Album Review: Joe Goodkin - Consolations and Desolations

In the lyric sheet I was provided for Consolations and Desolations, the word “love” appears 19 times—18 times within the words to the eight songs on the record, and once within the title to the opening track, and the first single released in advance of the album’s arrival in full, “Love Is A Stupid Word.”

And I find that, perhaps because I am entirely too sentimental, or earnest, I think a lot about love—the different types of love that are possible, but two types specifically, and the places where there might be similarities between them, albeit unexpected. 

I think about what it means to love someone for who they are, and not who you think they might be, or who you want them to be. Or what it means to love someone, and how you don’t love them “more” with each day, or year, that passes, but that you give each other the space to grow, remaining connected, still, through that love, over time.

I think about the ease, or difficulties, with which we feel love toward another, or rather, how that love, may or may not be a challenge to sustain in certain moments—I, often, believe that I am not easy to love, though I have been told that it might be easier than I think, or at the very least, not as difficult as I make it out to be. 

And I had not considered, up until now, if love, as a word, is stupid—or, I guess, maybe more accurately, a word that is overused, or used at the wrong time, or in an incorrect context, and in overusing it, or using it at the wrong time, or incorrectly, if it takes away from what it means—or, like, the actual feeling, or the act, or the experience, of loving someone.

Regardless, it is the word that we say. It is the word that we’ve got.

My hope is that it still has meaning.

*

In the past, since my introduction to Joe Goodkin, I had directly written about his work around five times (indirectly, a few more than that—beginning with his series of three unabashedly honest and confessional EPs released over the course of two years, to a lengthy collection of stripped-down rearrangements to songs he wrote when he was still fronting the band Paper Arrows during the late-2000s, and lastly, and most recently, his high concept song cycle based around The Iliad, released at the beginning of 2022. 

And what I have noticed, the more time I have spent listening to Goodkin’s music since my introduction to him nearly a decade ago, is that he has continued to grow and evolve with what he does. 

In turn, the longer I keep writing—writing about music, specifically, I have also continued to grow and evolve within these words on a page.

The way I write about music now has become more complicated and ambitious, which means that, eventually, the pieces that I have written about his work (and, like, every other record I write about) have also become more complicated and ambitious, and at times maybe much too personal; Goodkin in the way he plays with melody and imagery in his lyricism, continues to flourish within the craft—in doing so, keeps pushing himself—not to make things more complicated—not really, but to be more ambitious, or thoughtful, with what he is doing, and how he is doing it.

There is a notable and impressive dynamism to Goodkin’s output—simply because he is so diverse in how he writes, and what he writes about. His background in Classics, of course, lends itself to adapting both The Iliad and The Odyssey into spectral concept albums intended to be consumed from beginning to end, but it does really take a certain level of intelligence and heart to be able to make those projects still accessible and deeply personal, even though the songs are, inherently not about him as a character or protagonist within.

And it is that ability to take a story that, perhaps, someone without the interest or the background in ancient Greek poetry, might not find that genuinely interesting, but he retells it in a compelling and humanistic way that is inherently approachable. 

That also shaped Goodkin’s ability to comb through fragments of his life to craft the narratives found across the Record of series. Across the 18 songs total, he gathered memories and portraits of family members and other loved ones, and snapshots of his childhood growing up in Chicago, to build sprawling, and, at times, breathlessly executed songs that were as rich in imagery as they were revealing and confessional. 

And on his new full-length, Consolations and Desolations, Goodkin returns to that kind of revealing, confessional songwriting, though in this collection’s eight tracks, the revelations and confessionals are much more personal, with the lens of each song pointed further and further inward—on himself, yes, but also within the context of the love, and discourse that does inevitably arise within our connections to others.

*

Sometimes, the drugs don’t do the trick.

And I am, of course, genuinely interested in the conceit that Goodkin uses to pull Consolations and Desolations together—the eight songs, more or less, structured around the idea of love—the ways we both give and receive it, and its foundational purpose within a relationship. But what I am perhaps more interested in, or that there is much more of an immediacy to my interest, in the first line of the album—the opening line to “Love is A Stupid Word.”

Goodkin, himself, doesn’t even linger on it for that long—perhaps an intentional decision in terms of the line, itself, being used as a means of grabbing the listener’s attention and then pulling them into the rest of the narrative that will follow. “Sometimes the drugs don’t do the trick,” he muses with a little bit of a snarl in his voice. “They get me by but make me sick,” he continues in the following line, before arriving in a stark, brief, meditation on anxiety—“I sit up worrying—waiting for the end.”

