Songs for Pierre Chuvin

Title: Songs for Pierre Chuvin
Released: 2020
Label: Merge Records


Liner Notes 1

none


Table of Contents

  1. Aulon Raid
  2. Until Olympius Returns
  3. Last Gasp at Calama
  4. For the Snakes
  5. The Wooded Hills Along the Black Sea
  6. January 31, 438
  7. Hopeful Assassins of Zeno
  8. Their Gods Do Not Have Surgeons
  9. Going to Lebanon 2
  10. Exegetic Chains

Album Credits
Footnotes


Aulon Raid

This is called "Aulon Raid"

Come riding with your soldiers
See how they fare
Keep yourself out of the action
Arrows flying through the air
Your reputation precedes you
Something must be done
Here in the heat of the onslaught
I am the one

Me and my crew
We will deal with you
We will deal with you
Me and my pagan crew

Come to lay down the edict
Come for the spoils
Come for the temple attendants
Anointed in oils
Come flanked by your big guns
Ride with the pack
Come screaming for tribute
Go out on your back

Me and my crew
We will deal with you
We will deal with you
Me and my pagan crew, yeah, yeah


Until Olympius Returns 2

Alright, well, I had a tracked version of this we were all ready to master. And, uh, and it turns out there was a mysterious seven-and-a-half second gap in the other one. All hail the mysterious gap!

Go through the motions every day out in the square
Listen for the hidden rhythms on the air
Nod in agreement when the tyrant holds forth
Look for a beacon from the north
Protect yourself, vouch for every member of the team
This is just a momentary ripple in the stream

Join in the rebuilding, sing loudly at your labor
Make friends with the new guys, be nice to your neighbor
Profess keen interest in the welfare of the state
Taste everything they feed you, say it tastes real great
Spit it down your sleeve every time you get the chance
This is just a brief improvisation in the dance

Raise up the columns, take the statues down
Praise the columns, spread the word around town

Behold the temple where the old ones stood
Is it not a thing of beauty? Don't it make you feel good?
Is it not a big improvement on the way things used to be?
Is it not a stately beacon for the whole world to see?

We will be right here on the day it finally burns
Everybody hold a spot until Olympius returns

Yeah!


Last Gasp at Calama 3

Out in the street, free and young
Songs of the Great God wild on my tongue
Here come the new guys again
Humorless men

Let he who's without sin throw the first one, like you said 4
Let anyone else throw the second as long as it connects with your head

One summer, then all of this is gone
One more summer, then no more swan

Hand me a torch, why not
Let's get some kicks in while the flame's still hot
They'll do what they were gonna do anyway
But Carthage may rise again one day

"With the measure that you use, so shall it be measured to you," 5
So you say, and it's true

One summer, then all of this is gone
One more summer, then no more swan


For the Snakes

All your brambles, all your creeping vines
All of the trash that people leave behind
All your fine, fine columns poking up through the pond scum
We will have uses for these things when we come

Cracks in the marble you hauled in from the quarry
These will be seen by all in their glory
Long hidden shadows of the places they came from
We will bring memories of these things when we come

All your abandoned things
Once fine vestments, statues with wings
They have their uses, every one
Let me slither across them in the sun

Pale imitations that you brought back from afar
We will show them to you as they are
Wind through the ruins, high and lonesome
We will have uses for these things when we come


The Wooded Hills Along the Black Sea

One, two
One, two, three

Cause no trouble, keep to our own kind
Known to exist, hard to find
Neck deep in our passions, serve who we serve
Enshrouded in moonlight, bucking the curve

Under the radar
Just out of reach
Among the thick woods
A mile from the beach

The burden of exile gets easy to bear
Sometimes forget there's cities down there
Woodsmen with axes, they come and they go
Snitch to the prefect about what they don't know

Smell the ocean breeze
We will never run out of trees

Under the radar
Just out of reach
Among the thick woods
A mile from the beach, yeah


January 31, 438

Hey, I'm totally in the full heat of this one, so I haven't bothered to tune, so I'm not at 440 here. I don't know what to tell you. I'm in G, anyway, if anybody's taking notes. "January 31, 438."

When the hunger turns in on itself
And begins to devour its host
Who do you turn to for help?
Who do you love the most?

