The Mountain Goats are an American band formed in Claremont, California, by… Read Full Bio ↴The Mountain Goats are an American band formed in Claremont, California, by singer-songwriter John Darnielle. The band is currently based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. For many years, the sole member of the Mountain Goats was Darnielle, despite the plural moniker. The Mountain Goats are, for all practical purposes, the endlessly clever and prolific John Darnielle and whatever musicians he surrounds himself with, which means that while the soundscape may change from project to project, the overall tone and feel of Darnielle's work remains remarkably consistent. At his best, he writes finely observed, slightly surreal, impressionistic vignettes that manage to mix life as we live it with life as we wish we could live it, and as such he has more in common with a novelist than he does with the typical singer/songwriter, which is fitting, as he's also a published author. Darnielle's early Mountain Goats releases were lo-fi, cassette-recorded efforts cut with a rotating lineup of musicians, such as 1995's Nine Black Poppies and 2000's The Coroner's Gambit. By 2005's The Sunset Tree, his recordings had become cleaner and less cluttered, but his characters studies were just as vivid, and as the Mountain Goats finally cohered into a stable lineup (with Darnielle joined by Peter Hughes, Matt Douglas, and Jon Wurster), they recorded tuneful, thematically unified albums such as Beat the Champ (2015) and Goths (2017) that ranked with their finest work.
Darnielle began the new millennium with The Coroner's Gambit for Absolutely Kosher before signing to 4AD for the release of the surprisingly polished Tallahassee in 2002. We Shall All Be Healed followed in 2004, and one year later, Darnielle was back with The Sunset Tree. Remaining as prolific as ever, Darnielle turned away from the intensity of The Sunset Tree for a calmer, more reflective set of songs on 2006's Get Lonely. The accessible and assured Heretic Pride appeared in 2008. Next up was the Bible verse-inspired The Life of the World to Come, the group's sixth album for 4AD, in 2010. Switching to Merge Records in 2011, Darnielle released All Eternals Deck, which was recorded in four different studios in Brooklyn, Boston, North Carolina, and Florida with four different producers -- John Congleton, Scott Solter, Brandon Eggleston, and Morbid Angel guitarist and Hate Eternal frontman Erik Rutan -- helming various tracks. That year the band was also handpicked by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival that he was curating in Minehead, England, but they were ultimately unable to appear due to scheduling issues.

Original Air-Blue Gown
The Mountain Goats Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

Rain all burned away
The horseflies are an irridescent green
Plums boiled down to a pulp
Drying on a screen

Bright red air inside the house here
I can barely draw breath
Dark blue shapes pop behind my eyelids

I am not afraid of death

And on the television
Black and white footage of the young Cassius Clay
My god, my god, my god
He was something

Fists flashing as he comes toward the screen
Sailing headlong into nothing
And disappearing, reappearing
Out there in the clearing

Floating down the slight breeze
That plays along the edges of the leaves

It's you, it's you
It's you

Overall Meaning

The first verse of The Mountain Goats's song, "Original Air-Blue Gown," paints a vivid picture of a hot summer day where the rain has evaporated and the only things left to witness are the bright green iridescence of horseflies and the making of plum preserves. The use of color is significant in setting the mood of the song. The bright red air and dark blue shapes that pop behind the singer's eyelids could represent the oppressive heat that he's feeling, but the singer tells us that he's not afraid of death. This suggests that the heat could also represent passion and intensity, and the singer is embracing it.

The second verse takes a nostalgic turn as the singer watches black and white footage of a young Cassius Clay, who later became Muhammad Ali. The singer exclaims "My god, my god, my god, he was something," which highlights his admiration for Ali. The image of Ali's fists flashing as he comes toward the screen represents his power and confidence, but the line "sailing headlong into nothing and disappearing, reappearing/ out there in the clearing" is an ambiguous image that might be interpreted as the champion's seeming invincibility.

Line by Line Meaning

Rain all burned away
The scorched earth after a dry spell

The horseflies are an irridescent green
The beauty of nature even in pestilent insects

Plums boiled down to a pulp
The condensed essence of something

Drying on a screen
The process of purifying and preserving

Bright red air inside the house here
The suffocation and tension felt in one's own home

I can barely draw breath
The physical manifestation of the previous line

Dark blue shapes pop behind my eyelids
The imagination of what lies beyond

I am not afraid of death
The acceptance of one's own mortality

And on the television
The background noise of life

Black and white footage of the young Cassius Clay
The power of a moment in time

My god, my god, my god
The reverence and awe for greatness