The Coroner's Gambit

Released: 2000

Label: Absolutely Kosher

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Liner notes

(photo):

Incense factory, Calcutta, West Bengal, circa 1931

(title):

or Slavonic Dances, if you prefer. Sixteen new songs from your earnest friends, The Mountain Goats.

to be sung at the base of trees in Vancouver, Bombay, New Albany, Hull, Delft, Dar-es-Salaam, et cetera.

(paper wrapping front):

He was an old Hmong craftsman who worked mainly in wood — altarpieces like small bowls for water or petals, elephant-shaped incense burners, intricate rosebuds or lotuses, and, later, in accord with the inevitable crushing forward movement of the age, crucifixes —and lived in a house his father had built in the nineteen-twenties. His father had done whatever work he'd been able to pick up in order to feed the family; selling hand-carved trinkets at religious festivals was what had done the job during the long Thai holiday season, and that was where he'd picked it up. His woodwork was neither a hobby nor a form of meditation for him, and he didn't think of himself or his job as anachronistic in any way. It was what he did for a living during the daylight hours.

He fell in love with a woman who had initially stopped by the table he set up on Friday mornings on Ratchwithi Road near the children's school. She was from Taiwan: she'd met a Thai businessman there when she was nineteen, and he had brought her back home with him. Together they'd raised two daughters and a son, and then, in her forty-eighth year, just as she'd begun to enjoy adjusting to her new role as one-half of a doting grandparental couple (her first daughter, Mae Noi, having given her a grandson), her husband had been struck by a motorcycle weaving in and out of traffic during the permanent rush-hour conditions that plague the downtown Bangkok streets. The accident was not serious for the rider, who landed atop the car against which his motorcycle had pinned his victim, but the victim had suffered internal injuries too grave to be repaired. He died after two days in the hospital. She mourned him for as long as she could, and then, on days when she felt perfectly fine and the world seemed pleasant and good, she found herself mourning him some more.

Her sister-in-law came to live with her; the feeling between them was really more a matter of duty than of affection, but she was genuinely appreciative of the company. Though Mae Noi and the baby came by once a week for tea, it was hard to be alone; even with her sister-in-law there to share memories of the husband and brother they'd lost, and to make small talk when the memories became painful, she felt acutely and terribly lonely many times throughout the day. So when she stopped at his table of hand-carved bodshisattvas and spirit-houses by the school one Friday while walking her grandson to class, and he asked her innocently whether it wasn't a lovely Spring morning, she felt sharp pangs of excitement and gratitude. The feelings were like young sprouts pushing through cool earth in their difficult, explosive journey through the soil to the surface. Of course he had been lonely forever; his father and mother, though good people, had given him little idea of how one wound up getting married, and so he had wound up never doing so. Though a solitary person by nature, he was still a very friendly man to anyone who got to know him, and he loved company though he lacked the ability to say so. She found him charming, and after seeing her at his stall a number of times throughout the course of the school year he invited her to his small, old house for soup, where they told each other stories of their lives — small stories, without the huge dramatic flourishes with which more fortunate people feel the need to embellish their histories. His soup was mild and nutty like the food that the people in the hills had been enjoying for thousands of years. It made her feel loved, and she loved him for it. They spent many evenings giving sustenance to one another, and teaching each other songs they'd sung as children. He told her how to say "good grandson" in the Hmong language, and she transliterated his name into Mandarin so he could sign his name to his pieces in one elegant, small character.

The time was not very long for them; he was fifteen years older than she was, maybe more, and while decades of daily exercise had kept his body in trim fighting shape, he could feel in his blood that he had the same hard arteries that had killed both his father and his grandfather while they were still relatively young. Within a few years of their unfathomable fortune in finding one another they were both gone, the second following the first in natural response to unendurable grief and loss. Their time together was sweet and warm, and was like nothing else in the world. May their names, which history has seen fit to hide in the warm folds of its endless memory, be sung forever in the wordless movement of young trees in the wind. Let the love they cultivated like delicate juniper seedlings go on growing forever, rooted in its own self-sustaining riches. May the hours they gave one another wash gently over our cold world and heal its terrible sickness. May they rest in the limitless grace and peace that is their love's one true reward.

(paper wrapping back):

Elijah, Baboon, Horseradish Road, Onions, and the Alphonse Mambo recorded in Omaha with Simon Joyner, Chris Deden, Lonnie Methe, Brad Smith, John Kotchen, Steve Micek, and Pat Oakes. All of them are owed money and are to be treated with deference and respect. Five of the remaining songs were recorded at Main St. in Colo, which is a small town in Iowa, and the rest were recorded two blocks north of Emma McCarthy Lee Park in Ames, which is a considerably larger town half an hour west of Colo. Though happy circumstances currently have the Mountain Goats claiming Ames, we continue to straight up represent Colo and will put the slap down on anyone who disrespects it. Transfer and levels by Bob Durkee at fBE in Pomona, California, with Joel Huschle attending. As a result of some regrettable but inevitable conversations that took place during the transfer, Bob, Joel, and the Mountain Goats have formed a new, super-powerful punk rock machine called Stage Bidet , and we urge you to watch for us and clear us a wide berth whenever we're in your town. Instead of thanking all the people I always thank to whom I say, collectively and with no less sincerity: thanks, I am just going to spend the time left us here addressing an absent friend. Rozz: I wish you hadn't've gone and killed yourself. Though I hadn't seen or spoken with you in eight years since that night when, as far as I can tell from the reports I was later able to piece together, you tried, not without reason, to strangle the life out of me out there on the landing of Damien's apartment and I probably never would have ever seen you again anyway, it was still hard to hear that you were gone. All your friends had been predicting your death since the early eighties, and no-one could bear the though of you growing old, but none of that did anything to soften the blow when I heard. I don't really believe that the dead see or hear what we do out here in the realm of corruptible things, and I don't imagine that anyone reads the scribblings on the backs of album jackets to them, either, so I am really only addressing a memory. To that memory I say: I thought of you now and then when I was writing these songs. I don't suppose they'd do much for you, but I thought of you all the same. All your friends miss you in some way, a little or a lot. The rumors about your final hours are dismal and tawdry: I am sure they would please you immensely. For your sake, I hope that the Christians were wrong and that you were right about whether the faithless are destined for eternal torment. In the event that you are a ghost and are wandering the earth moaning and rattling chains, I moved to Iowa from California four or five years ago: stop by any time. Have a seat on the couch until I get home from work. Help yourself to anything in the refrigerator, or to the whiskey and sake on top of it. Make yourself right at home.

(label):

They have been talking about a journey into the interior. They know the dangers and yet they have already decided upon it. No one can talk them out of it. It is clear that their minds are made up. Their knapsacks are packed.

Their guides have been chosen They remain cool to suggestions. They smile enigmatic smiles. They no longer answer questions.

Carol EMSHWILLER. "Being Mysterious Strangers from Distance Shores"

Related material

Shower and Tampa are outtakes from the album.

