The Singles Jukebox

“Die for Judas” is my new demo submission for Lana Del Rey.

[Video][Website]
[7.20]

Jer Fairall: Life lessons hard-learned but wiser for it and a skipping acoustic guitar provide a thematic sequel to the first-person abuse narratives of The Sunset Tree, while the cackling threat of “mistreat your altar boys long enough and this is what you get” introduces the spiritual cousins of the misunderstood delinquents of “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton.” A lyric that mixes loaded Christian archetypes with sweeping cries of “all is lost” further reveals John Darnielle as a metalhead denied his own chance to shred, now stuck rendering the raw materials for storming metal anthems in his own, quieter language. But those bright, Memphis-y horns sound entirely hopeful and redemptive, offering a fitting conclusion to stories that have earned endings that, if not quite feel-good, at least feel good enough.
[9]

Ian Mathers: John Darnielle keeps writing (deliberate?) mission statements for his songwriting, or his characters: “Some things you do just to see how bad they’ll make you feel.” At the same time, he’s shown impressive dedication to varying his sound for someone who seemed like he could keep using the same boombox-and-acoustic setup forever for much of his career. Some of the Mountain Goats’ recent records have had midtempo tunes that really only carry interest if Darnielle’s lyrics and delivery are enough for you (and, err, there’s a fair number of people who fit that description), but the horns on “Cry for Judas” give the chorus a gently elegiac feel that’s at peace with things without being mournful. “I’m still here, but all is lost” could be another mission statement. Darnielle writes songs for after the fall, when we all wake up and realize that it’s never gonna get better but we can be okay anyways. Fittingly, he doesn’t sing that line like it’s a sad one at all.
[9]

Alfred Soto: One of Transcendental Youth‘s less transcendent songs, “Cry For Judas” matters less as a mission statement than as an excuse for John Darnielle to test his increasing command of horn sections. In this case the lyrics are ill served by the horns.
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: Those horns! Oh right, the rest of the song. “Cry For Judas” is a distant relative to John Darnielle’s “This Year,” a song that sounded triumphant but concealed a lot of sinister details underneath the surface. On this new single, a line like “mistreat your altar boys enough/and this is what you get” initially sounds clever, but hides a lot of darkness that manifests itself in characters who “speed up to the precipice/and then slam on the brakes.” Yet it’s delivered in a hopeful, ultimately upbeat way thanks to…those horns!
[8]

Brad Shoup: John Darnielle’s compositional evolution continues incrementally. This time, we get semipro horns, snow tires on the band’s sturdy tricycle. They don’t get more stirring than as fanfare in the intro, sadly. Throughout, Peter Hughes’ bass jabs, the counterpart to Darnielle’s vocal bruise-poking. The image on an altar bearing a “white chalk Baphomet” reads like a wink at the fans, but it’s immediately followed by a pointed reference to John’s beloved Catholic church, a startling bit of the political within the personal.
[7]

Anthony Easton: Each Mountain Goats production gets slicker and more complex, but the slickness and complexity is done to add rather than subtract from Darnielle’s words, and the words this time are him at his most axiomatic.
[8]

Katherine St Asaph: Meticulously arranged, from the horns to the acceleration right as Darnielle’s singing about it. The Mountain Goats generally do more for others than me, and I don’t even want to know what acts of dude those first lines will end up justifying (though of course they’ll tell us all about it) — but I call craft when I see it.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: “Some things you do just to see how bad they’ll make you feel”; is it a problem that John Darnielle returns so readily to a theme of joyfully embracing fatalism? No; he’s proved over and over that the terrible catharsis he draws from that well makes for transfixing art. The problem with “Cry for Judas” lies in the way I’m talking about the technique rather than the story. The fuller arrangement is no compensation; it highlights the tune’s (admittedly not unbecoming) flimsiness.
[5]

Will Adams: The brass arrangement is the MVP here, playing sixth man for lyrics that speak in generalities and singers who honk in their lower registers.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: Plonking horns on top of a little shuffle is nearly a guarantee of either tweeness or glurge, but John Darnielle’s voice is completely incapable of conveying twee, and his songwriting is always deft enough to sidestep glurge. As much as he spits out some of these lines, this somehow comes out sounding happy and uplifting. And if you don’t like that mood, you can always pay closer attention and enjoy the song for the words. I like both, thanks
[8]