“I am going to make it through this year if it kills me”
Themes bursting out of the gates like flood, the Mountain Goats’ “This Year” captures the quintessence of running through the starting line of life head first onto a tightrope and somehow making it to the other side. Multiple hours after sunsets, the day before moving cities, the five to six hours between falling in love and having three papers due the next morning, Jon Darnelle and his band capture the feeling of the post-climactic, blindsiding, and bludgeoning normality that manages to keep life glued together in the best way possible.
”This Year” is about the human capacity to overcome when literally nothing else in the entire world besides one person’s will to keep walking forward shows any indication of any possibility of success. The song is for anyone buried under an ocean’s weight of air contained within their own head and who can always see above the dense water of intense social misguidedness and self-inflicted overbearance but have a hard time getting themselves there. “This Year” is an ode to the beautiful ability of the over-bursting fullness of life within the smallest details meaning so much more. Somehow, The Mountain Goats are able to harnesses an indescribable and everburning optimism through the discussion of a singular evening with a girl away from a stepfather’s house.
“This Year” speaks to taking life step by step, to not throwing away the small happy things underneath mountains of torrential life goop. In a fearless cavalcade The Mountain Goats unapologetically declare sanctity in the fleeting and purpose in the irreverent, happiness in the small footnotes of humanity. In their song, Darnelle and company rev the engine of pleasant normality and place it on a pedestal, displaying its inherent beauty and motivating reverse-reformation like a forgotten lighthouse put back into the awareness of all lost at sea. “This Year” tells the cross-culturally shared story often spoken over and forgotten, one of simplistic motivation and beautiful small occasions that far too often only unconsciously keep us running. “This Year” is about the simple moments life that speak in colors and warmth instead of words. A story, moral, and motivation very, ineffably human.
(For an even more humanly striking experience check out The Mountain Goat’s acoustic version of the song on their album “Come, come to the Sunset Tree” which is not currently available on Spotify!)
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About the Curator - Sean Arison
Sean is a musician, writer, and artist currently studying psychology near Los Angeles, California. He really enjoys nice smelling fauna and homely ambient lighting. After exclusively listening to the Beatles, Beethoven, and Pink Floyd until the age of fourteen, he now possesses a wide music taste and loves discovering and sharing the beautiful art that he comes across. Sean loves how music is able to indefinably connect to the individual on such a unique and personal level. Sean is currently working on releasing his first full-length album in the near future. To know more, connect with Sean on Instagram!
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