...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-5th-onions-1wsw8wv</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:38:55 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 4 - Elijah</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-4-elijah-ts39qge</link>
                <description><![CDATA[There&#039;s something fascinating as someone who grew up without any religion of seeing the shapes that belief makes when it is instilled but then carefully considered. There are aspects of imagery and language that to me are learned and to some people are second nature, and it creates as much of a gap as trying to swear in a foreign language. My only theism is cultural theism, which is basically those of the trappings that seem most marketable. So, it&#039;s easy to hide from e in religion. To make the ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-4-elijah-ts39qge</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:31:01 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 3 - Island Garden Song</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-3-island-garden-song-h9xht4e</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Tape hum, I have missed you. And the songs have moved on since you and I last broke bread. This is a small pastoral about disappearing. A simple idea that commits to its imagery rather than using it as disguise. It&#039;s a hymn to the pleasures of leaving, to the joys of the solitary, to the feeling not of being nowhere but of being not somewhere. I have idle visions sometimes of what would happen if I was cut off from the world. I think the earliest version was if you had to stay home with nothing ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-3-island-garden-song-h9xht4e</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:23:43 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>April 2 - Cool Hundred</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/april-2-cool-hundred-h9xyt4e</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This song doesn&#039;t exist. Neither does this blog post.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">april-2-cool-hundred-h9xyt4e</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 05 Apr 2026 22:26:52 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 31 - Horseradish Road</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-31-horseradish-road-zbpkdj6</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I&#039;m going to say something odd about this one. Some background first. I&#039;m a later Mountain Goats fan. Didn&#039;t listen to them until probably 2019. First album was The Sunset Tree. I think that sets the scene as to how this band first grounded with me, as a fairly mature and developed musical combination. One of the things I have most enjoyed about going back through their catalogue for the last three months is seeing all the places where they began, the bits that didn&#039;t work, the interesting exper...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-31-horseradish-road-zbpkdj6</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 04 Apr 2026 22:06:53 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 30 - Sure Do Love You Baby But I Can&#039;t Do 60 No More</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-30-sure-do-love-you-baby-but-i-cant-do-60-no-more-s201z85</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is kind of a tough one. It&#039;s unreleased, the only recording seems to be a single recorder version of a performance where John was belting it out and his voice was suffering as a result. It touches on a lot of John of This Period themes. Strained love, moving to new places, trying to work out what a comfortable life is and if one&#039;s even worthwhile. This one gets a bit lost in its details. Better formed versions of these ideas made it further out into the world.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-30-sure-do-love-you-baby-but-i-cant-do-60-no-more-s201z85</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 03 Apr 2026 22:12:50 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 29 - Shower</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-29-shower-uvb8g9n</link>
                <description><![CDATA[It&#039;s October 2008. You&#039;re in a small sports bar next to a Best Western in a town in West Virginia whose name you genuinely do not remember. You drove half of the day and say in the passenger seat for the other half while your wife drove. You&#039;re going from North Carolina to Ohio to visit a good friend who performed your wedding ceremony and used to be a pro wrestler. Your mind is in a hundred tired places for a hundred tired reasons. Earlier today, while sitting in a passenger seat as the Ford tr...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-29-shower-uvb8g9n</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 02 Apr 2026 22:30:48 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 28 - Commandante</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-28-commandante-wr9c64p</link>
                <description><![CDATA[OK, so rhyming Brendan Behan and Tripoli, and puts me entirely on this song&#039;s side, and boy is that ever just the start. John is flying with this one, soaring through Americana like a pair of bottle rockets, in a Chairman Mao coat with a jetpack strapped to his back. The joy in this song is infectious and earned, it&#039;s a pleasure and delight in the weird and nerdy, the things that hit the inner value of cool which is nothing to do with what other people think. This is a song at play, and every pa...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-28-commandante-wr9c64p</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 01 Apr 2026 22:07:21 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 27 - Genesis 19:1-2</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-27-genesis-191-2-21jrbg2</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Hitting the rough edges of (deeply religious) punk here, as John looks at the parts of the bible most likely to get him in trouble with certain other people of faith. It&#039;s a funny thing, wickedness. Or the assumption of wickedness. Collective punishment is justified by the idea that everyone deserves it. And once you start thinking that it&#039;s not about what people did but what they are. I can&#039;t write much today. I just found out that an old friend who was in my rpg group but dropped out of it for...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-27-genesis-191-2-21jrbg2</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 22:30:26 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 26 - Crows</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-26-crows-1wfb8wv</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This song begins at the intersection of a variety of John&#039;s abilities hitting their full maturity. The guitar work, confidence of voice, and beauty of the lyrics all come together into a rather perfect piece of folk music about the past becoming even more the past. I&#039;ve lived in North Carolina, not as rural as the parts in this song, but not that far off, and the image of the past being both swallowed up by the sea of nature and torn up by the march of the present is a really compelling one to m...