the mountain goats / albums

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- Zopilote Machine
- - 20,536 plays
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The Mountain Goats
Released 1995

Orange Ball of Love
02:12
972 plays

Alpha Sun Hat
01:24
931 plays

Sinaloan Milk Snake Song
02:14
857 plays

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songs

- 1
- Alpha Incipiens
- 01:36
- 1,215 plays

- 2
- Azo Tle Nelli in Tlalticpac?
- 03:02
- 820 plays

- 3
- Alpha Sun Hat
- 01:24
- 931 plays

- 4
- The Black Ice Cream Song
- 02:03
- 2,099 plays

- 5
- Sinaloan Milk Snake Song
- 02:14
- 857 plays

- 6
- We Have Seen the Enemy
- 01:53
- 844 plays

- 7
- Standard Bitter Love Song #7
- 02:22
- 826 plays

- 8
- Quetzalcoatl Eats Plums
- 02:25
- 850 plays

- 9
- Orange Ball of Love
- 02:12
- 972 plays

- 10
- Orange Ball of Hate
- 02:09
- 1,215 plays

- 11
- Bad Priestess
- 01:29
- 789 plays

- 12
- Going to Bristol
- 02:02
- 794 plays

- 13
- Young Caesar 2000
- 02:17
- 785 plays

- 14
- Going to Lebanon
- 02:29
- 842 plays

- 15
- Grendel's Mother
- 02:20
- 1,195 plays

- 16
- Song for Tura Santana
- 02:03
- 652 plays

- 17
- Alpha in Tauris
- 02:09
- 736 plays

- 18
- Going to Georgia
- 02:15
- 3,401 plays

- 19
- Quetzalcoatal Is Born
- 02:21
- 713 plays

album review

Following a spate of cassette-only releases, singles, EPs, and compilation tracks stretching back over four years, 1995's Zopilote Machine is the Mountain Goats' full-length debut. Any sense that John Darnielle would upgrade his purist lo-fi aesthetic for the CD age is dashed by the opening track; making Guided by Voices seem like Pink Floyd in comparison, Zopilote Machine was, like most early Mountain Goats releases, primarily recorded on a cheap cassette boombox. However, that opening track, "Alpha Incipiens," is in retrospect clear evidence of Darnielle's artistic ambition; though he didn't explain it as such at the time, "Alpha Incipiens" and its companion tracks, "Alpha Sun Hat" and "Alpha in Tauris," were the beginning of a song cycle that would stretch through the next seven years, culminating in 2002's bleak concept album Tallahassee. "Alpha Sun Hat" is a particular standout, with winsome lines like "I'd like to give in to your oboe reed voice" giving little hint of the depressing turn this story of a dysfunctional alcoholic couple would take. Zopilote Machine also contains three entries in Darnielle's "Going To..." series of songs about physical and psychic displacement, as well as three songs referencing his ongoing fascination with Aztec mythology, including the haunting "Quetzalcoatl Eats Plums," which sounds like a lo-fi indie take on Tea for the Tillerman-era Cat Stevens. Though many of the Mountain Goats' early cassette releases had featured a bassist alongside Darnielle, his vocals and guitar are the only elements on Zopilote Machine; due to the primitive direct-to-cassette-through-condenser-mike recording technique, the album has a unique sound, with Darnielle's urgent, rhythmic acoustic guitar given primacy over his vocals, which sound compressed, hissy, and thin in comparison. New listeners, even if they're familiar with more conventional-sounding later Mountain Goats albums like The Sunset Tree and Get Lonely, will have a learning curve with Zopilote Machine (or indeed any Mountain Goats release from the mid-'90s), but after the mental recalibration that makes this stark performance style seem less alien, the unpretentious poetry and deadpan humor of Darnielle's lyrics and the folkie delicacy of his melodies blossom. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide