Listening Post: The Mountain Goats - The Life of the World to Come

The Mountain Goats - The Life of the World to Come - 2009

I've been listening to the 27 part Yale lecture series on the Civil War which I downloaded from iTunes. The lecturer, David Blight, is an expert on the subject and suggests a series of corollary works to read alongside the class.
I am NOT going to do that.
I'm just going to enjoy the lecture and learn what I can.
This is the same approach I am taking to the new Mountain Goats album. Why does it matter? Because every song is named after a passage of the bible and I have no intention of looking them up and figuring out how they relate to the subject matter.
I think that's a little too much work, truly.
This is also the first Mountain Goats that I am really not that interested in recommending. Why? Well, to be honest, it's a little petty. The lead single track, Genesis, was so evocative, the perfect little MG ditty that I was so excited to hear the next collection of songs after the brilliance of Heretic Pride.
But that was not the case. The rest of the songs are so quiet, intimate, difficult to penetrate, that I kind of feel like someone said, "Hey, John, we need a single." And we were given a track that could have been on the previous record.
Look, this is standard issue Mountain Goats. The songcraft is there, the topic matter is there. Its just that this is the first time that I feel like it's a yawn. We've been here before.
Still, there are haunting moments of Goats-ian brilliance. But this isn't an essential Darnielle record in the least.

Grade: B
ASide: Genesis 3:23
BlindSide: Psalms 40:2, Hebrews, 11:40
DownSide: Matthew 25:21

Listening Post: The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride

The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride - 2008

This review was originally presented in Shuffleboil.

In “San Bernadino,” the second track on The Mountain Goats’ new album “Heretic Pride,” John Darnielle sings, “We got in your car and we hit the highway.” A simple line that, through the economy of language that is Darnielle’s specialty, gives away the entire relationship of the couple that has pulled off the side of the road to park at the motel and have their baby in bathtub. A married couple shares their cars. Single people own their own vehicles. It’s her car. It’s their baby. They aren’t married. And they “will never be alone, no matter what they say, [they’re] gonna be okay.” We believe him. Everything will work out just fine. It’s an optimistic piece to say the least. And it embodies everything that is great about The Mountain Goats.





The economy of language. The true power lies in the nuance. God is in the details. Most singer songwriters never get this. Most poets hide behind veils of symbolism and simile. John Darnielle inhabits his subjects and conveys their essences with just a turn of phrase, a specific pronoun, a descriptive Marcus Allen t-shirt. The album’s title is taken from one of the best tracks and in his press release/comic Darnielle makes a point to let us know that the heretic who is empowered by the “reckoning”, emboldened by his martyrdom, strengthened by his physical abuses, dies shortly after the song ends. The author is god to his creations and takes glee and pride in knowing that their lives don’t just begin at the first drum beat and end at the fade out. His characters pre-exist and post-exist in this universe that is The Mountain Goats.

That Darnielle is a master of the music-as-novella is not new information. The “alpha” characters who have been chronicled over the years in various songs and then as the main protagonists of “Tallahassee,” the first album The Goats did for 4AD, are fully formed, constantly evolving people who Darnielle keeps coming back to. Keeps writing about. They are, however, fiction. Making the colossal nature of the work that much more spellbinding.

There isn’t a substandard moment on “Heretic Pride”, though some have felt that it isn’t as focused as “Tallahasee” or “The Sunset Tree”. It doesn’t have a song as shattering as Get Lonely’s “Woke Up New” A MUST download track for everyone who has ever lost someone through breakup or death. This album is more of a collection of songs.




Like “Autoclave,” an urgent and ironically folky retro new wave throwback about a person who is so incapable of love that his heart acts as a dentist’s autoclave, destroying any emotion that comes near it.

Or my personal favorite (of the moment), “Lovecraft in Brooklyn.” In the case of that song, it isn’t a depiction of the famed horror writer who moved to Brooklyn to be with the woman he loved only to find himself more xenophobic and racist than before. Rather it’s how the main character of the song describes his own feeling of xenophobia and racism. He feels “like Lovecraft in Brooklyn.” Darnielle is nothing if not literate. This is Indie rock of a different sort. In a way, John Darnielle (The only real member of The Mountain Goats) is really an heir apparent to Bruce Springsteen. The Springsteen of Yore. When his songs were populated by “the magic rat” or “Wendy” or “Mary” or “The Saint in the City.” Springsteen fans have long lamented that the songs filled with stories of fictional characters through whom we could relate our own lives have given way to solid rockers and a more expansive worldview. Darnielle has remained true to his canon of characters. Creating new ones along the way, he inhabits these people, these works of fiction and, almost never does it feel confessional. Except that he is so true to his subjects that they almost always seem confessional. That is some great writing.




As a whole, “Heretic Pride” is a terrific and rewarding album. It only gets richer with each listen. And, as for a place to start listening to The Mountain Goats (who have some 14 albums to their name dating back to 1991), there really is no better place to start.

Grade: A
ASide: Sax Rohmer #1, Heretic Pride, So Desperate, Michael Myers Respendent
BlindSide: San Bernardino, Autoclave, Lovecraft in Brooklyn, Sept 15th 1983,

Listening Post: The Mountain Goats - Get Lonely

The Mountain Goats - Get Lonely - 2006

Get Lonely will always have a very special place in my heart. If you scroll down this blog you'll see the video for "Woke Up New", a song that perfectly describes my feelings of loss after my daughter Lizzie died.
The album gets points for having that song. If a song can make me cry every single time I hear it, it deserves a special place in my world.
The entire album is of no surprise; Darnielle tells you what to expect in the title. Unlike the last three Mountain Goats albums this one's title is descriptive. The Mountain Goats get lonely. The songs are about being alone. Left. Abandoned. Isolated. Interestingly, they are all more accessible than most of the ones that we've been listening to. It's as though the catchiness of "You or Your Memory" took hold and, in the case of, say, "Half Dead", could be recorded by Jimmy Buffett. Save the isolation, desperation, sadness, etc.
There are moments on Get Lonely that I highly suggest not be listened to if you are a) recently dumped by a girlfriend b) very very high and paranoid or c) very drunk on single malt anything. The title track and the next song "Maybe Sprout Wings" are enough to elicit a complete sense of hopelessness. A life bereft of reason. Darnielle was married at the time he wrote and produced this album which suggests not that it's autobiographical, but that he is a brilliant writer of fiction. Able to craft characters so real and inhabit them & paint them so vividly that its impossible not to think they are all confessional.
That singular focus of Get Lonely can get a bit weary. It's a lot to ask of an audience to sit through a dozen songs about being sad that you are alone. The good news is that John Darnielle is also a good songwriter but, if you've been with the Goats so far, you can pass on this one. Get "Woke Up New", though. That's a keeper.

Grade: B
ASide: Woke Up New
BlindSide: New Monster Avenue, Maybe Sprout Wings, If You See Light


Review number 468

Listening Post: The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree

The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree - 2005

The soft piano, the brushes on the drums, something's a little different on The Sunset Tree. Now, albeit I have refused to go deeper into the past of The Mountain Goats. I'm not interested in all that lo-fi stuff recorded on boom boxes in the back of department stores and stuff. I have limited time, you know? So, maybe this isn't all that uncommon, I mean, there was some piano on Tallahassee, right?
This is different though. The Sunset Tree is a lush, delicate investigation into John Darnielle's youth, which was dominated by an abusive step-father, who gets credited with a thank you on this record.
Each track paints another vivid image of this suburban hell. Whether it be the crappy motel room in Los Angeles in "You and Your Memory" or the white shag carpet thick with pet hair on "Broom People" or the escape and return on "This Year", (the first time I would actually say The Mountain Goats can swing hard, Jack.) a song as vivid in its portrayal of that terror as it is clean in it's delivery.
I'm not sure why Darnielle has my number. Maybe it's because we are close in age. When he talks about Watergate being on the tv in "Dance Party" I remember my childhood. I think I'm a couple years older but not by much. His suburbia is NOT Spielberg's of Poltergeist and E.T. Darnielle's is realer. My parents were together and there was no abuse in ours (unless you call Jewish guilt and boomer refusal to admit culpability abuse...) but Darnielle manages to capture adolescence of that time perfectly. It might be universal, I don't know. I know that it hits home for me.
Sure, The Sunset Tree gets tired toward the end and, after a bit of reflection resolution. On "Pale Green Things", the monster is finally dead. Even though John is released I can't help but weep. Maybe its because I've been a stepdad. Maybe its because, as an adult when I didn't need it, I had a stepdad that I didn't like. I don't know.