The song itself moves along rather quickly, or at a faster, kind of rollicking tempo, but if I may, and if you will allow me, I would like to slow this specific moment down and sit with it just a little longer, and unpack all that it might mean.

Sometimes, the drugs don’t do the trick.

Sometimes the way we attempt to medicate, or self-medicate, a problem does not, in fact, help. 

The prescription antidepressant we take, and have taken, for years, popping it in our mouths out of obligation every morning and swallowing with a gulp of water.

The antidepressant we take and have long suspected is no longer doing what it is supposed to.

Sometimes, the drugs don’t do the trick.

The ways we attempt to medicate or self-medicate a problem do not, in fact, help.

The drinks we consume in the evening before dinner, or during, or after. The drinks we consume sometimes entirely too quickly. The drinks we tell ourselves we don’t need to have today, but ultimately do. The drinks we tell ourselves we do not need to have more than one of today, but then, out of necessity or out of a familiarity or a terrible comfort of some kind, a second can or bottle is opened.

The drinks that we hope will distract us, or dull us, or take the edge off just a little bit until the evening is over, and we can stop trying to outrun our problems, and fold ourselves into the darkness until morning, which is when everything will inevitably hurt again.

The drugs don’t do the trick. They get us by. They make us sick.

I sit up, worrying.

I wait for the end.

*

In the lyric sheet I was provided for Consolations and Desolations, the word “love” appears 19 times—18 times within the words to the eight songs on the record, and once within the title to the opening track, and the first single released in advance of the album’s arrival in full, “Love Is A Stupid Word.”

“Love is A Stupid Word,” aside from being penned with the kind of first line that does both command and demand your attention, is arranged musically to quite literally be a perfect opening track—it is big, bright, and bombastic in terms of its scope, though the song’s enormity and exuberance is not necessarily indicative of the tone for the seven songs that will follow,, Goodkin does, however, return to a similar sonic pallet at least once the further into Consolations he takes you.

The bright and bombastic nature of the song is also, perhaps, unexpected given the kind of very sparse material Goodkin has been recording as a solo artist—this album does mark his first time being backed by a full band in over a decade, since more or less putting an end to Paper Arrows, and the exuberant pacing of “Love Is A Stupid Word,” individually, creates a surprising contrast between both a number of the songs that follow on Desolations, but also to Goodkin’s body of work, often smoldering or brooding in how they sound. 

Goodkin is a dynamic, or multifaceted songwriter, and a song like this, standing out within the context of the album but also within his canon, is a great example—the knack he has for writing an infectious and well-structured pop song, with the melody and unrelenting driving rhythm of the crisp percussion, among other elements within, all serving as some minor distractions from the seriousness, or at least how bleak some of the lyricism can be, especially the further into the song we’re taken, and Goodkin’s depictions of anxiety become even more palpable. 

“Sometimes I dream that I’m alone and where you’ve gone, no one knows,” he begins in the second verse. “I go door to door with menace in my eyes. Then I catch what’s on the news—there’s a car, a shirt, some shoes. I wake up and see your face—you hold me while I cry.”

Later, as the song continues to tumble and build, Goodkin does try to reassure himself, repeating, “It was only a dream,” like a mantra, but he ultimately doesn’t believe it, because, like the drugs in the opening line, this reminder does not help.

But within the seriousness of the song, or at least this anxiety within a domestic depiction, the song itself, like, musically speaking, in how it is put together, just keeps building momentum through its enormous, strummy guitar chords, and the jangly addition of a frenetic tambourine shake near the conclusion as it begins to kind of spiral into something both manic and triumphant sounding. 

And I had not considered, up until now, if love, as a word, is stupid—or, I guess, maybe more accurately, a word that is overused, or used at the wrong time, or in an incorrect context, and in overusing it, or using it at the wrong time, or incorrectly, if it takes away from what it means—or, like, the actual feeling, or the act, or the experience, of loving someone.

Regardless, it is the word that we say. It is the word that we’ve got.

My hope is that it still has meaning.

*

Consolations, in a way, is structured so that a majority of the less somber, or smoldering-sounding material is placed at the top of the record, with the inherently much more aesthetically pensive tunes sequenced within the second half, and arriving at the halfway point of the record, as one side ends and the other begins, is “Endless Fall”—which is among the finest within the collection w/r/t both Goodkin’s vivid writing and ability to build a world within a song, but also the way that, musically, there is a feeling of tension or at least restrained that is played with as the song’s instrumentation literally simmers underneath his tender vocals through its entirety. 

