The Mountain Goats/Limesix: “In Corolla”

The Mountain Goats: Get Lonely

The Mountain Goats‘ Get Lonely is the best breakup record ever. If you get left by (or leave) someone and end up wanting to do nothing more than lie on the floor in a puddle of self-absorption and denial, or drive around endlessly feeling sorry for yourself, or eat yourself into a stupor, etc. etc. etc., then this is the album that should accompany your profound funk.

Sadly, it came out around my tenth year of marriage, and I’m not planning on ending that anytime soon, so I kind of have to catapult myself backwards through time when I listen to it and pretend I’m 18-22 and trying to get over a broken heart. It’s not that hard, actually. The record I used at the time was Seam’s Are You Driving Me Crazy? and so Get Lonely now kind of shares a space in my mind previously reserved for that one.

Anyway, it’s kind of a concept record about getting over and not getting over someone, and feeling like you can’t live without them, and all that kind of fun stuff. It has some of the most poignant lyrical imagery in a career full of poignant lyrical imagery, and it also has one of my very favorite (and saddest) lyrics ever: “The first time I made coffee for just myself, I made too much of it. But I drank it all, just cause you hate it when I let things go to waste.”

But this post isn’t about that song (“Woke Up New”), or even specifically about that album – it’s about the last song on the album, “In Corolla.” It’s a quiet conclusion to a quiet record (and maybe my favorite Mountain Goats song ever) – our narrator has given up, essentially, and sinks into a swamp (metaphorical or otherwise) as he says goodbye to his departed love. It’s completely depressing, so of course, I decided to learn how to play it, which I hardly ever do. Then I went into the studio and recorded a version of it as a kind of countryfied rave-up. It’ll be on a limesix EP I release in the near future, but here’s a rough mix of it, side-by-side with the original. Hope you enjoy:

The Mountain Goats: “In Corolla” (right-click to download)

limesix: “in corolla” (rough mix) (right-click to download)