{"id":6230,"date":"2022-08-31T20:28:11","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T20:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=6230"},"modified":"2022-08-31T20:43:25","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T20:43:25","slug":"bleed-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2022\/08\/31\/bleed-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Bleed Out"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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A Professional Reviews The Mountain Goats' Bleed Out<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The album review that follows was delivered in a plain manila envelope to Fare Forward<\/em>\u2019s unlisted P.O. box. It has been edited for clarity by Drea Jenkins.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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I\u2019m not a bad guy. I joined the Force because I wanted to take down bad guys. I left for the same reason. See, on the Force they don\u2019t let you do nothing without ten kinds of paperwork. Then you finally take a guy down, and they let him go the next week. The way I do things now, there\u2019s no red tape, but there\u2019s no paycheck either. So I start taking on a few paying jobs. I figure bad guys mostly want to kill other bad guys. So they call me, I take care of it, I pay my bills.<\/p>

Sometimes they just want me to rough a guy up a bit. \u201cBreaking kneecaps,\u201d that\u2019s mostly just an expression, but a sock full of ball bearings, that\u2019s absolutely real. I get sent to this guy\u2019s apartment, I\u2019m supposed to give him the once over, nothing too serious. I don\u2019t know why, I don\u2019t ask. I\u2019m in this apartment, me and this guy, our business is completed you might say, and I look at his busted up stereo\u2014it was real nice before I got there\u2014and I see this album next to it still in the plastic. The cover shows some cops hauling off these bloody bodies with sheets on them\u2014it looks badass.<\/p>

This album is called Bleed Out<\/em>, and it\u2019s by some band called The Mountain Goats. I\u2019ve never heard of \u2018em, but I think, why not? I take it back to my place, put it on, and let\u2019s just say this thing is right up my alley. This Darnielle guy, he gets a lot right. For a guy who’s probably never seen it except on late-night TV, he understands a lot about the job. But he gets some stuff wrong too, about people like me, trying to do our part, so I\u2019m putting in my two cents.<\/p>

Okay, right off, this song \u201cTraining Montage.\u201d My line of work, I gotta stay in shape. This song got me to add two blocks to my morning run. It reminded me of when I first left the Force. There was this low-level punk who\u2019d killed his old lady, made it look like an accident. I had nothing on the guy. So I decide I\u2019m going to go over to his place and beat it out of him. One thing leads to another, and you get the second accidental death in the family that week. I thought about why I did it, and I kept coming back to that poor woman. So if this band comes to town, you bet I\u2019m going to be there shouting along with everybody else:\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m doing this for revenge! I\u2019m doing this for you!\u201d And maybe it didn\u2019t do that woman any good. She was already dead. But I got some real justice for once. That guy won\u2019t mess with anyone ever again.<\/p>

Now, the next song, \u201cMark on You,\u201d this one reminds me of what I do now. Once you\u2019ve been \u201cmarked\u201d there\u2019s no way around it\u2014if I don\u2019t kill you there\u2019ll be a bigger, better, more expensive guy coming after me. I don\u2019t get the bit about the swordsman though. Must be some movie thing. And no one trains anyone for this job, at least not in a gym or something. You have to come prepared. My first mark, that was my \u201ctraining\u201d\u2014I had to get this hit or I was out. If I didn\u2019t do it, I didn\u2019t get paid, and the guy was gonna find someone else. I\u2019m better now but I still do that guy\u2019s jobs for cheap. You gotta remember who gave you your first shot.<\/p>

\u201cWage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome\u201d makes me think about these young guys who try to get into what I do. Unless you\u2019re really, really good, you aren\u2019t going to get rich doing this. And no one out here is handsome. The work is hard and it shows. You may die younger than other folks, but only after you\u2019ve got a few real ugly scars, maybe after your nose is broken a few times. But some other parts of the song are real good. In this work you stay flexible and you stay independent because you\u2019re doing it your way. And you have to stay undefeated\u2014if you\u2019re defeated out here, you\u2019re dead.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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When I die\u2014and I will die, probably bleeding out on the job just like the guy in the song\u2014I\u2019m not going to be sitting there thinking how sad it is.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Make You Suffer\u201d really takes me back to my early days. This song is real mean, but it\u2019s the meanness that you have to have in this kind of work. The morning after I did that first guy, I left a note for my wife about how I had to get out and I couldn\u2019t bring her with me. If this was going to be my life, I had to stay focused, had to \u201clet my yes be yes.\u201d Back then I cared a lot about the suffering. I wanted to really make those guys pay. But after a while, you realize that death is just emptiness anyway, so what you do to them on the way doesn\u2019t make much difference. Taking these guys off the streets, that\u2019s what really matters. Still, I like the song. It\u2019s good to have ideals when you\u2019re young.<\/p>

\u201cGuys on Every Corner\u201d is another good one. These guys, these bad guys, the worst of the worst, they really are everywhere and \u201cthey don\u2019t look so special.\u201d That\u2019s the thing, you can\u2019t find these people by looking at them, you have to get inside their world. Even now I can\u2019t be sure if someone is bad or not just by seeing them in the street. They look just like everyone else because evil lurks everywhere.<\/p>

The last song on the album is \u201cBleed Out\u201d just like the album is Bleed Out<\/em>. I\u2019m excited going into this song, but then it\u2019s a total letdown. There\u2019s this guy who got shot and now he\u2019s whining about how there\u2019s no one to save him and he\u2019s not even sure what it was all for. If this guy is supposed to be some kind of badass, like the rest of the guys on this album, he ought to have known he was going to get his eventually. My way of living, you know what you\u2019re signing up for.<\/p>

When I die\u2014and I will die, probably bleeding out on the job just like the guy in the song\u2014I\u2019m not going to be sitting there thinking how sad it is. Dying is just part of the fight. I\u2019m here to take the worst folks off this earth to make some room for the good ones. I might not be one of the good ones, but I\u2019m on their side, and when I go I\u2019ll know that. This \u201cBleed Out\u201d guy, he just doesn\u2019t have the right stuff. And that\u2019s what this John Darnielle gets wrong\u2014he thinks guys like me are out here for ourselves. But I\u2019m where I need to be, and when I go, even I won\u2019t know the difference.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Drea Jenkins<\/strong> is a software developer in Lebanon, NH. She graduated from Dartmouth College in 2020 and spends her free time reading, writing, and coding. She only listens to The Mountain Goats.
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Bleed Out<\/strong> was released by Merge Records on August 18, 2022. You can purchase the album on vinyl, CD, cassette tape, or digital download here<\/a>.<\/em>
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