6. Oceanographer's Choice

“What Mountain Goats Song Should You Be Listening To?” the writer Emma Stanford asks in the title to a really funny list of life situations and the Mountain Goats songs that go with them. For instance: “If you’re in love with someone and it feels OK, but you’re pretty sure it’s going to get worse from here” AND “you like references to Aristotelian poetics and you’re in a car”: “The Recognition Scene.” Also: “If you’re in love with someone and it feels great, but that’s mostly because you’re a teenager and you don’t have a lot else to feel good about” AND “there are UFOs”: “Tulsa Imperative.” And finally: “If you’re in a mutually destructive relationship and it’s making you horny”: “Oceanographer’s Choice.”

If there’s a song that fits the last situation better than “Oceanographer’s Choice” does, I haven’t heard it. Part of the beauty of songs as an art form is that there are so many of them and that they’re each so little—that they’re so similar to one another. There’s no way of elevating yourself above all others, if you’re a song; the most that you can do to differentiate yourself is to stick out in one small way. “Oceanographer’s Choice” is sort of exemplary, I think, because it just does its one thing with overwhelming force—it’s about, maybe, doing your one thing with overwhelming force, even if you can’t convince anyone (including yourself) that it’s worth doing.

It was recorded in October 2001, in Cassadaga, New York, not far from where Hughes was living. The producer of Tallahassee, Tony Doogan, brought in a couple of the members of the Delgados, a Scottish indie band, to play drums and guitar on the track, making it the first-ever Mountain Goats song with the backing of a full band. Darnielle seems both animated by the company and totally at home in the new sonic environment, which is garage-y and arty at the same time. The song fades in on a G5/D from a processed, channel-shifting electric guitar that Darnielle interrupts—“Well”—and then converts into the opening chords and lines: G5 (GUY in a skeleton costume), Bb (COMES up to the guy in the), Eb (SUPerman SUIT, runs through him with a), G5 (BROADsword). The drummer, Paul Savage, throws in a few hits on “runs through him” and then the rest of the band comes in on “broadsword”: Hughes, joining Savage in a relentless d’-DUN-DUN-duh, d’-DUN-DUN-duh, and a piano and an organ on Ds. It’s both an incredible first verse—the speaker is describing a scene in a TV movie—and an explosive, all-business opening to a rock song.

Then Alpha Couple One resets the room—TV off, lights on, radio up loud—and Alpha Couple Two walks in. They lock eyes. Whoever is on the piano is banging out Ds in octaves, a fuzzed bass is doubling the bass part, and now there’s these two. “You kicked the ashtray over as we came toward each other,” AC One sings.

Stubbed my cigarette out against the west wall
Quickly lit another
Look at that
Would you look at that?
We’re throwing off sparks
What will I do when I don’t have you
To hold onto in the dark?

No one’s denying that it’s almost over, and that’s a big part of the reason why they’re so insanely lit up for one another. AC Two throws the window open, they have half-rageful sex (it’s hard to imagine any other kind in the midst of this song), and “night comes to Tallahassee.” Then they go at it again.

And then we fell down
And we locked arms
We knocked the dresser over as we rolled across the floor
I don’t mean it when I tell you
That I don’t love you any more

Look at that
Would you look at that?
The way the ceiling starts to swerve
What will I do when I don’t have you?
When I finally get what I deserve?

At which point the song announces its true objective, which is to be, as much as possible, the essence of what it also refers to. Those D notes, hammered on the piano, sustained on the organ, and inside every one of the chords in the song, come a little further forward in mix. The G5 gets ready to remain a G5, which it does, after a staggeringly effective double-hit from Savage. And for the next minute and 23 seconds, a band that’s gone into a wrecking-ball zone just speaks its own strange mind, with a moody, swooping guitar coursing through it.

“The whole deal with the Tallahassee couple is there isn’t any actual conflict,” Darnielle told an audience in 2011, “because they are both in pursuit of the same goal: total self-annihilation.” The paradox, obviously, is that they love the pursuit—even love who they have become in the pursuit (I don’t mean it when I tell you/That I don’t love you anymore)—but know that all that will be vaporized once they have reached their goal. It looks like they have a choice between staying together or breaking up, but right now, the only thing that’s keeping them together is their fighting and drunkenness, which will eventually break them up. It’s a Hobson’s choice, which is when you’re presented with two options but it doesn’t matter which one you choose because there’s only one possible result. (I’m pretty sure that this is at least part of what the song’s title is alluding to; there’s an oceanographer named Hobson at the University of Victoria, so, maybe . . .) And that’s why there’s so much helpless sadness in the mix, even in a sex-fueled rager like this. “What will I do when I don’t have you?” the song asks, twice, with Darnielle’s voice doubled. It’s like they’re singing it, or thinking it, at the same time.