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-26-crows-1wfb8wv</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2026 21:57:34 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 24 - Dutch Orchestra Blues</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-24-dutch-orchestra-blues-5e2dv73</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Not a blues, let&#039;s start there. Which is pedantic and silly about a song that&#039;s joyful and silly. And also sad. This is a sing about faith in the hidden things. About yearning for the reassurance that better things are happening somewhere, just a little too quiet for you to hear but there nonetheless. I find songs of faith fascinating not because I have no faith or because there aren&#039;t things that I need to be true but because my own... whatever it is... operates on different terms. I fear uncer...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-24-dutch-orchestra-blues-5e2dv73</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 28 Mar 2026 23:15:36 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 23 - Cobscook Bay</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-23-cobscook-bay-pt5qfky</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I don&#039;t know if this is the first time I&#039;ve heard an electric guitar in a Mountain Goats song, but it&#039;s certainly one of the earliest examples to leap out at me, an electric sound with vibrato buit no distortion, in a full background of instrumentation. This song is a kind of Walden-by-the-sea for me, a semi-pastoral of life away from life, with occasional visitors, beautiful mornings, and a world shrunk down small to the point where you can hear the waves break and the trees grow. There&#039;s miser...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-23-cobscook-bay-pt5qfky</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 27 Mar 2026 22:43:07 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 22 - Golden Boy</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-22-golden-boy-5edzv73</link>
                <description><![CDATA[What a delightful whimsical little song. Edges of Big Rock Candy Mountain, with the sort of sincerity of someone who with their entire heart and soul believe they are being a lil goof. Done with anything less than sincerity, done with horror of horrors irony this would be insufferable. it would have a sneer on its lips as it told you to be good and get to heaven because you can&#039;t buy Golden Boy Peanuts in hell. But this is sincere, and I&#039;m sure the peanuts taste like goddamn heaven. Golden Boy a...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-22-golden-boy-5edzv73</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 26 Mar 2026 23:18:38 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 21 - Treetop Song</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-21-treetop-song-h95xt4e</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I can feel the landscape of this song. It&#039;s an early morning, some fog in the air, and there&#039;s a calm in the air. And somewhere within that a fantasy made of choppy guitar and harmonica. It&#039;s a small one, this. A quick scene that is the edge of pastoral, with a note of energy that becomes almost fantastic. The song and the singer take off in unison, leaving us in the beautiful calm of the treetops.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-21-treetop-song-h95xt4e</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 25 Mar 2026 22:00:58 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 20 - Narakaloka</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-20-narakaloka-wrfz64p</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Welcome back tape hum. John sets a table here, a beautiful domestic scene of a garden being planted, a kitchen being outfitted, a series of events that will survive the singer. This is a small gem, a bleak song of hope. Things pass, but we can make sure things endure. The seeds we plant will grow one day. The spices we store in our kitchen will be opened and used. The world will live on. And that&#039;s hope, of a sort.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-20-narakaloka-wrfz64p</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 25 Mar 2026 21:55:36 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 19 - Song for the Julian Calendar</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-19-song-for-the-julian-calendar-4xcda1t</link>
                <description><![CDATA[A couple of songs into Full Force Galesberg and the first thing that is striking me about this record is how much fuller the sound is than what has come before. Not just that there are more instruments, but that this album&#039;s exploration of the folk space is lending itself to different musical cadences and concordances better than previous multi-instrumental tracks. There&#039;s been a lot of growth here and it lands the band in a very interesting place. Unsurprisingly from the title, this is in many ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-19-song-for-the-julian-calendar-4xcda1t</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:14:36 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 18 - Original Air-Blue Gown</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-18-original-air-blue-gown-86jxnwy</link>
                <description><![CDATA[It&#039;s late. Not absurdly late, not so late it&#039;s actually early again. But, like 1:30. There&#039;s a party going on nearby, and you&#039;re not quite at it. You were at it, but the house has a porch and you didn&#039;t want that many people near you. You&#039;re talking to a couple of people, maybe one person, in a hushed voice. About what, you&#039;re not sure. it felt profound and then it&#039;s gone. If you were drunk you&#039;re not any more, but you&#039;re not sober either. You exist in the quiet soft joy of the late dark night. ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-18-original-air-blue-gown-86jxnwy</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 24 Mar 2026 21:04:30 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 17 - Calcutta</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-17-calcutta-ptrxfky</link>
