The beginning of The Mountain Goats performance at the Paradise Rock club on Friday was sloppy at best. The band seemed to forget the entire first song, “Liza Forever Minnelli” from All Eternals Deck, which is particularly odd because the album was released just days earlier, on March 29. Front-man John Darnielle barely knew the words, and one of his guitarists began playing in the wrong key. In addition, the sound guy must have been asleep during sound check because there was reverb on the amps every couple of minutes. After three attempts, however, The Mountain Goats finally got into a groove, playing a candid set that sounded like a mix of The Decemberists’ lyrical ballads with a hint of Cake’s humor and a splash of Bright Eyes’ musical styling’s. Despite all of the comparisons, though, The Mountain Goats definitely has a sound of its own.
Despite the plural moniker, The Mountain Goats consists only of John Darnielle, who began playing under that stage name in the 1990s while attending Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif. Although he records and plays with a variety of collaborators, he remains the sole member of the band. Originally, Darnielle focused on homemade lo-fi recordings that centered primarily on his lyrics, but he has since evolved to a more polished approach, recording in a studio with a full band. Since then, two of The Mountain Goats’ songs have been featured on the Showtime hit series Weeds and the songs “No Children,” “Old College Try” and “Love Love Love” were on Adult Swim’s Moral Orel. Throughout the show, Darnielle switched between playing older tracks back from his mixtape days and newer songs with a backing band.
Performing under unadorned house lights, Darnielle engaged the audience with his low-key sound, which often places the center of audience’s attention on his lyrics rather than the instruments. In fact, when Darnielle first began putting his poems to music in the 90s, he believed his day job would be as a poet, not a singer. Not only is this evident in his sound, but also in the way that Darnielle interacts with the audience. Unlike other artists, Darnielle acknowledged the obligatory grumblings of “Freeeeeeebird” from the crowd during a break between songs. “There are two words that need to be stricken from everybody’s vocabulary: free and bird,” he replied. Instead of “Freebird,” The Mountain Goats played “Jeff Davis County Blues,” about getting out of jail in a small Texas town, from the album All Hail West Texas. According to his Wikipedia page, All Hail West Texas is a concept album consisting of “fourteen songs about seven people, two houses, a motorcycle and a locked treatment facility for adolescent boys.”
About halfway through his set, Darnielle played Thin Lizzy cover “Jailbreak,” which shifted the mood of the set from moderately somber to reasonably chipper. The audience sang along, seeming to enjoy the lighthearted nature of the performance. Not to disappoint, The Mountain Goats soon followed with “You Were Cool,” a silly song perfectly encompassed by the first three lines: “This is a song with the same four chords/I use most of the time/when I’ve got something on my mind.” Another crowd favorite, “Home Again Garden Grove,” from We Shall All be Healed received an energized reaction from the crowd. The song exemplifies Darnielle at his lo-fi best — out of the ordinary guitar progression coupled with brilliant lyrical metaphors. It is no wonder that We Shall Be Healed is one of The Mountain Goats’ most popular albums.
After covering “One Fine Day” by The Chiffons, the top girl group of the 60s, The Mountain Goats’ set came to a quiet close with “This Year” from The Sunset Tree. The encore consisted of another cover, “Plain” by indie-band Silkworm, followed by “California Song” from 1995 album, Sweden, during which Darnielle had the audience chanting “I got joy joy joy in my soul tonight/I got joy joy joy in my arms alright.” Sensing that the audience could listen to him play for yet another two hours, Darnielle came out for a second encore, playing “No Children,” a song about a failed marriage before which Darnielle prompted: “If I’ve learned anything in life, it’s get a good divorce lawyer.” Even though The Mountain Goats’ songs are gloomy in nature, the beauty of the words and accompanying music provide a sense of hopefulness.
Although The Mountain Goats opened with a rocky start — perhaps Darnielle’s idea of an April Fool’s joke — the audience seemed to enjoy every minute of the show. The focus was primarily on Darnielle himself with his band merely performing in the background, which makes sense since Darnielle has been shelling out the songs for almost 20 years. The audience was deeply devoted to the performer and was genuinely sad when the Paradise turned on its lights for the night. The sadness, however, could have been due to The Mountain Goats’ parting words: “And I hope you die/I hope we both die.” With Darnielle’s sense of humor, though, we will never truly know.
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