Calling All Mountain Goats Fans

April 6, 2018 9:42 PM

For the past few months, the podcast I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats has provided a fascinating glimpse into the mind of John Darnielle, who is both one of our greatest songwriters and, [some] would argue, one of our greatest writers. Every week on the podcast, Darnielle has been sitting down with Night Vale host and Mountain Goats superfan Joseph Fink. The podcast’s first season has centered on the classic 2002 album All Hail West Texas, the last and greatest document of Darnielle’s acoustic-guitar-and-boom-box lo-fi period. And now we get a tribute album out of it. (Link to free album stream.)
posted by Orlop (35 comments total)

HAIL SATAN
posted by reductiondesign at 9:47 PM on April 6, 2018 [10 favorites]

When you punish a person
For dreaming his dream
Don’t expect that he’ll thank or forgive you
The best ever death metal band out of Denton
Will in time both outpace and outlive you.
Hail Satan!

posted by mr_roboto at 9:49 PM on April 6, 2018 [9 favorites]

I also think he’s one of our best writers. His first novel was great. His second was better.
posted by mr_roboto at 9:51 PM on April 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

When you punish a person
For dreaming his dream
Don’t expect that he’ll thank or forgive you
The best ever death metal band out of Denton
Will in time both outpace and outlive you.
Hail Satan!

I get shivers every time I hear those lines.

On the tribute album, I'm especially fond of the Holy Sons, whom I hadn't heard of before, doing Source Decay.
posted by Orlop at 9:56 PM on April 6, 2018 [3 favorites]

On the tribute album... I’ve long thought that Distant Stations is *almost* a great song and just needs the right cover to bring it home. I appreciate Byrd’s effort, but he doesn’t manage it.

And this is what tells you I’m a true fan... Source Decay Is probably my favorite song. Period. My favorite song. This cover is revelatory as to how Darnielles’a rendition is perfect.

And I remember the train
Headed South out of Bangkok
Down
Toward
The water.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:01 PM on April 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

I’m rendering all these lyrics from memory btw omg I’ve listened to this album so many times.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:02 PM on April 6, 2018 [3 favorites]

I’ve gotta stop now (mostly because I’ve started listening to MG albums I’m on Sweden now) but did anyone else have the experience of thinking that Darnielle was some kind of weirdo outsider artist but then realizing that he was just a regular guy who happens to be a genius whose creativity was just pouting out of him so violently that it sounded like weirdo outsider art?
posted by mr_roboto at 10:20 PM on April 6, 2018 [6 favorites]

This is my story of my first exposure to the Mountain Goats and All Hail West Texas.

A friend of mine sent me a live recording of "Denton." I was sort of half-listening to it, thinking, yeah, yeah, Mr. Mountain Goats dude, that's all very well and nostalgic, but you weren't the Daria trapped in class with your Beavis and Butthead, just trying to get clear of boys like them so you could get the hell out of your miserable environment. But then came those lines "and this was how Cyrus got sent to the school/where they told him he'd never be famous," and my sympathies completely reversed. Goodness, I thought, that's some writin'.

It's rare for me to be neutral about an MG song, up to about the Life of the World to Come era; either I like it a lot or it makes me cringe with embarrassment. (To this day, I don't get the appeal of "Going to Georgia.") When that sort of highly cultivated awkwardness goes wrong, it goes really wrong. But they're still probably my favorite band. Even if I find some of the tootling of Goths off-putting.
posted by praemunire at 10:24 PM on April 6, 2018 [4 favorites]

Darnielle was some kind of weirdo outsider artist

He was a psychiatric nurse who (it sounds like) spent much of his adolescence abusing some fairly hard-core substances and was living at the hospital where he was working when he started recording, so...I'm not sure he wasn't?
posted by praemunire at 10:27 PM on April 6, 2018 [6 favorites]

Hmmm. I've never listened to the Mountain Goats before. I can't decide if I love it or hate it. Thanks for posting.
posted by tom_r at 10:34 PM on April 6, 2018

Literally reading this thread having just re-strung my guitar, and started off (as I always do) with Denton (followed by Old College Try and No Children). Heard a few of the songs on this album, this is a good cue to listen to the whole thing.
posted by Pink Frost at 10:34 PM on April 6, 2018

(To this day, I don't get the appeal of "Going to Georgia.")