Table of contents

Jaipur

This house is so haunted with dead men I can't lose

I was having visions of sugared pastry

Cooked up in clarified butter

I tried to turn my visions into prayers

But I built my castle way up high in the air

Yeah, I came to the gates of the fabled pink city

Hungry and tired and cold

Swing low, sweet chariot

Chrome tailpipes shining, bright as spun gold

My brothers picked me up out of the rushes

Handed me into to the company of evil men

But I inched my way down the Eastern Seaboard

I am coming to Atlanta again

Yeah, I came to the gates of the fabled pink city

Hungry and tired and mad as all hell

Swing low, sweet jewel-encrusted chariot

Make me young again, make me well

I am the killer, dressed in pilgrim's clothing

I'm the hard to find stations on the AM band

I am the white sky high over Tripoli

I am the land mine hidden in the sand

Yeah, I came to the gates of the fabled pink city

Hungry and tired and alone

Swing low, sweet, sweet, sweet chariot

Coming for to carry me home

Elijah

Streak the windows

Smear the walls with coconut oil, yeah

Fill the cast-iron kettle with water and magnolia blossom

Let it boil

Let the water roll

Let the fire take its toll

I'm coming home

I'm coming home

Dust off the idols, give them something to eat

I think they're hungry, I know I'm starving half to death

I know you're waiting, I know you've been waiting for a long, long time

And I'm coming home

I'm coming home

Set the table those three extra places

One for me, one for your doubts, and one for God

Let the incense burn in every room

Feel the fullness of time in the empty tomb

Feel the future kicking in your womb

I'm coming home

I'm coming home

Trick Mirror

Seventeen years ago

They told me to teach him everything I know

Let the fire rain down

Rain down

Watched it flare up inside his heart

Saw it tearing him completely apart

Head to toe

I know

And blood will run through the streets of Rome today

And roll across the ocean

Fourteen years ago tonight

Watched him tearing through the garden killing everything in sight

I let my curiosity

Get the best of me

I saw the sourceless anger eating at him from inside

No one around him to stem the rising tide

Evil from his head down to his feet

Quinines bitter, sugars sweet

And blood will run through the streets of Rome today

And roll across the ocean

Island Garden Song

I will sail

To the far shore

And I will chop

A hole in the hull too big to repair

And I will turn

The soil with my hands

And I will make

My home there

My garden will grow so high

My garden will grow so high

That I will be completely hidden

And I will go

Where I will go

And I will jettison

All dead weight

And I will use

These words for kindling

And I will sleep

By the garden gate

My garden will grow so high

My garden will grow so high

That I will be completely hidden

The Coroner's Gambit

When Death came calling today

I heard the gentle grace of his cadences

I couldn't say no

I couldn't say no

When he showed me his new silk scarves

Laid out on the shiny black plastic tray

Couldn't say, couldn't say, couldn't say, couldn't say, couldn't say no

I couldn't say no

And I'm sorry I couldn't

You know how badly I wanted to

Didn't want, didn't want, didn't want, didn't want, didn't want to lose you

But his smile was dazzling

And his eyes were sparkling

Like moonlight

On the water at midnight

Couldn't say, couldn't say, couldn't say, couldn't say, couldn't say, couldn't say no

I couldn't say no

Baboon

The sun came up above the strange white plain

Blood-red flowers all wet with rain

And the spirit wasn't really willing anymore

But the flesh was very, very strong

And I've got very little money left and I've got no sense

But I'll have none of your goddamned impudence

Sun came up above the new white fields

Everything was new again

Pure power stripped of meaning

Sky burning

Spring cleaning

Daisies on the hillside like cancer on the skin

Pretty little yellow eyes that flutter in the wind

I'd be grateful my children aren't here to see this if you'd ever seen fit to give me children

And my defenses may be working with a skeleton crew

But I'll be skinned alive before I'll take this from you

The sun came up above the ocean out west

All the colors of the rainbow

Stand up straight you can see the house leaning

Day breaking

Spring cleaning

Scotch Grove

On the way home from the party

Neither of us said a word

LeAnn Rimes on the car stereo

Sang that song you know I hate, the one about the blackbird

And the rain came down on the windshield

I wished it would wash us both away

You had to open up your mouth, didn't you

I knew what you were gonna say

And you were Bluebeard's wife

Opening every cupboard trying to find the smoking gun

I told you, I told you

I told you not to open that one

Horseradish Road

The way that everybody's voice

Comes out muffled when they speak

The way we take our diminishing inventories

Month to month and week to week

The Maria Callas records

On the stereo all the time

You're gonna get yours

And I'm gonna get mine

'Cause in this car, in this car

Somebody's bound to get burned

I know, I know

'Cause I've been watching the road turn

The Enigma Variations

On the radio

The things that I could guess at

The things that I already know

When the twelve thousand dollars

That turned up in your purse

You've done something awful

I've done something worse

And in this car, in this car

Somebody's bound to get burned

I know, I know

'Cause I've been watching the road turn

Family Happiness

As we cruised across

The Canadian border

You reached into your handbag

Pulled out a microcassette recorder

Started quoting Tolstoy into the machine

I had no idea what you meant

Guess I'm supposed to figure these things out

Or maybe it's supposed to be self-evident

But I've gone feral

And I don't speak the language anymore

We're headed deep into the forest

I got the pedal to the floor

The engine shudders like a dying man

When you reach out to grab my hand

You could bring out all your weapons

You can't make me go to war

Long winding Canadian highways

Innumerable evergreens

Weather forecast on the AM radio

Says, "We'll be expecting highs in the low teens"

When I mouth my silent curses at you

I can see my breath

I hope the stars don't even come out tonight

I hope we both freeze to death

Look at the person I've turned into, tell me how you like him now

No standards of any kind to break, no creeds to disavow

I am right here where you want me

Do what you brought me out here for

You can arm me to the teeth

You can't make me go to war

Onions

The last white slabs of snow

Melted off seven weeks ago

And the geese are headed north again

Through the tightening sky, and I

Can feel my heart in my throat again

New onions growing in the ground

The cows come gingerly out of the barn

When they see that the ground is warm

They pick up a little speed, it makes me feel so good

And I feel it rushing down my throat, fresh blood

I head out onto the earth, its cold heart is melting

I don't know if I can stand it

Springtime's coming, that means you'll be coming back around

New onions growing underground, underground

"Bluejays and Cardinals"