The Sunset Tree is like a musical memoir. It's pure, it's wrenching, it's terrifying and it's brilliant.

Grade: A+
ASide: You and Your Memory, This Year, Lion's Teeth, Pale Green Things
BlindSide: Broom People, Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?

Listening Post: The Mountain Goats - We Shall All Be Healed

The Mountain Goats - We Shall All Be Healed - 2004

John Darnielle is a fantastic storyteller. At once confessional and then, hard right turn to observational. Comfortable in 1st person, 3rd person, 2nd person, he's what you should think of when you hear the term "Rock Poet Laureate". He takes what Craig Finn did with Lifter Puller and The Hold Steady and, instead of exploding it, made it more reductive. I'm not qualified to determine whether or not he's the "New Dylan", as I'm no expert in the old Dylan.
We Shall All Be Healed is not a collected work like the preceding "Tallahassee" or the forthcoming "The Sunset Tree". It's a collection of songs, each one acerbic, biting, tense, the people who populate the vignettes are vivid and each track is a minor epic. WSABH is a little more accessible than Tallahassee and for that reason it's just not as good. It's more polished, less haunting. The knife doesn't wield as sharply as it did on that one, and the record does veer into the uber-lo-fi of Darnielle's earlier work ("Home Again Garden Grove", "Quito") but these are but quibbles as one after another the songs invite the listener into the realm of Darnielle's story craft.

Grade: B
ASide: Slow West Vultures, Mole
BlindSide: Letter from Belgium, Your Belgian Things
DownSide: The Young Thousands, Home Again Garden Grove

Listening Post: The Mountain Goats - Tallahassee

The Mountain Goats - Tallahassee - 2002

There are a few great pieces of art that make you realize that you will never be able to achieve...that. For some it's Van Gogh. For others it's Gatsby.
For me it's, among many other things, John Darnielle's Mountain Goats album Tallahassee.
See, I'm a sucker for artists who create a character and keep them going, examining their lives for the duration. Dave Sim's 30+ year odyssey that was Cerebus is a great example. Trudeau's Doonesbury another. And the "alpha" couple in Darnielle's work. That he keeps going back to that well to examine these people is startling and amazing.
And, after years of that he devoted an entire album to them. Tallahassee is about the alpha couple moving to that town, buying a house sight unseen and drinking themselves to their end.
Mountain Goats albums sound like Mountain Goats albums. Darnielle's guitar loves a certain 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2 rhythm (among others) and his voice is almost repellently nasal. But the songs...the songs...Alpha Couple are those people you are afraid that you might turn into with a turn of bad luck or an illness, like the mother/daughter in Grey Gardens. I don't know if I know any Alpha Couples because I imagine they disappear into their own oblivion.

A song like "No Children" begs the question "How did they get here?" and, better, "What were they like when they met? Was it ever good?" Because it's a harrowingly depressing song. Take the opening verse:
I hope that our few remaining friends
Give up on trying to save us
I hope we come up with a failsafe plot
To piss off the dumb few that forgave us
I hope the fences we mended
Fall down beneath their own weight
And I hope we hang on past the last exit
I hope it's already too late
And I hope the junkyard a few blocks from here
Someday burns down
And I hope the rising black smoke carries me far away
And I never come back to this town
Again in my life
I hope I lie
And tell everyone you were a good wife
And I hope you die
I hope we both die

If that doesn't make you want to slit your wrists....I just don't know. You can't just put Tallahassee on in the background and do something else. The record demands that you pay attention. You couldn't surf the web or do your taxes while reading a book and that's what this is: a book. A novel.

There's no way to pick just one song on Talahassee, because they aren't really meant to be heard as singles. The entire cycle works like Drive By Truckers' Southern Rock Opera; all part of one great book. I don't know what happens to our heroes. I assume from the website for the album, based on the notes in the attic, that they drank themselves to death or that they used the poisons in the garden and committed suicide. "Old College Try" sort of gives me that suicide pact feeling as well.

