Topic: The Mountain Goats

[Cuellar]

The Life of the World to Come was the first one to get me into the band and I can't recommend it highly enough; it's as devastating as The Sunset Tree, although for very different reasons, and a great representation of different aspects of the band's sound. Plus it's all about Death and God.

I avoided this one because of the god stuff I'm afraid to say, but I really shouldn't have. It's got some beauties on it, and some crushing bits:

And you were a presence full of light upon this earth
And I am a witness to your life and to its worth

- Matthew 25:21

Dunno why exactly, but that bit punched me in the gut. Struggle to listen to that song.

[Famous Mortimer]

I keep forgetting it's the same guy W

Listened to that one a few weeks ago actually. I don’t remember who made me aware of archive.org, but this site is amazing. It is an attempt to archive everything, including live music performances. Look at this!

https://archive.org/details/etree?and%5B%5D=Mountain+goats&sin=

I’ve only used it for the Mountain Goats, but I bet there’s a fucking ton of stuff on there. Reminds me of being a teenager and seeing out shit bootleg copies of live albums and listening for how songs are different live, or which bits stay the same.

What a resource.

Edit: look, here’s a show I was at! https://archive.org/details/tMG2018-04-14.bootleg/03_howToEmbraceASwampCreature.flac

For my brother-in-law's birthday, I bought him a hard drive and filled it with Grateful Dead bootlegs from archive.org, and he seemed rather moved by it. But now I've opened up his eyes to it, he's really into that audiophile thing of getting the best possible quality copy of every show. Much as I like long songs, I just can't get into the jam band thing.

Hold on, this is about the Mountain Goats, who I remember as a tape label band from the 90s then completely forgot about until a couple of years ago. I was listening to something of theirs the other day and it was great, though.

[Brian Freeze]

The Mountain Goats are featured on the latest epsiode of the Song Exploder podcast in case anyone might be interested.  I cant put up a link cos im a useless twat on my phone.

[kalowski]

All Hail West Texas is probably my favourite album by them / him. "The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton" is one of my favourite songs ever written by anyone. The whole album is a fucking marvel of a thing, really. Just stunning song after stunning song. The economy of the storytelling, the amount of information he conveys with so little. It's breathtaking.

Ah, yes. Such pleasure from such simple vignettes. The song you mention is just delightful, with his repeated, "Hail Satan" as hilarious as it should be.

[FerriswheelBueller]

Ah, yes. Such pleasure from such simple vignettes. The song you mention is just delightful, with his repeated, "Hail Satan" as hilarious as it should be.

Jenny is my fave off that record.

How much better can my life get? / 900cc of pure whining power / no outstanding warrants for my arrest

Great line. Great record.

[phantom_power]

Has anyone heard the I Only Listen To The Mountain Goats podcast? It is presented by the bloke who wrote Welcome To Night Vale and each episode talks about a song from All Hail West Texas and other things besides with John Darnielle and guest. They start with the original song and end with a cover from a different band. It is pretty good stuff, even though the presenter sounds like he is doing a bad Ira Glass impression, and Darnielle is a fascinating bloke

[peanutbutter]

The Mountain Goats are featured on the latest epsiode of the Song Exploder podcast in case anyone might be interested.  I cant put up a link cos im a useless twat on my phone.

Isnt there a whole podcast just about Mountain Goats songs with John Darnielle and some other dude?

Has anyone heard the I Only Listen To The Mountain Goats podcast? It is presented by the bloke who wrote Welcome To Night Vale and each episode talks about a song from All Hail West Texas and other things besides with John Darnielle and guest. They start with the original song and end with a cover from a different band. It is pretty good stuff, even though the presenter sounds like he is doing a bad Ira Glass impression, and Darnielle is a fascinating bloke

Oh, yes there is, it's this one!

[FerriswheelBueller]

Stuck in my head today

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hKudKA9LvZ0

[gout_pony]

Ahh you've got me listening to All Hail again some 15 years since I spent much of my time doing just that. I find it strange to think he was a few years older than I am now when he wrote it - not due to lack of maturity in the lyrics or anything like that, but that I associate it so strongly with the feelings of youth. I find it amazing he still had that foggy-headed yet lucid fervour at 30-something.

[Old Thrashbarg]

This a cover of a Trembling Blue Stars song, but it does feel like it could have been written by Darnielle. And he performs it as though it's his own.

Sometimes I Still Feel The Bruise

[FerriswheelBueller]

Posted this in another thread, may as well share it here.

Unreleased song, I’d never heard it before but it’s a belter. Peak Mountain Goats.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xMAhXEopqHw

[turnstyle]

I avoided this one because of the god stuff I'm afraid to say, but I really shouldn't have. It's got some beauties on it, and some crushing bits:
 - Matthew 25:21

Dunno why exactly, but that bit punched me in the gut. Struggle to listen to that song.

Oh yeah, that's a good un. It's about his mother in law dying. I saw him live just after that album came out, and he struggled to get through that song. Took him a few goes.

I've been a Mountain Goats fan since I happened upon Tallahassee in 2002. Don't remember the circumstances now. I think I was just randomly searching the internet for new bands using my favourite genre at the time, the rather vague 'lo fi'. Nested between your Barlows and your Pavements, up pops the Mountain Goats. I downloaded their most recent album, Tallahassee, slapped it onto mini disc (heady days indeed), and the rest is history.

Seen them live probably 5/6 times since, and spoke to Jon after a show once. Nice fella, unsurprisingly. 

I always seek out their latest album, but while I see records like Tallahassee, All Hail West Texas, and We Shall All Be Healed as essential, I've struggled to get into the albums from the last couple of years. Goths, Transcendental Youths and the latest one are albums I can put on, enjoy, but then not recall much about them. Beat the Champ got its hooks in me though.