Bluejays and Cardinals all come out to play

The highway traffic gets out of your way

Skies clear up if they're overcast

Pit bulls are gentle when you come past

Stars come out of hiding for you

And I would too, but this world couldn't hold you

You slipped free

Without me

The new sheen over everything

When you open up your mouth to sing

Baseballs travel faster when you watch them fly

Apples fatten on the trees when you walk by

You bring something unreplaceable to each and every day

Or you used to anyway, but this world couldn't hold you

And you slipped free

Yeah, this world couldn't hold you

You slipped free

Without me

Shadow Song

If you get there before me

Will you save me a seat?

If you get there before me

Would you save me a seat?

And if I never get there at all

Would you leave the seat empty?

If you get there before me

Will you light us a fire?

If you get there before me

Will you light us a fire?

And if I never show

You can watch the embers glow

You can keep the fire burning

This is a song for you in case I never make it through to where you are

This is a song for you in case I never make it through to where you are

There Will Be No Divorce

The rain fell all night

And it kept me awake

It was still falling by morning

It was hard to take, and you were

Sleeping on the floor

Breathing free and even

If I ever want to drive myself insane

All I have to do is watch you breathing

And at 5 AM

I turned the radio on

And an old man's voice

Sang a short, sweet song

And then the static roared again

Hungry for blood

I heard the rain falling from the rainspout

Down, down into the sweet, wet mud

And you punched out all the windows

And the wind began to wail

And you gathered your hair behind your head

Like God was gonna catch you by the ponytail

And then the old voice crackled through the static

And I felt young and alive

And the hairs stood up on the back of my neck

We were rising from the grave

Yeah, yeah

Insurance Fraud #2

Bag full of oily rags

Fifty cent lighter

Dreams of retirement in Cancún

Burning ever brighter

There's a lot of ways to make money in this world

But I can't recommend insurance fraud

Burnt out shell of a Volkswagen

Blood stains on the driveway

Torn up Mercedes

By the side of the highway

Big plans, big plans

Let me tell you something, sister

You will never get away with it

I was sitting in the recliner with the TV on

When you said something evil, and then you were gone

Explosives in the water main

A blown fuse

College graduation photograph

Splashed all over the 6 o'clock news

I won't be cashing in your policy

'Til I find out what it is you're trying to do to me

Alphonse Mambo

I could almost hear the rhythm section

Kick in as the sun began to blaze

I saw you walk across the plaza

Figured I'd just play it like it lays

Yeah, yeah, yeah

I think I'm gonna be real sick again

Think it's gonna happen real soon

And I know I can't afford another night here in this place

With its sixteenth floor view of the ocean and the dunes

And it's gonna be just you and me today

Waiting for the other shoe to drop in Tampa Bay

I can hear the roar of the crowd

In the stadium a couple blocks away

It's the kind of thing that used to get me all worked up

But I don't want to talk about it now, OK, OK?

OK

I just want to get this whole thing over with

I don't want to deal with it anymore

I hear the cogs all slipping at the same time

And then I see you walk in through the door

And it's gonna be just you and me today

Waiting for the other shoe to drop in Tampa Bay

We Were Patriots

Clear sky over Calcutta

Warm wind

Dvořák on the shortwave

Clear signal coming in

La la la

La la la la la

La la

La la la la la la la

Long vowels spill like liquid from your mouth

I hang on every word you say

An army of transistor radios on the bookshelf

Left on all day

Let them play

Yeah, let 'em all play on and on and on

Let 'em all play longer and louder

Long after you're gone

La la

La la la la la

La la

La la la la la

Clear sky sheltering our fragile little house

Listening to the radio all the time

Your hand on my forehead as though to check for a fever, yeah

Big plans in mind

La la la la

La la la la la

La la la la

La la la la la la la

La la

La la la la la la

Yeah, yeah

Credits

Thanks as always to Caliclimber, whose Flickr page provided the album art and the sleeve text. Thanks also to asrath who provided a source for the label text, to Harrison Lemke, who pointed out the possibility that John meant to refer to Lila McCann in Scotch Grove, to Brendan Robertovich, who corrected an error in my labeling of the liner notes, and to Mairead Beeson, who offered a detailed analysis of several parts of Elijah.