Grade: A
ASide: Tallahassee, No Children, See America Right, Alpha Rats Nest
BlindSide: Idylls of the King, Peacocks, Oceanographer's Choice

The Mountain Goats - Heretic Pride. A Shuffleboil Review

It's finally done. After living with the album for a few weeks, entrenching myself in it and waiting for the official release to pen my review I suddenly realized that the release date had passed and I was behind the curve. Suddenly everyone, even the estimable Scot, Toad, had put out their review. I hunkered down and put my feelings for the album to words.
As always it can be found at www.shuffleboil.com THE place for culture junkies. Have you gotten your boil on?

Heretic Pride by The Mountain Goats



In “San Bernadino,” the second track on The Mountain Goats’ new album “Heretic Pride,” John Darnielle sings, “We got in your car and we hit the highway.” A simple line that, through the economy of language that is Darnielle’s specialty, gives away the entire relationship of the couple that has pulled off the side of the road to park at the motel and have their baby in bathtub. A married couple shares their cars. Single people own their own vehicles. It’s her car. It’s their baby. They aren’t married. And they “will never be alone, no matter what they say, [they’re] gonna be okay.” We believe him. Everything will work out just fine. It’s an optimistic piece to say the least. And it embodies everything that is great about The Mountain Goats.

The economy of language. The true power lies in the nuance. God is in the details. Most singer songwriters never get this. Most poets hide behind veils of symbolism and simile. John Darnielle inhabits his subjects and conveys their essences with just a turn of phrase, a specific pronoun, a descriptive Marcus Allen t-shirt. The album’s title is taken from one of the best tracks and in his press release/comic Darnielle makes a point to let us know that the heretic who is empowered by the “reckoning”, emboldened by his martyrdom, strengthened by his physical abuses, dies shortly after the song ends. The author is god to his creations and takes glee and pride in knowing that their lives don’t just begin at the first drum beat and end at the fade out. His characters pre-exist and post-exist in this universe that is The Mountain Goats.

That Darnielle is a master of the music-as-novella is not new information. The “alpha” characters who have been chronicled over the years in various songs and then as the main protagonists of “Tallahassee,” the first album The Goats did for 4AD, are fully formed, constantly evolving people who Darnielle keeps coming back to. Keeps writing about. They are, however, fiction. Making the colossal nature of the work that much more spellbinding.

There isn’t a substandard moment on “Heretic Pride”, though some have felt that it isn’t as focused as “Tallahasee” or “The Sunset Tree”. It doesn’t have a song as shattering as Get Lonely’s “Woke Up New” A MUST download track for everyone who has ever lost someone through breakup or death. This album is more of a collection of songs.

Like “Autoclave,” an urgent and ironically folky retro new wave throwback about a person who is so incapable of love that his heart acts as a dentist’s autoclave, destroying any emotion that comes near it.

Or my personal favorite (of the moment), “Lovecraft in Brooklyn.” In the case of that song, it isn’t a depiction of the famed horror writer who moved to Brooklyn to be with the woman he loved only to find himself more xenophobic and racist than before. Rather it’s how the main character of the song describes his own feeling of xenophobia and racism. He feels “like Lovecraft in Brooklyn.” Darnielle is nothing if not literate. This is Indie rock of a different sort. In a way, John Darnielle (The only real member of The Mountain Goats) is really an heir apparent to Bruce Springsteen. The Springsteen of Yore. When his songs were populated by “the magic rat” or “Wendy” or “Mary” or “The Saint in the City.” Springsteen fans have long lamented that the songs filled with stories of fictional characters through whom we could relate our own lives have given way to solid rockers and a more expansive worldview. Darnielle has remained true to his canon of characters. Creating new ones along the way, he inhabits these people, these works of fiction and, almost never does it feel confessional. Except that he is so true to his subjects that they almost always seem confessional. That is some great writing.

As a whole, “Heretic Pride” is a terrific and rewarding album. It only gets richer with each listen. And, as for a place to start listening to The Mountain Goats (who have some 14 albums to their name dating back to 1991), there really is no better place to start.