                <description><![CDATA[It&#039;s not March 17, it&#039;s March 23rd, and I have the kind of cold and headache that mean I&#039;m only vaguely tethered to reality. Perfect time to hear a Mountain Goats song from the fringes of existence. This was apparently only played live once. Hard to think why, as it&#039;s a perfectly nicely performed story-song that doesn&#039;t reach a chorus but doesn&#039;t outstay its welcome. It&#039;s potentially a bit orientalist, as pretty much any song by a white person about India is going to be, but there isn&#039;t a reason...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-17-calcutta-ptrxfky</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 23 Mar 2026 20:40:51 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 16 - Cutter</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-16-cutter-qzvg9a9</link>
                <description><![CDATA[OK, so full disclosure: I&#039;ve been on holiday and am currently sick for the second time since the last block update I did. This is why these are late and why this is incoherent. Makes sense therefore that this is a sort of hidden track, with only live versions. Adding to that, March 16 is John&#039;s birthday. Adding to that, March 16 is one of my two anniversaries. This is a song about things being bad and getting communications from a distance, and they don&#039;t make your troubles go away but they do g...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-16-cutter-qzvg9a9</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 22 Mar 2026 20:57:48 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 15 - Masher</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-15-masher-tsk4qge</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Floating away on the guitar of this song, so much of a woodland pastoral, the sound of double the expected strings out under a canopy of trees. This is a song of solitude, which is a different thing from loneliness, it&#039;s the sound of someone far beyond society. This song is gorgeous. That&#039;s not a particularly sophisticated take, but it&#039;s one of the ones where the simplicity and beauty of the lyrics sits perfectly with the rolling complicated riff to create a feeling of chaotic nature. May we all...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-15-masher-tsk4qge</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 15 Mar 2026 21:52:00 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 14 - New Britain</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-14-new-britain-qzr69a9</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Mountain Goats do folk horror. The discordant guitars are a particular delight here with the imaginative language of a strange inhabitant of a strange albion. This is a beautiful and strange land of odd landscapes and odd feelings, and at their heart the human moment of seeing the person you love behind the love you have for them. Speaking of Britain and strange landscapes. I&#039;m not in England right now. I&#039;m on holiday in Cyprus. This is a profoundly weird time to be on holiday in Cyprus. I&#039;m in ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-14-new-britain-qzr69a9</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 14 Mar 2026 20:37:34 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 13 - An Inscription at Salonae</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-13-an-inscription-at-salonae-yatwe17</link>
                <description><![CDATA[The rhythm of this reminded me of Santa Monica by Everclear, although that&#039;s where the similarity ended. It&#039;s a wonderfully calm and matter of fact delivery for lyrical material that starts in the mythological and goes upwards from there. Often John sits at points in the alignment that are directly between history, mythology, and religion, and is good enough at allusion to make the exact positioning a matter of some nuance. This definitely falls into a human area, almost colloquial, with a story...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-13-an-inscription-at-salonae-yatwe17</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 13 Mar 2026 22:21:27 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 12 - Raid on Entebbe</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-12-raid-on-entebbe-s2r9z85</link>
                <description><![CDATA[There&#039;s a strange moment at this start of this song where for just a moment I hear a very familiar guitar part, only... it&#039;s not familiar yet. It&#039;s inevitable for a songwriter who has written (as can be seen in this project) 366 songs, but for just a few bars I heard Amy, AKA Spent Gladiator. She won&#039;t be back for quite a while, which made this a bit like seeing a childhood photo of a friend you didn&#039;t meet until their thirties. Anyway, this actual song rather than my brainfarts: I enjoyed the f...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-12-raid-on-entebbe-s2r9z85</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 12 Mar 2026 23:34:51 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 11 - Ghosts</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-11-ghosts-9dk5s7z</link>
                <description><![CDATA[The bouncing roll of the guitar in this is an early example of one of my favourite John tropes: the jolly, catchy song about how depressed the singer is and how much everything is terrible. Well, that&#039;s dismissive. It&#039;s not just about that, although the it made me wish I was dead refrain makes that a fundamental part. This to me is a song about the joy of breaking free from things, of knowing what the darkness looks like, and of walking towards lighter and better places. Not a depressing song bu...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-11-ghosts-9dk5s7z</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 11 Mar 2026 23:34:09 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 10 - Four New Trees</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-10-four-new-trees-fq8zhyp</link>
                <description><![CDATA[A delightful little folky number, four verses about four trees with different personalities and characteristics, with a delightful sting in the tail about the last one. This song is insubstantial, but delightful in its insubstantiality. It&#039;s a small growth in a woodland glade, away from people, with an abundance of comfort and a hint of paranoia. I can see the narrator out in their little cabin, slowly building up hallucinations about this fourth tree. Which makes me wonder if there are any tree...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-10-four-new-trees-fq8zhyp</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 10 Mar 2026 23:39:11 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 9 - Red Choral Diamond Spray</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-9-red-choral-diamond-spray-wraj64p</link>
                <description><![CDATA[It&#039;s the quiet ones that get me. I love a bit of big jangly guitar, and as we get onto full band numbers there are going to be some amazing things going on, but something about soft picking and near whispered vocals captures something pure in this music. This isn&#039;t a song I was necessarily meant to hear. Per John&#039;s notes, this was from an album that wasn&#039;t released at all, presumably one made for people other than the public, and leaked against his will. I&#039;m not sure what to think about that. In...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-9-red-choral-diamond-spray-wraj64p</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 09 Mar 2026 22:43:23 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 8 - Stars Fell on Alabama</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-8-stars-fell-on-alabama-h98dt4e</link>
                <description><![CDATA[With this title it won&#039;t come as much surprise that this is a very country-inflected song in a good way. it&#039;s warm and dark with points of light and convivial voices singing about dark things. The major detail that strikes me lyrically about this song is you looked real calm being such a tremendous wrong-footing of a first line. It&#039;s not what you say about a loved one, someone with whom you&#039;re going to share a kiss or more than one. it&#039;s what you say in retrospect about someone who ended up doin...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-8-stars-fell-on-alabama-h98dt4e</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 08 Mar 2026 23:22:43 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 7 - Cheshire County</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-7-cheshire-county-gy7r55y</link>
                <description><![CDATA[So we&#039;re very much into the era of Mountain Goats songs being delightful little bops. This is a magical pastoral number, with spells under the surface and a strong fundamental presence of nature. Actually, that&#039;s wrong. What&#039;s present here isn&#039;t nature. it&#039;s rural domesticity. And in an increasingly urban world it&#039;s worth bearing the difference in mind. It&#039;s easy to think that the natural world is the outside worksite of agriculture, simply because it does its industrial work through machines th...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-7-cheshire-county-gy7r55y</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 07 Mar 2026 23:38:10 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 6 - Black Molly</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-6-black-molly-v408y0t</link>
                <description><![CDATA[It might be the very live at a dive bar recording, but there is something delightfully and atmospherically nineties about this song. It might also be that half of the chord sequence is Stars by Hum which is one of my favourite songs from the nineties. But the overall effect was that this song, which I came to new on this playthrough, filled me with nostalgia. This is a song about love and precarity, about the dangers of longing and despair and how they make moments of romantic desperation feel m...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-6-black-molly-v408y0t</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 06 Mar 2026 22:55:20 +0000</pubDate>
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                    <item>
                <title>March 5 - Going To Georgia</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-5-going-to-georgia-ts1gqge</link>
                <description><![CDATA[The first thing that strikes me about this mix of spoken word and soaring vocals is that this might be the strongest that John&#039;s voice has sounded so far. In this song of love and isolation and the continual background fear of potential violence we hear a voice that is pushing forward through the years. In a way this is a simple young love song, and certainly the parts that are the real totems in this song are pure and simple and resonate strongly. My heart pumping blood remembers times when she...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-5-going-to-georgia-ts1gqge</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 05 Mar 2026 23:29:04 +0000</pubDate>
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                    <item>
                <title>March 4 - That Hippolytine Feeling</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-4-that-hippolytine-feeling-6uewkgj</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Ah, a bad recording in a very different way than other ones. This is a radio recording of a live show, complete with proper radio hiss, and is one of the only versions of this absolute ramp of a song. It&#039;s about love and guns and youth and death and God and Greek Mythology. In other words, it&#039;s like you cooked down the first 10 years of the Mountain Goats into a single shot and drunk it in one go. What a weird delight. oh, and here&#039;s a wild live version that&#039;s even shorter]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-4-that-hippolytine-feeling-6uewkgj</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 23:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 3 - Nine Black Poppies</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-3-nine-black-poppies-1wg78wv</link>
                <description><![CDATA[A chaotic descent of a sing, frantic chords and a low low riff on loose strings. This is a jangly open chord burst of burning paranoia, all signifiers and urgency. There&#039;s a couple of versions of this, each from a confused and paranoid narrator to an unnamed but seemingly untrustworthy you. The album version renders the song&#039;s worry in a solid slow increase of pressure, which makes everything oppressive. The live version is the same song going from a crawl to a sprint, with creeping worries beco...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-3-nine-black-poppies-1wg78wv</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 03 Mar 2026 23:04:17 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 2 - Pure Money</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-2-pure-money-865knwy</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Ich weiß nicht, warum dieses Lied mit einer Frau beginnt, die Deutsch spricht. This becomes a soothing soft keyboard song with the smallest hint of menace in it. An odd late night sound with a vocal that seems like it&#039;s trying not to be heard in another room. It very much has the feeling of a road not taken, a form of musicality played with and then left where it was. Much like John in his notes in This Year, I have a number of other paths my life could have taken, the biggest of which revolves ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-2-pure-money-865knwy</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 02 Mar 2026 22:02:37 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>March 1 - Cubs in Five</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-1-cubs-in-five-r548uz7</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I don&#039;t know why, but listening to this I found myself thinking of Walt Whitman and Wallace Stevens. Something about the intersection of the universal and timeless and the immediate. This is a cynical song about hope. About the wonderful things we wish for and don&#039;t get. About the darkness revealed by what we don&#039;t have and the purity of aspiration of what we wish for. This is regret for love gone sour, even as the narrator knows it can&#039;t be any other way. It&#039;s also an early appearance for Peter...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">march-1-cubs-in-five-r548uz7</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 01 Mar 2026 23:19:02 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 29 - Song for Roger Maris</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-29-song-for-roger-maris-s28pz85</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Yes, this day doesn&#039;t exist this year, but this song does. Well, kind of. This is an unreleased song that exists largely in bootlegs. The particular version I heard was a 1999 bootleg from CBGBs, which displays probably more passion than skill. I&#039;ve also linked a 2024 version. There&#039;s something special about a song that only exists live. It&#039;s a small covenant between you and the people in the room, and each time you hear it, it&#039;s different. In this case this starts off as the scream of a young m...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-29-song-for-roger-maris-s28pz85</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 01 Mar 2026 23:12:28 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 28 - Cold Milk Bottle</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-28-cold-milk-bottle-ptzyfky</link>
                <description><![CDATA[A burst of jangly energy here, covering a song that functions as an inverse love song. That feeling of having your day darken simply by someone&#039;s existence making itself known. I&#039;m always fascinated by anti-romance in songs. The feeling of strong passion about someone, yearning even, but only negative passion. Repulsion is attraction seen through another lens, a spade is just a heart upside down (with a bit added). My personal canon (that I&#039;m fairly sure this song and its author wouldn&#039;t agree w...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-28-cold-milk-bottle-ptzyfky</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 28 Feb 2026 23:21:16 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 27 - Million</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-27-million-5exmv73</link>
                <description><![CDATA[The roll of this song is intense as it searches thought yearning and explores different concepts. This is an era of Mountain Goats songs that all feel like they take place at night in open places, and there&#039;s a certain mentality that the open creates in those places. During the day, the sky is the sky, a big canopy above you, a dome. You can see as high as the clouds or maybe as high as the arc of blue all the way up. But at night, especially on a cloudless night, especially if there isn&#039;t much ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-27-million-5exmv73</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 27 Feb 2026 22:13:57 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 26 - Heights</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-26-heights-s21jz85</link>
                <description><![CDATA[It takes a moment for the unstandard chords of this to settle, and the effect is interestingly unsettling and fits well with plaintive nostalgic lyrics about a love of the past that clearly had doom in its core even if it had joy in the moment and regret in its memory. Or at least, I presume it&#039;s love. The joy of ambiguous lyrics is that maybe it&#039;s not. Maybe this isn&#039;t a sing about a fictional lost love of a fictional narrator and is instead a fictional friend who met a fictional tragic end. We...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-26-heights-s21jz85</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 26 Feb 2026 23:03:26 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 25 - Going To Reykjavik</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-25-going-to-reykjavik-ptsvfky</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Sometimes a Mountain Goats song sounds like a letter from a lighthouse keeper in the middle of an ocean, recording the ways in which he spends his time and his sanity while waiting for relief and for someone to send his missives to. This is a song that can be found in an ocean of sound, overlapping guitars creating a chaos that the audience can slip into like cold water. It&#039;s lonely and it&#039;s crowded, and both relaxing and unsettling at the same time. I spent notable portions of my life yearning ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-25-going-to-reykjavik-ptsvfky</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 25 Feb 2026 23:17:44 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 24 - Going To Scotland</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-24-going-to-scotland-9dcws7z</link>
                <description><![CDATA[God, this is catchy. God this is catchy. A life and a travelogue in a song that lives in being close part harmony between a male and female voice. This is joyful and desperate and brimming over with love and need and no way back. I&#039;m put in mind of the Ben Wheatley film Sightseers, which starts as two odd people on a road trip and both becomes so much more and stays exactly that. One of the several ways that the Mountain Goats style is evolving is in how much this felt like a song. Yeah, that so...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-24-going-to-scotland-9dcws7z</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 24 Feb 2026 22:56:46 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 23 - Blood Royal</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-23-blood-royal-b8w9cy2</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Back to the tape recorder, for this very claustrophobic track. Maybe it&#039;s just the headphones and the layers of sound but I felt like this song was coming at me from every side at once. The song itself is a rich chaos, double tracked vocals and dissonant memories. Blood and colours and memories crowding together. I find it hard to sit with this song for too long as the power within it comes from everywhere at all times.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-23-blood-royal-b8w9cy2</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 23 Feb 2026 22:39:38 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 22 - Orange Ball Of Pain</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-22-orange-ball-of-pain-pt95fky</link>