Opening with the slight, cavernous blip of a drum machine, “Endless Fall” is among the album’s folksiest, or at least has a part of its arranging firmly planted in a rootsy sound with a resonant, thudding kick drum that keeps sparse time underneath both Goodkin’s intricate string plucking of the guitar, the subtle, impactful tones of the organ from Al Gamble, of the group St. Paul and The Broken Bones, and the eerie twang of the Weissenborn slide guitar, played by Adam Ollendorf. 

The impressive thing, musically, about “Endless Fall,” is the control that Goodkin and this assemblage of musicians have over the song—it is written in such a way that is not really meant to work toward a build, or some kind of explosive moment, but rather it just oscillates in this space of quiet reserve, and never strays all that far from it. There is no sense of tension in need of release, either—it is just instruments, shuffling along, existing in a space that swirls around Goodkin’s narrative.

And it is Goodkin’s very poetic and descriptive nature within “Endless Fall” that makes it as compelling and thoughtful as it is.

Not a stark meditation, but a meditation nevertheless, on mortality, as well as a kind of ruminating sadness, or darkness, Goodkin treads carefully in how he depicts both, and at the end of each verse, offers a simple reassurance.

“At the last of summer, moonlight in your eyes,” he begins, gently, both figuratively and literally—and, like the attention-grabbing opening line of “Love Is A Stupid Word” that pulls you into the song, here, Goodkin pulls a different kind of legerdemain by beginning with something that does sound rather romantic, or that it will be setting a certain kind of stage, before he does create a very surprising juxtaposition and minor feeling of unease with the lines that follow, which really do get right to the heart of the song’s theme.

“You can’t help but wonder what it is that lies in the thing that haunts us all—do not be afraid of endless fall,” he tells both the unnamed character who accompanies him within the song, as well as us, as listeners who are alongside both of them.

There is a heaviness to the song, yes, as it gently unfolds, and it is that gentleness that Goodkin uses as a means to offset the inherent darkness at its core—and the further the song drifts through its four verses, the more inward, or at least personal, it becomes; and in doing that, creates one of the more resonant and reflective moments throughout Consolations that lingered with me, at least, long after I had finished listening.

“When your seasons turn blue with a feeling you can’t name—the autumn fires burn you, and your love is cut with pain,” Goodkin muses starkly in the third verse. “When that sorrow calls, do not be afraid of endless fall.”

Do not be afraid. 

The drugs don’t do the trick. They get us by. They make us sick.

I sit up, worrying.

I wait for the end.

*

Goodkin’s work with a full band on Consolations and Desolations really lends itself to making these songs quite robust—some of them, sure, like “Endless Fall,” are spectral enough that they could work, or thrive, within the soundscape he’s carved out for himself over the last eight years, but are really put together around the idea of this additional instrumentation being present and allowing the material to really flourish in the way it was intended.

And that instrumentation, or that flourishing, does not have to be rooted in big, punchy bombast like “Love is A Stupid Word” or the similarly triumphant and enormous sounding “More Than Our Mistakes, which is what opens the album’s second half—the flourishing, or at least some of the genuinely interesting moments can come in the form of a very small detail within the fabric of the song.

One of those minor details is tucked into the opening of “Someone Else,” which arrives early within the album’s second half, and is also the second single that Goodkin issued ahead of the album in full. Opening with the intricate plucking of the strings to his guitar, and punctuating the conclusion of the first verse, there is this moment that occurs with the song’s percussive elements, which surprised me the first time I listened to it, and surprises me still, many listens later. And it is a small detail, within the fabric of the song, but impressive nevertheless, with a long, but hushed cymbal crash that rings out and then eventually fades away, but it takes all of nine seconds to do so—you can still hear the faint trails of it as Goodkin begins the second verse.

Along with that, and some brushed snare hits to keep a rhythm, there is this skittering sound that comes through, as well, which is a little disorienting at first, even with as subtle as it is, but all of these elements come together to create something that is quite stirring and impactful—a kind of gentle, graceful beauty. 

And for as pensive and inward as portions of Consolations can be, and for as often as Goodkin uses these songs to depict the discourses or difficulties within a relationship, he does remain true to his earnestness as a songwriter, and there is an earnestness to “Someone Else,” which I am remiss to call a “love song,” but rather, it is a song about love, or about how love is the thing, or the feeling, that keeps us connected to someone over time, and how that love does ultimately grow.

“You were someone else before the smile I sent your way like the sun,” Goodkin reminisces in the first verse of the song, then, shortly thereafter, “I was someone else before the look you gave me on the night I found some sort of magic out of a book—some treasure buried in my ground.”

