Going To Maine – The Mountain Goats
Oh Maine, you are a beautiful state, but holy cow are there not any good songs about you.
My default for this project, when a specific state is extremely weak, is to fall back on the wonderful cushion of John Darnielle’s “Going to…” series. So far that hasn’t been necessary. Until today.
And unfortunately, while you can’t really go wrong with the Mountain Goats, this is hardly one of his strongest songs. It, quite rightly, was stashed at the very end of a rarities collection, and mostly lives up to that promise. It’s a perfectly cromulent song, but not a whole lot more.
Still, the only other options I could even think of were 1) Okkervil River’s “Maine Island Lovers,” which is pretty much the peak of their mopey songs about mopiness and I just cannot get into, and 2) that awful Tim McGraw song about Portland. Which, no.
So, here we are.