I dance with the ones that brought me
I dance with the ones that brought me here

When the word comes down the wire that they're looking
To make an example of you
Skin and bones around a campfire beneath the stars
No good end in view

I dance with the ones that brought me
I dance with the ones that brought me here

I dance in the dark all alone
I dance for the god on the throne
If they come catch me and arrest me, mid-step
Let me go down dancing, let me be the last one left

Crushed like a seashell by a seaside warrior's foot
Trying to turn the tide
When the hunger's all that holds you together
Who do you want by your side?

I dance with the ones that brought me, yeah
I dance with the ones that brought me here


Hopeful Assassins of Zeno 6

Get tired of coming in from the mountains every year
Find some place to set up shop around here
Spread out a little, circulate
A log that floats down river will surely take on weight
Meet some people, make some friends
How long till we get sent back to the mountains?
It all depends

On the hopeful
And the cunning
And the faithful
The well-positioned
Filthy but graceful

Get familiar with affairs of state
Foretell the future, get a pretty good success rate
Notch some wins, take some losses
Be nice to the guys who wear necklaces with crosses
They will stab you in the back
You gotta turn the other cheek
You gotta learn to love Jesus, so to speak

Like the hopeful
And the cunning
And the faithful
The well-positioned
Filthy but graceful

Real filthy, think about getting clean
Even hear the soldiers talk about it, down at the canteen

Little kings keep coming, 7 one another's head
Which is exactly how the portents read
Watch with wonder, fail to discern
These people never learn
How long until the snake devours its tail? Longer than we think
Still it's gotta happen sometime
Until then, raise a drink

To the hopeful
And the cunning
And the faithful
The well-positioned
Filthy but graceful


Their Gods Do Not Have Surgeons

They came like beasts who'd tasted blood
First a few and then the flood
Coursing over hill and dale
Wet paw prints on their bloody trail
Return the peace you took from me
Give me back my community
Show us the goodwill you were shown
But leave us alone

And restore the temple of Isis at Memphis
Yeah, restore the temple of Isis at Memphis

Their hunger like a worm inside them
No sacred place could be denied them
They who talk all day of beauty
Call all the plain things dirty
Melted holes in celluloid
Give me back what you've destroyed
You who come demanding proof
Let your God rebuild this roof

And restore the temple of Isis at Memphis
Yeah, restore the temple of Isis at Memphis

Make it whole again if you can
Stand in the smoke and say some prayers
Wave your hand

And restore the temple of Isis at Memphis
Restore the temple of Isis at Memphis


Going to Lebanon 2 8

We came down to the shore
Always some desperate people there
Anywhere people congregate for pleasure
They'll go hunting for treasure

Come one, come all, fortune-seeking brothers
Pick up the faint, faint scent of the faith of our fathers
Their names were known once to me
I hear them sometimes on the song of the sea

Take note of what will be gone
In the blink of an eye
The blue, blue water, the bone-white sky

You can set your watch by these guys
We will be high on the highway before they've even opened their eyes
Picture them scouring the sanctuary looking for gold
It never gets old

But there is no gold and there is no silver
And "the South takes what the North delivers" 9
Reverse the circuit sometimes, every couple seasons
Remember our grandfathers whenever we need a reason

Take note of what will be gone
In the blink of an eye
The blue, blue water, the bone-white sky, yeah


Exegetic Chains

Look closely at the shadows on the ground beneath the trees
The labors of Hercules
Wild grasses on the hills, rippling in the wind
Cybele unchained

The songs you sing at Christmastime
The stories that you tell
Well, I knew them well
Yes, I knew them well

Say your prayers to whomever you call out to in the night
Keep the chains tight
Make it through this year
If it kills you outright

The coins they toss at dancers whirling in the city square
Music on the air
The places where we met to share our secrets now and then
We will see them again

Change will come
Stay warm inside the ripple of the Panasonic hum
It grinds and it roars
Headed somewhere better if I have to crawl there on all fours

Say your prayers to whomever you call out to in the night
Keep the chains tight
Make it through this year
If it kills you outright


Album Credits

Recorded March 16-25, 2020, Durham, North Carolina,
utilizing the trusty Panasonic RX-FT500 + the Marantz PMD222.
Mastered by Brent Lambert at The Kitchen, Carrboro NC

Maximum thanks to Merge Records + to Ryan Matteson.
This album is for Peter + Jon + Trudy + Avel + Matt + Brandon,
pagan stowaways in a supercathedral world


Footnotes

  1. Though there are no physical liner notes for this album, its bandcamp page includes some writing that fulfills a similar purpose:

    SO THIS TAPE STARTED while the entire band was decamped at an undisclosed location working on the next Mountain Goats album, and I had brought books with me to read, and one of them was Pierre Chuvin’s A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, which I was reading as research material for another thing I’m working on; and it’s been a long time since I sat around playing music and thinking about antiquity, but I used to do it all the time, and several of you know that because the old tapes are all littered with stories about Ajax and Agamemnon and the cult of Cybele, stories which, when I was learning them, got me so fired up that as soon as I got out of class I’d drive home in my yellow 1969 Superbeetle and write songs about them.

    At our undisclosed location, one morning, immersed day and night in our work but also beginning to get the feeling that the increasingly febrile pitch of the newsfeed would continue to rise until it reached registers not seen in a while, I had a thought—what if the next Mountain Goats album was just songs about these pagans? And I wrote down the title “Aulon Raid.”

    I GOT HOME about seven days later and the world was a very different place by then, and I took my old boombox down from the shelf where it sits flanked by brass deities from a former period of my life, and I got a wild idea to stand it on its end to reduce the unpleasant clicking that made it unusable—the hum & grind are one thing, basically ambient noise that adds to the pleasure of the sound if you’re into it, but the clicking I’m talking about developed sometime in the early 2000s and is not a conscriptable effect, it renders the Panasonic unusable.

    Unless you stand it on its end, I learned, by accident, one day during the early weeks of the new days.

    AS THESE DAYS WERE DEVELOPING, I realized, as I’d feared a week before, that the work schedule my band and I had planned for spring probably wouldn’t be panning out. The four members of the band split up our touring income equally, nightly pay & sales of merchandise; before we split up that income, we pay several people from gross receipts: Brandon, our soundman and tour manager of over a decade; Trudy, who works the merch table with style and flair; and Avel, who manages the stage no matter how unmanageable I become. I can’t do what I do without these people and I take great pleasure in trying to make their job a fun place to work. All seven of us rely on the Mountain Goats for our paycheck.

    The boombox and I knew we had to do something. Back in the early nineties, when I’d first met Peter Hughes, I wanted to make a tape to be on his label, Sonic Enemy. It was Christmas break and I was on a hot streak, so I decided to try to make a full tape over the course of the break. That tape became Transmissions to Horace, which consisted entirely of work done on a daily basis during that span. I haven’t tried anything like that in a while.

    I WROTE A SONG EVERY DAY for the next ten days while reading A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, starting with “Aulon Raid” and working in exactly the style I used to work in: read until something jumps out at me; play guitar and ad-lib out loud until I get a phrase I like; write the lyrics, get the song together, record immediately. Those original lyrics, exactly as written on the cardstock I save from comic books I buy, with corrections and everything, will be randomly inserted into orders; each is one of a kind, an original first draft of the lyrics to the first all-boombox Mountain Goats album since All Hail West Texas. It seems unlikely that I will ever again offer original drafts of lyrics for sale or otherwise, but pandemics call for wild measures.

    I dedicate this tape to everybody who’s waited a long time for the wheels to sound their joyous grind: may they grind us into a safe future where we gather once again in rooms to sing songs about pagan priests & hidden shelters, and where we see each other face to face.

    Hail the Panasonic! Hail the inscrutable engines of chance! Hail Cybele!

    —John Darnielle, Durham, NC, March 2020 ↩


  2. Olympius was a pagan leader who fled persecution, never to return. ↩

  3. Calama was an ancient Roman city located in what is now northeastern Algeria. ↩

  4. Likely referencing John 8:7 "When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, 'Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.'" (New International Version) ↩

  5. Likely referencing Matthew 7:2 "For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." (New International Version) ↩

  6. The Eastern Roman emperor Zeno reigned from 474 to 475 CE, and again from 476 to 491 CE. There were several attempts on Zeno's life: "It is not surprising that in 477 one of Zeno's slaves tried to assassinate him, as did a factorum of the queen mother in 478, and agents of the empress in 481." (A Chronicle of the Last Pagans by Pierre Chuvin, translated by B. A. Archer, page 98, Harvard University Press, 1990). These attempts were unsuccessful, and emperor Zeno died of natural causes. ↩

  7. John's handwritten lyric sheet for this song indicates that the word "for" should have been here, making the line "Little kings keep coming for one another's head." However, that "for" isn't audible in the recorded version. ↩

  8. The first "Going to Lebanon" was on the 1994 album Zopilote Machine. ↩

  9. There are quotation marks around these words on John's handwritten lyric sheet, possibly indicating a quotation from the song "Unfair" by Pavement. ↩