                <description><![CDATA[And welcome back to folk territory. The guitar and vocals are soft and meditative storytelling, allowing the lyrics to perform a one-two punch of undermining and then reinforcing. Let&#039;s not beat around the bush: this song is built around a pun. And as with the best pastiche is works largely because it is a genuinely delightful version of what it is sending up. The line repetition and the slow building of ideas are hallmarks of the best folk, and in this case the tracks of Nick Drake in particula...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-22-orange-ball-of-pain-pt95fky</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 22 Feb 2026 23:35:28 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 21 - Full Flower</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-21-full-flower-1wka8wv</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Folks, I don&#039;t want to freak you out, but I just heard an electric guitar. And multi-instrumentation. We&#039;re onto a new album here with new production standards. We are a long way from the rumble grumble of John&#039;s tape recorder and a lot closer to, well, indie music of 1995. Unfortunately something else that feels a long way away in this song is John&#039;s vocals. The guitar is so loud and forward that it took a couple of listens to have the vocals feel like anything but pleasant choral noise. This i...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-21-full-flower-1wka8wv</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 21 Feb 2026 22:27:28 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 20 - Against Agamemnon</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-20-against-agamemnon-qz2b9a9</link>
                <description><![CDATA[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&#039;...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-20-against-agamemnon-qz2b9a9</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 20 Feb 2026 22:54:04 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 19 - Duke Ellington</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-19-duke-ellington-218jbg2</link>
                <description><![CDATA[A mainstay of all eras of the Mountain Goats is the song as a sketch. A small set of details spelling out something very specific, with the potential for universality through the small details. Here, we&#039;re getting even more specific than usual and looking at a narrator, barely pictures, listening to a jazz great in Sweden in the early 1960s and thinking about the distance between himself and the musician. A distance increased still further by this scene being drawn by an american musician in the...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-19-duke-ellington-218jbg2</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 19 Feb 2026 22:15:19 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 18 - The Only Thing I Know</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-18-the-only-thing-i-know-h9s8t4e</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is an interesting time for production on Mountain Goats songs, as they move between solo and multi-instrumental and between tape recorder and studio. Sometimes this works very well, as with Song For Dana Plato. Other times... OK, that feels unfair. I like this song quite a lot. There&#039;s something assured and melancholy about the instrumentation and it both tries things and identifies a solid folk pop groove to sit in. I just kind of want to hear a version of this in a better studio where the...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-18-the-only-thing-i-know-h9s8t4e</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 18 Feb 2026 22:26:51 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 17 - Song for Dana Plato</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-17-song-for-dana-plato-h99pt4e</link>
                <description><![CDATA[A surprisingly full sound for this period, and a catching chorus at a point where John was quite chorus-averse. There&#039;s something nicely and deliberately unsettling in the bass progression that stops the song ever settling into a reassuring pattern, which works well with the subject matter. The catchy chorus of the song works best because it&#039;s not true. The repeated refrain of it&#039;s easy to slow down is easy to sing and hard to live. There are times where slowing down is essentially impossible be...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-17-song-for-dana-plato-h99pt4e</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 17 Feb 2026 23:23:49 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 16 - Noche Del Guajolote</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-16-noche-del-guajolote-s22yz85</link>
                <description><![CDATA[There&#039;s always something pleasant about a recording that sounds like a party. One of the reasons why (and I&#039;m sure we&#039;ll get to them eventually) the Jordan Lake Sessions are so beloved by Mountain Goats fans is that they sound like friends playing together. The same is true about this little folk country warble-along. It&#039;s turkeys and silly vocals and friendship captured by a microphone that happened to be there. We&#039;re back in the realm of Mountain Goats songs for weird compilations, this one wa...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-16-noche-del-guajolote-s22yz85</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 16 Feb 2026 22:37:18 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 15 - Hatha Hill</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-15-hatha-hill-zbb5dj6</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Exceptionally simple riff at the core of this one, but the sound is irresistible. Heavy on the bass and moving at a soft and drowzy pace with beautifully droning violins in the mix. There are basically two chords in this with a soft vocal over the top and it is a seductively enjoyable piece of music. This feels both personal and private and benefits from both. A capture not just of a moment in the life of a character but a moment in the life of a songwriter. I don&#039;t know who had sugar on their m...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-15-hatha-hill-zbb5dj6</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 15 Feb 2026 23:12:00 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 14 - Going to Port Washington</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-14-going-to-port-washington-uvv4g9n</link>