I don't know if you've heard this or not but Darnielle himself now considers it "misogynistic garbage" and no longer plays it. So you're in good company!
posted by valrus at 10:36 PM on April 6, 2018 [5 favorites]

this is a great album and a good podcast but joseph is a terrible interviewer and does not really contribute much to the whole thing IMO (besides, obviously, being the driving force behind the podcast existing at all).
posted by JimBennett at 10:52 PM on April 6, 2018 [3 favorites]

What I really need in my life is a season of this podcast about Full Force Galesburg.
posted by jason_steakums at 10:58 PM on April 6, 2018 [8 favorites]

i have to imagine either tallahassee or the sunset tree is next on the list but yeah i could basically listen to them do this for every tMG album.
posted by JimBennett at 11:07 PM on April 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

I once hitchhiked from LA to San Luis Obispo on a whim because I woke up with Dance Music stuck in my head. It's a weird place.
posted by wjfitzy at 11:08 PM on April 6, 2018 [4 favorites]

I spent a night at the Travelodge, Holt Boulevard, between Gary and White, because Mountain Goats.
posted by Twinge at 11:17 PM on April 6, 2018 [6 favorites]

And this is what tells you I’m a true fan... Source Decay Is probably my favorite song. Period. My favorite song. This cover is revelatory as to how Darnielles’a rendition is perfect.

I actually thought that was one of the better covers.

this is a great album and a good podcast but joseph is a terrible interviewer and does not really contribute much to the whole thing IMO (besides, obviously, being the driving force behind the podcast existing at all).

A lot of people have said that and I kinda feel like some of them are expecting something they're not going to get? Like I don't think Darnielle wants to just explain all the songs. But I do get it to an extent - not having really listened to Night Vale I have a hard time getting super invested in Fink bringing the conversation back to talking about writing it. It just doesn't bug me that much.

He was a psychiatric nurse who (it sounds like) spent much of his adolescence abusing some fairly hard-core substances and was living at the hospital where he was working when he started recording, so...I'm not sure he wasn't?

The thing about him is he definitely went through some really dark stuff when he was young (his Marc Maron interview is fantastic: be warned of mention of hard drugs and domestic abuse) but he didn't start recording a lot until he was a ways into his 20s and his life was getting better then. So looking at him or listening to him now he seems really normal and together in contrast to his ability to channel dark stuff in music.
posted by atoxyl at 12:43 AM on April 7, 2018 [4 favorites]

I started with the... early full band era and for some reason I think I never liked this album quite as much as one is supposed to, even after I got into some of the other lo-fi stuff. So I did benefit from the chance to go through it song by song and catch some of what I was missing. Like that Balance is as perfect a song as any of the bigger "hits".
posted by atoxyl at 12:50 AM on April 7, 2018 [1 favorite]

I also think he’s one of our best writers. His first novel was great.

I realized a little while ago that Wolf in White Van draws on the same era and culture Ready Player One does - in a much more compelling way, in my opinion.
posted by atoxyl at 1:05 AM on April 7, 2018 [4 favorites]

I’ve always been a bit of a Mountain Goats agnostic, but this record (and “Coroner’s Gambit”) were both really good.

Also, i’ve played music trivia with John Darnielle. He’s really good at the Metal rounds.
posted by thivaia at 5:44 AM on April 7, 2018 [6 favorites]

My first exposure to The Mountain Goats was hearing No Children played on the local college radio station at a time when I was trapped in a horrible, codependent, abusive relationship—which I was then still in deep denial about. It woke something up in me and I credit it with helping to push me toward realizing how bad things really were. Like, if I'm identifying this strongly with this song, something must be really wrong. It didn't grant me the courage to get out right away, but it was absolutely one of the things that put me on the path. So thank you, John Darnielle and WTUL.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:44 AM on April 7, 2018 [9 favorites]

this is a great album and a good podcast but joseph is a terrible interviewer and does not really contribute much to the whole thing IMO (besides, obviously, being the driving force behind the podcast existing at all).

I haven't actually listened to the podcast yet. Is it worth it anyway? I get frustrated by weak interviewing.
posted by Orlop at 5:47 AM on April 7, 2018

Orlop, yes! John has a lot of interesting stuff to say! Take your time with it - it can be a little repetitive, but you learn some interesting things about how JD writes.
posted by JoeBlubaugh at 8:02 AM on April 7, 2018

I love this album, and the Mountain Goats, beyond reason, and they've been one of my favourite bands for about 15 years, which is half my life. But I also found this podcast unlistenable because of Joseph Fink's terrible interviewing, which made me really sad. John Darnielle is a wonderful interviewee-- he's such a generous speaker and such a fount of interesting and funny and insightful things, and it's frustrating to think how much better this could have been.

Oh, and "Source Decay" is my favourite song as well! A friend and I have a semi-joking theory that you should never tell anyone your favourite Mountain Goats song, because it reveals too much about you.
posted by ITheCosmos at 11:15 AM on April 7, 2018 [4 favorites]

A lot of people have said that and I kinda feel like some of them are expecting something they're not going to get? Like I don't think Darnielle wants to just explain all the songs. But I do get it to an extent - not having really listened to Night Vale I have a hard time getting super invested in Fink bringing the conversation back to talking about writing it. It just doesn't bug me that much.

yeah a lot of people on the (very small) tMG subreddit have this visceral distaste for the podcast because of this and this is not my beef at ALL. i think the "conversation between friends" format really brings the best out of john whether he's talking about his own work, the bible, or john cougar mellancamp. it's just that joseph's own insights and stories aren't interesting at all to me, and when he does try to actively interview he often derails or interrupts john (this happened like three times in the most recent episode). i like the dude, and clearly john does too, which is why the podcast works at all, i just sort of have to tune him out.

compare this to roderick on the line, another podcast ostensibly about a musician, where merlin is incredibly good at letting roderick go off on extreme tangents, but is also good at reeling him in, AND is an interesting and likable dude himself. it's just more satisfying listening.