I don't think they're bad albums, I just think its tough to beat the first few Mountain Goats albums you hear. Hard to replicate that feeling.

I also thought the I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats podcast would be right up my street, but it's too much of a peek behind the curtain for me. I'd recommend John's WTF interview with Marc Maron though, that's a good listen.

Anyway, as you were.

[FerriswheelBueller]

Yeah, I’ve not been sold on the podcast either. I think Darnielle comes across very well; funny and self-effacing but the other guy has zero edge so it just feels a bit... nothing. Like being interviewed by damp lettuce (but the lettuce is doing a sub-par Ira Glass impression). I tried a few different episodes at different times and just didn’t get it.

Anyway, here’s Cubs in Five. Hadn’t heard this until a week ago, now it is stuck in my head.

Post-season baseball series (except for Wildcards and Divisional Series) are played in a “best of 7” format. It is common to predict your team winning and give the number of games (ie “Jays in 6”). Baseball is a funny old game (the worst team will beat everyone in the league multiple times per season), so it is a bit mad to say your team will win it in 4 (the minimum number of games required to win a best of 7 series), so to predict “Cubs in Five” is only slightly less deluded, especially about that Cubs team.

The Cubs are now very good and will be for a while (young core of players built around Schwarber/Rizzo/Bryant/Baez). They won it all in 2016. The Tampa Bay Buccs still stink.

[FerriswheelBueller]

Really worth your time

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iZNFKxeYZPA

[kalowski]

Really worth your time

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iZNFKxeYZPA

Brilliant.

[Cuellar]

Yeah, I’ve not been sold on the podcast either. I think Darnielle comes across very well; funny and self-effacing but the other guy has zero edge so it just feels a bit... nothing. Like being interviewed by damp lettuce (but the lettuce is doing a sub-par Ira Glass impression). I tried a few different episodes at different times and just didn’t get it.

Anyway, here’s Cubs in Five. Hadn’t heard this until a week ago, now it is stuck in my head.

Mmm I felt the same about the podcast, thought it would be brilliant, and Darnielle was very engaging and insightful for most of it, but I don't think the host is a good interviewer I'm sorry to say. I liked the cover of Absolute Lithops Effect by someone whose name I forget sorry though.

[FerriswheelBueller]

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy the Mountain Goats?

Getting very into Goths. It’s good, isn’t it? Wow. Lovely stuff.

[FerriswheelBueller]

Still stuck on the Mountain Goats.

Massively into Beat The Champ at the moment. Ostensibly about wrestling (something about which I have no knowledge or opinion really), but the record is able to transcend that. Songs like Hair Match or Heel Turn #2 which are about this stupid performative pantomime on the surface, but which manage to feel like they are about something important and relatable. Success and failure, life and death, all couched in the language of silly over the top wrestling (sort of). Great sax hooks as well.

Great band, great record.

[Cuellar]

Yeah, it's a brilliant album imho, good and evil, childhood trauma (AS USUAL cuh), perseverance etc.

Made me look at wrestling differently. I mean, I don't watch it obviously, but The Legend of Chavo Guerrero made me more sympathetic to it as a concept. An unhappy, lonely kid looking for structure, 'justice' and so on. Went to see some lucha libre when I was in Mexico partly thanks to this album.

[FerriswheelBueller]

Sort of working backwards through the catalogue now. Onto The Life of the World to Come which is an astonishing piece of work. The Jesus stuff put me off, but it’s not really prevalent in the actual record really, and the material is so good that it barely matters.

[FerriswheelBueller]

I feel embarrassed at this point that I can’t get past the Mountain Goats. They are clever, and silly, and real, and good, and I’m just stuck on them, still.

I got heavily into them when my son was born, and have incredibly formative memories around his first walk/word/etc so I think I am hard-coded to love the Mountain Goats in tangent with my child. What a sap.

They are still terrific though. I’ll put up a weirder song here when I’m done choosing one.

Edit: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qZZ7fKC1uNY

this is a song / with the same four chords / I use most of the time / when I’ve got something on my mind / and I don’t want to squander the moment

He’s right as well:

Dmaj as your starting point, Asus4, Em, Gmaj. Could be most of ‘All Hail West Texas’ I think

[Old Thrashbarg]

Not heard that one before, but it's brilliant. Also amazing to think a song that good can have existed for 10 years and not made it onto any album.

[Cuellar]

Aw yeah I love that song. Makes me think John Darnielle would have been a nice mate to have at school.

[Cuellar]

Also illustrates his creative process quite well. I was listening to some interview he was giving about one of his novels and the interviewer asked him how writing it compared to writing songs, and he said 'oh with songs it's very quick, this was totally different'. For someone so prolific I suppose it would have to be quick, but I still think it's quite amazing how he can just keep bashing out absolute winners.

[FerriswheelBueller]

Let me die, surrounded by machines

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=--ncbR_PS50

Got a bit of nice mid-00s over-production on it, which I really like.

[DukeDeMondo]

The new album, recorded on the old.boombox during lockdown, is absolutely wonderful. It's no All Hail West Texas, obviously, but it's wonderful to hear him sound like this again. He posted videos on youtube as the songs were being recorded, also. But the resulting record is an absolute joy.
 

[FerriswheelBueller]

Isn’t it good? I tried to get one of the physical tapes but wasn’t quick enough. Will settle for the eventual vinyl release.

[Old Thrashbarg]

With everything going on, the new album managed to completely pass me by.

Got it yesterday and first impressions are that it's my favourite album of his for a good few years. Since Transcendental Youth maybe? Really looking forward to him being able to tour it.