                <description><![CDATA[OK, so the story behind this one is absolutely adorable. While ultimately this was available on the rarities album Ghana, this was initially released as part of The Wedding Record, a four track album that one of John&#039;s friends put out to announce his upcoming wedding. And, fittingly, it&#039;s a bright delight of a song about love. Warm bass from Rachel Ware ushers along a song about driving through New York with someone you love and seeing the very silly name of a local bridge. It&#039;s insubstantial an...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-14-going-to-port-washington-uvv4g9n</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 14 Feb 2026 22:36:25 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 13 - Song for John Davis</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-13-song-for-john-davis-dcbh23r</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Grumble of tape recorder, opening bright chord, historical lyrics, this is peak early Mountain Goats. John&#039;s love of history, especially of the small personal lives of people in remarkable historical situations, is one of his most assured strengths. I&#039;ve always had a love of the personal in history, the central and so hard to grasp concept that the people then were the people now, just with a different set of experiences and upbringings. The social history recorded by people like Dr Eleanor Jane...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-13-song-for-john-davis-dcbh23r</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2026 23:08:47 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 12 - Pure Gold</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-12-pure-gold-6ur2kgj</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Another multi-instrumental track, which fills out the sound significantly. Having spent around six weeks in the world of early Mountain Goats there is something magical that I see happening when John is working with other people and suddenly the dimensions of his sound spill out in all sorts of new directions. Lyrically this sits in comfortably uncomfortable ground for a Mountain Goats song, dealing as it does with someone seeing things others can&#039;t, omens that exist perfectly to them and may no...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-12-pure-gold-6ur2kgj</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2026 23:02:58 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 11 - Wrong!</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-11-wrong-wrky64p</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Hello keyboard my old friend... There&#039;s something lovely about the Mountain Goats songs that got made for little tapes or compilations or were otherwise sent off into the world to find their way. Album tracks or tracks for John&#039;s cassettes invariably have a sense of planning and consideration. They&#039;re the ones that are going to be part of the Canon, as it were. This makes them orchids: kept in the hothouse, fed carefully, looked after. By contrast a song John wrote and recorded for someone else&#039;...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-11-wrong-wrky64p</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 11 Feb 2026 22:57:21 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 10 - Whole Wide World</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-10-whole-wide-world-66dkgjz</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Oh John, with your soft voice saying unsettling things. I&#039;m being put to sleep and kept awake at the same time and by the same thing. This is a song whose sadness is quiet and contained and no less devastating for that. It&#039;s small because sometimes the things that destroy us aren&#039;t big. Things end in tiny moments, where pain only needs to resonate inside you. There is no sound big enough, so keep the sound small. There&#039;s a full band version of this on the Jordan Lake sessions. It&#039;s unhelpful to ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-10-whole-wide-world-66dkgjz</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 10 Feb 2026 23:16:51 +0000</pubDate>
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                    <item>
                <title>February 9 - Some Swedish Trees</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-9-some-swedish-trees-bbfcy27</link>
                <description><![CDATA[God, I am such a sucker for band chat in songs. There&#039;s nothing like thinking of bands as collections of voices to make the sing feel natural and like it captures a moment. And on the chorus of this odd little pastoral we get (for I think the first time in this collection) a harmonised voice, adding to John&#039;s and raising it. The two voices together gave this song a seventies folk-rock feel which felt natural with its content, and was matched by the return of bass behind the guitar. It also moves...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-9-some-swedish-trees-bbfcy27</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 10 Feb 2026 23:11:26 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 8 - Sept 19 Triple X Love!  Love!</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-8-sept-19-triple-x-love-love-ggb55y6</link>
                <description><![CDATA[So, dates. I&#039;m writing this on February 10 about the song for February 8 which namechecks September 19 unless you&#039;re looking at the Youtube version which namechecks September 16. One of those dates is my birthday. So I&#039;m starting this one off timelost. And the Youtube version of this song starts off with a little bit of reggae. OK, cool.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-8-sept-19-triple-x-love-love-ggb55y6</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 10 Feb 2026 23:03:52 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 7 - Snow Crush Killing Song</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-7-snow-crush-killing-song-rrzuz7s</link>
                <description><![CDATA[I know you&#039;re changing, god damn you for that Sometimes love hurts. Sometimes love causes us to hurt. This is a song under a snow drift about the passage of time and the fact that the only way to stop it moving is to kill it, and the times where that almost feels like the preferable option. It&#039;s a quiet song, which is different from a soft song and not the same thing at all as a song without power. It&#039;s a sing about small moments, which is different from being a song about unimportant moments.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-7-snow-crush-killing-song-rrzuz7s</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 10 Feb 2026 22:53:04 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>Frbruary 6 - Third Snow Song</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-6-third-snow-song-uuyg9ne</link>
                <description><![CDATA[not much to say about this one, which isn&#039;t the same as not liking it. It&#039;s a small punchy account from the singer&#039;s life, a story of being unprepared for the cold in a cold place, with cheerful and warm guitar behind it. This is a tough year. We&#039;re all hammering against the ice. I hope we find what works.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-6-third-snow-song-uuyg9ne</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 09 Feb 2026 22:10:35 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 4 - Going to Tennessee</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-4-going-to-tennessee-qqs9a9m</link>
