Today Im featuring a guest post written by Eric Severson, analyzing the Mountain Goats iconic This Year. Enjoy: Early on the Mountain Goats record The Sunset Tree is the song This Year, which encapsulates many of the albums themes: an abusive stepfather, troubled youth, substance abuse, dysfunctional romance, and desperation for freedom. While it serves this role admirably (and is really catchy, to boot), it also seems like fairly simple and familiar territory...a high schoolers plan graduate and get as far away from here as possible. To wit: I am gonna make it through this year, if it kills me. However, as the rest of the autobiographical album (and John Darnielles other accounts of his life) clearly shows, these issues are not isolated to just one period. Long-lasting psychological effects, interpersonal problems, and the further depths of addiction all stemmed from this problematic time. But one of the last lines of the song is one that takes an impressive, but fairly straightforward song and blows its meaning wide open. There will be feasting and dancing in Jerusalem next year/ I am going to make it through this year if it kills me. This unexpected interjection seems odd at first, and many simply shrug it off, but it might be the most meaningful phrase in the song. It wont surprise anybody who knows this bands work to find themselves plunged into allusions to Biblical history and religious tradition. The phrase next year in Jerusalem is spoken during the Seder ceremony of Hanukkah to indicate the longing of the Jewish people to reunite from the diaspora which began in 586 b.c.e. (and is the story behind Hanukkah). Of course, they have now been saying this for up to 2600 years, and next year has apparently not yet arrived. And thats the crux of the song, too: this year is not just the literal calendar or school year, but the entire period of isolation, captivity, and struggle—and he knows it. Who knows when next year will come? Maybe never--for him, or for us. But I am going to make it through This Year if it kills me.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 18:00:01 +0000
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