And in its unabashed earnestness and sentimentality, there is something admirable to walking back through a relationship—a marriage, etc., and finding these moments, or brief fragments, however small or large, and turning them into something as literate, and weaving them into a song—and becoming more sentimental the deeper into the song we’re taken. “You were someone else before the songs I played for you on the phone,” he recalls. “My dog would try to sing along—he could see I was scared to be alone.”

That robust, or at least much larger feeling, throughout Consolations and Desolations does really add to the depth, and resonance of a lot of these songs—specifically in the contrast that occurs with the twangy dissonance and then hopeful ascension that is depicted in “Stay,” which as you might be able to surmise from the title, does exist within the space of a disagreement between partners—“I take a breath—you’re at the door,” Goodkin confesses within the opening line, then admits, “There’s too much shit between me and you”; or in the album’s penultimate track, “From Were We Came,” which is among the songs that I think benefits the most from this being an effort put together with a full band, or at least a lot more happening with production.

Like “Someone Else,” “From Where We Came” does work from within the past, though within that past, it is less tender, and much more self-effacing in how Goodkin explores his younger days—“We can’t know how our stories end,” he sings in the second verse. “The past is just things we tell—what we did, who we did it with…,” then in the chorus, he does attempt to reconcile or at least acknowledge the role the past does play in the present: “No one ever gets away—we change, but something still remains of the light, and dark, and love and shame from where we came.” 

This rumination is punctuated through a slow, trudging, ramshackle rhythm, and mournful, subtle accompaniments, quietly finding their place very low within the mix—with Goodkin’s voice layered in different tones, emphasizing the gravity of this kind of self-reflection, and creating a somber, disorienting feeling.

*

In the lyric sheet I was provided for Consolations and Desolations, the word “love” appears 19 times—18 times within the words to the eight songs on the record, and once within the title to the opening track, and the first single released in advance of the album’s arrival in full, “Love Is A Stupid Word.”

And it makes the most sense or is at least obvious that in the eight songs on the album, the word “love,” in the 18 times it is used, it appears the most in “Love is A Stupid Word”—six, total, but even if the word itself, stupid or not, is not specifically used within the words to a song, those sentiments are ever-present. 

I often think about what it means to love someone for who they are, and not who you think they might be, or who you want them to be. Or what it means to love someone, and how you don’t love them “more” with each day, or year, that passes, but that you give each other the space to grow, remaining connected, still, through that love, over time.

I think about the ease, or difficulties, with which we feel love toward another, or rather, how that love, may or may not be a challenge to sustain in certain moments—I, often, believe that I am not easy to love, though I have been told that it might be easier than I think, or at the very least, not as difficult as I make it out to be. 

And I had not considered, up until now, if love, as a word, is stupid—or, I guess, maybe more accurately, a word that is overused, or used at the wrong time, or in an incorrect context, and in overusing it, or using it at the wrong time, or incorrectly, if it takes away from what it means—or, like, the actual feeling, or the act, or the experience, of loving someone.

Regardless, it is the word that we say. It is the word that we’ve got.

My hope is that it still has meaning, and I think that one of the things, out of all of the things, that are tightly woven into and reverberating throughout Consolations and Desolations, is that love is what we say, and what we’ve got, in the moments both good and bad, and that it, as a feeling, or an idea, or a word (albeit perhaps a stupid one), still holds weight and still has the meaning we want it to when it is said, or shown, to the ones we do truly love.

And I am, of course, invested and genuinely interested in what Goodkin uses as his conceit to connect these eight songs together—structured around the idea of love—the ways we both give and receive it, and the way it is the foundation within a relationship, but after all of the time I have spent listening to Consolations and Desolations, what I find that I am still, perhaps, slightly more invested and genuinely interested in, or at least there is still a feeling of immediacy to me wanting to unpack it just a little bit further, is the opening line to the first song on the album.

Sometimes, the drugs don’t do the trick.

Within the song, it isn’t lingered on for that long, and is used as a means of grabbing the listener’s attention, and pulling them into the rest of the narrative—“Sometimes the drugs don’t do the trick. They get me by, but make me sick,” Goodkin sings on “Love is A Stupid Word.” “I sit up worrying—waiting for the end.”

There is a bit of a curl, or snarl in his voice as he makes this admission, and the song itself lips along at a brisk, rollicking, almost stomping tempo, and this moment—the moment of admission, is not intentionally lingered on but still, now, as we head toward the end, I would still like to slow things down, and sit with this just a little bit longer, and unpack all that it might mean. 