                <description><![CDATA[The beauty of the Mountain Goats as a band, a project, whatever, is that they know no limits in terms of genre or experimentation. ThHis is especially true later in the band&#039;s progression, but even close-ish to the start as we are now the progress of listening to John work out things that his guitar can do is often the process of listening to him wander through genres. The chord progression, and especially the way John builds the roll of the chords, puts me very much in mind of Nick Drake, which...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-4-going-to-tennessee-qqs9a9m</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 09 Feb 2026 21:38:50 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 5 - The Recognition Scene</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-5-the-recognition-scene-ttsqge2</link>
                <description><![CDATA[First appearance in this collection so far of the albun Sweden, which is not about Sweden. There&#039;s a small time jump here and it&#039;s clear in the confidence and assurance of how the lyrics work with the vocals, on top of a simple but effective guitar through line. This song speaks to moments in my own admittedly limited experience I&#039;ve realised that something is over before the something has realised it itself. If that makes sense. And even if it doesn&#039;t. The first moment where the inertia of the ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-5-the-recognition-scene-ttsqge2</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 09 Feb 2026 21:53:38 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 3 - Pure Heat</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-3-pure-heat-5ggv73t</link>
                <description><![CDATA[There&#039;s something calypso-like about the instrumentation of this song, small and jaunty and with an odd sadness behind it. This sadness is enhanced through the lyrics, which much like much Mountain Goats from this time, are laced with loneliness and regret and romance. This is a small song in many ways, a scrap of a thought over a slight if delightful guitar part. What gives it weight is the growth in John&#039;s voice. These lyrics aren&#039;t the forced get-through-it emoting of some early Mountain Goat...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-3-pure-heat-5ggv73t</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 09 Feb 2026 21:25:34 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 2 - Going To Jamaica</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-2-going-to-jamaica-qfp9a9m</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is a big open song with big open chords, giving an odd and apocalyptic vision of a fading world. Flowers in dry soil, the birds fleeing for another world, a sense of survivors in a place for the last time This is an empty song. Not in the sense of it lacking substance or feeling like there&#039;s anything missing, but in the sense of it creating a beautiful emptiness. The narrator and their mentioned but not pictured you are not permanent residents in this song. They&#039;re here for a moment and rea...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-2-going-to-jamaica-qfp9a9m</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 02 Feb 2026 22:35:03 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>February 1 - Alpha Gelida</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/february-1-alpha-gelida-4vga1tq</link>
                <description><![CDATA[February opens with a very Violent Femmes place. This is tense storytelling about love going wrong. Several parts of this feel like throw forwards to songs yet to come. The mentions of the young lions coming out has seeds of what will become the Sunset Tree. And the continued presence of, as John calls them, the Alpha Couple, pushes this song forward in time. There&#039;s a number of clear advances in the musicality in this piece compared to where we were a month ago or even a couple of weeks ago. Th...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">february-1-alpha-gelida-4vga1tq</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 02 Feb 2026 22:24:59 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>January</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/january-w1u64pw</link>
                <description><![CDATA[OK, so I&#039;ve been doing this for a month. or rather I haven&#039;t. I didn&#039;t start this until about 3 weeks ago when someone else mentioned the book club on youtube pages. And I posted on a few. But this seemed more my speed and more like something I would stick to. So with that in mind, here are some questions for myself from myself after listening to a month of early Mountain Goats in the order dictated by a Christmas present.]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">january-w1u64pw</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 31 Jan 2026 23:37:05 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>January 31 - Going To Wisconsin</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/january-31-going-to-wisconsin-9hzs7zd</link>
                <description><![CDATA[This is a song that comes out of the blocks at full pace, with seemingly no care whether if trips over its own feet a few times as it goes. It gets noticeably faster as it&#039;s going which feels like that ideal mix of thematically appropriate and not necessarily on purpose. The lyrics are the perfect sort of young-man-yelling-at-the-sky nonsense, a flight of fancy that skids across the surface of the song like a stone across Lake Superior. Or possibly a water droplet across a hot plate. This is pas...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">january-31-going-to-wisconsin-9hzs7zd</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 31 Jan 2026 23:15:35 +0000</pubDate>
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                <title>January 30 - Orange Ball of Peace</title>
                <link>https://miscellany.pckt.blog/january-30-orange-ball-of-peace-bs3cy27</link>
                <description><![CDATA[Sometimes John will hit you with a song that&#039;s so simple that it wrongfoots you, and the straightforward pleasure of it will have you second guessing yourself. This song is small (1 minute 25) and doesn&#039;t need to be a second longer than it is. It&#039;s a thought and the answer to the thought, both of which work perfectly as they are. There&#039;s a beautiful art to the small. The joke short story format of the drabble, the imposed limits of the perfect tweet, poetic forms such as haiku and limerick, all ...]]></description>
                <author>Miscellany</author>
                <guid isPermaLink="false">january-30-orange-ball-of-peace-bs3cy27</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 30 Jan 2026 22:55:13 +0000</pubDate>
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