The Sunset Tree

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The Sunset Tree
The Sunset Tree cover
Studio album by The Mountain Goats
Released April 26, 2005
Recorded November 4, 2004–November 15, 2004
Genre Folk-rock
Length 39:35
Label 4AD
Producer(s) John Vanderslice
Professional reviews
The Mountain Goats chronology
We Shall All Be Healed
(2004)		 The Sunset Tree
(2005)		 Get Lonely
(2006)


The Sunset Tree is a 2005 album from John Darnielle's main project, The Mountain Goats. While We Shall All Be Healed focused on Darnielle's years as a teenager involved with other meth users, The Sunset Tree talks much about his childhood, and features domestic violence as a recurring theme. An alternate, limited edition vinyl, entitled Come, Come to the Sunset Tree was sold as a tour-only LP with 1000 copies. Darnielle has said the album name came from a hymn mentioned in a particularly brutal scene in Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh.

The album is dedicated, somewhat sardonically, to Darnielle's stepfather, by whom the album was "made possible." Evidence of Darnielle's somewhat abusive childhood is juxtaposed against an upbeat and excited backdrop of an energetically stummed guitar - especially noticeable in the songs "This Year" and "Dance Music." The tone of the album gets more somber and serious as it continues, dealing with Darnielle's longing for escape and feelings of powerlessness, and leading up to a confrontation with his stepfather in the song "Lion's Teeth." The album is summed up in the final two songs: "Love, Love, Love," in which he extols the virtue and folly of doing things for reasons of love, and "Pale Green Things," a quiet story in which the singer recalls a time when his stepfather took him out to watch the horses at the racetrack. Darnielle closes the song, and the album, with a lyric of his sister calling him, where "She told me that you'd died at last...at last!", seemingly exulting the fact that this menace has left his life at a far overdue time. But this is quickly followed by, "and that morning at the racetrack is one thing I remembered," leaving us with a different point of view from Darnielle, who is quietly mourning this man who caused him so much pain.

Contents

[edit] Track listing

All songs written by John Darnielle

  1. "You or Your Memory" – 2:15
  2. "Broom People" – 2:44
  3. "This Year" – 3:52
  4. "Dilaudid" – 2:10
  5. "Dance Music" – 1:57
  6. "Dinu Lipatti's Bones" – 3:18
  7. "Up the Wolves" – 3:27
  8. "Lion's Teeth" – 3:25
  9. "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod" – 3:22
  10. "Magpie" – 2:00
  11. "Song for Dennis Brown" – 3:57
  12. "Love Love Love" – 2:48
  13. "Pale Green Things" – 4:19

[edit] Track listing (vinyl-only release)

All songs written by John Darnielle

[edit] Side A

  1. "You or Your Memory"
  2. "Up the Wolves"
  3. "Dilaudid"
  4. "Collapsing Stars"
  5. "Dinu Lipatti's Bones"
  6. "Love Love Love"

[edit] Side B

  1. "High Doses #2"
  2. "Lions Teeth"
  3. "This Year"
  4. "Song for Dennis Brown"
  5. "The Day the Aliens Came"

[edit] External link

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