And what I have come to understand is that there is a paralyzing nature to when something is not doing the trick—not doing what you would like it to do, or believe it should be doing. 

Sometimes, the drugs don’t do the trick.

Sometimes the way we attempt to medicate, or self-medicate, a problem does not, in fact, help. 

The prescription antidepressant we take, and have taken, for years, popping it in our mouths out of obligation every morning and swallowing with a gulp of water that we have long suspected is no longer doing what it is supposed to, or helping how we’d like it to. 

Sometimes, the drugs don’t do the trick.

The ways we attempt to medicate or self-medicate a problem does not, in fact, help.

The drinks we consume in the evening—often too quickly, with the intent that they will distract us, or dull us, or take the edge off just enough until the night is over and we can stop trying to outrun our problems, and fold ourselves into the darkness until morning, which is when everything does inevitably hurt again. 

The drugs don’t do the trick. They get us by. They make us sick.

I sit up, worrying.

I wait for the end.

Consolations and Desolations is a short album—eight songs, arriving at less than half an hour, and Goodkin concludes it with the meditative “Enter Hope.” But even with what is implied or alluded to in the title, it is startling in just how bleak and damn near ominous of a song it ends up being, both in its tone and its writing—a rather surprising, though ultimately a fitting choice, to end the album with.

“Enter Hope” begins with the contemplative, mournful string plucks of Goodkin’s guitar—methodical in the rhythm he is working to build, but what makes the song so striking is the cavernous, haunting echo applied to his voice, as well as the unforgettable opening line. “I feel a darkness rising,” he begins, his voice working from within the contrast created by his natural range, and the eerie effects trailing after him here. “To meet me where I used to stay. There’s a storm on the horizon—it will behave here any day.”

Accompanied by a sweeping cello, and myriad, ghostly atmospheric flourishes that ripple and coast through the second verse, the imagery Goodkin taps into is dark—later on, within the final verses, he makes use of biblical references—a device he has used in the past in songwriting, as well as conjuring a vivid portrait of something apocalyptic—which, whether intentional or not, creates a connection to a moment within the song “Forgiveness,” one of his finest tracks to date, originally released as part of the “song a month” series he was releasing throughout 2020. 

But it is in the second verse where Goodkin does reveal, through his lyricism, that, at least in part, “Enter Hope” might be about the challenges to remain inspired, and to keep writing songs. “Words have lost their meaning,” he says. “Melody is without light. Major chords all sound like leaving…,” which is tethered to the line that is repeated like an incantation in the chorus—“Keep working on your lines until they rhyme.”

I, perhaps too often, in finding myself within a song, or an album—like, where I catch unflattering glimpses of myself in it as I listen, will call it a reflection of the human condition. And I worry that an expression, or a description, like that, much like the word “love,” is not stupid, but perhaps overused—or used at the improper time, and loses some of its intended meaning or impact.

I still do not know if I feel that “love,” itself, as a word, is a stupid one. It is one that, I think, we, as a whole, should be more careful with, though often are not. 

Consolations and Desolations, though, is an accurate depiction of the human condition—or, at least, a portion of the condition that does resonate with me, because of how Goodkin positions himself, and these songs, within the overlap of love, work, and a darkness just at the edge. 

The love, and the work—neither of those are easy. Or, the trick is to make them look easy, or not to let on just how difficult it all really is.

The work—the words, they don’t always rhyme like you, perhaps, need them to. Or, they don’t fall into place, onto the page, as thoughtfully or as eloquently as you wish. They lose their meaning, or, you begin to wonder why you sometimes go through the motions and keep trying.

The love—there are the difficulties, and the ease with, which we feel love toward another, and how that love may or may not be a challenge to sustain within certain moments. I, often, believe that I am not easy to love, though I have been told that it might be easier than I think it is, or at the very least, not as difficult as I make it out to be. 

I think about what it means to love someone for who they are, and not who you think they might be, or who you want them to be. Or what it means to love someone, and how you don’t love them “more” with each day, or year, that passes, but that you give each other space to grow, remaining connected, still, through that love, over time. 

The darkness just at the edge—it does, at times, seem impossible to keep that away, or remain a few steps ahead of it. And too often do we, or at least I, let too much of that darkness in. 

Then I am unable to find my way out.

I still do not know if I feel that “love,” itself, as a word, is a stupid one.

Regardless, it is the word that we say. It is the word that we’ve got.

My hope is that it still has meaning.

 

There is hope in the meaning. 

Consolations and Desolations is available now as a digital download from Quell Records.