I haven't actually listened to the podcast yet. Is it worth it anyway? I get frustrated by weak interviewing.

YMMV. john has so much interesting to say that i found it worthwhile. there are tangents galore so don't expect a neat or thorough breakdown of the album (though there are still plenty of neat insights). roughly a third to half of each episode is a conversation with the cover artist, i found these (generally) to be more illuminating, though there were a couple of duds there too and joseph often seemed ESPECIALLY out of his element during these parts.

oh and i just have to say how much i enjoyed their use of the instrumental Goths tracks as background music, it gave it a kind of loungey NPR vibe that i enjoyed immensely.
posted by JimBennett at 11:28 AM on April 7, 2018

I haven't actually listened to the podcast yet. Is it worth it anyway? I get frustrated by weak interviewing.

To me it just ends up being less like "the guy from Night Vale interviews the guy from the Mountain Goats" and more like "the guy from Night Vale and the guy from the Mountain Goats and in the second segment a guest musician just chat about stuff." I think there are plenty of good bits that come out of that (personally I enjoy some of the musician shop talk especially) but people showing up for the Mountain Goats are likely to be more interested in some parts of that conversation than others, you know?
posted by atoxyl at 11:44 AM on April 7, 2018

1994 - 2004 was the Mountain Goats era I connected to. By the time I'd discovered his music, he'd already moved away from the raw lo-fi recording style and onto a fuller and more diverse sound, which I find utterly uncompelling. But I still have the old albums, and there's nothing else quite like them. They more or less define a certain period of my life.

One of Darnielle's great gifts is that of exaltation—music that’s meant to be sung at the top of your lungs. That's what people are responding to with Going to Georgia. I understand why some people, Darnielle included, are turned off by the lyrics, but I basically disagree with the premise that writing from the perspective of flawed and problematic characters is necessarily equivalent to endorsing those qualities and must therefore be Called Out, lest our collective virtue be tainted. A lot of Darnielle’s songs are about abused and/or abusive people in deeply unhealthy relationships. Tallahassee was solely about that. These aren't how-to guides for appropriate relationship dynamics; they're huge flaming train-wrecks of human emotion.

I’ve mostly enjoyed the podcast so far. Darnielle has a lot to say about the creative process, as well as about art and life in general, though I could honestly do without the covers. I doubt they'll ever dig back as far as Nothing For Juice, but I desperately want to know the story behind Orange Ball of Pain, because it's one of the saddest songs I know of and yet the lyrics are so cryptic. I simultaneously don't want to know because the question is probably more interesting than the answer.
posted by dephlogisticated at 3:30 PM on April 7, 2018 [1 favorite]

I basically disagree with the premise that writing from the perspective of flawed and problematic characters is necessarily equivalent to endorsing those qualities and must therefore be Called Out, lest our collective virtue be tainted

I think if you read the second of the links in the comment, you'll see that that is not what he is saying at all.

If JD just stopped singing songs with fucked-up narrators doing harmful things, his catalog would shrink by about 83%.
posted by praemunire at 4:47 PM on April 7, 2018 [1 favorite]

One of Darnielle's great gifts is that of exaltation—music that’s meant to be sung at the top of your lungs.

I really want to be at a show where he does "Tahitian Ambrosia Maker" from Sweden because I really want to be in a crowd of folks screaming "AND IIIIIII'M GONNA MAKE YOU A NICE COCONUT CREAM PIE"
posted by jason_steakums at 6:21 PM on April 7, 2018 [3 favorites]

This sent me down a set list spiral. I went to a show at the Knitting Factory back in the day (not the old old Kinitting Factory - but the one on Leonard) and it was around All Hail,West Texas and for the encore he asked for the stage lights and all lights to be turned off and then I want to say that he did “The Mess Inside” in complete darkness. And it was such a perfect show that I never went to another one. Because nothing could top it.

He also used to post on the old ILM board in what think of as the MOMUS days but it was really just early the 2000’s. Another spiral - “so the john darn13113 or whatever that i've seen posting here is the john darnielle of mountain goats??” Good times.
posted by rdnnyc at 7:05 PM on April 7, 2018 [1 favorite]

I really appreciate how some Mountain Goats albums are slow burn sleepers, it took me until very recently to realize that All Eternals Deck is low key one of JD's best. I'm excited for the day Transcendental Youth finally clicks with me, that's the one post-boombox era album I still haven't connected with very well.
posted by jason_steakums at 9:26 PM on April 7, 2018 [2 favorites]

Transcendental Youth finally clicks with me, that's the one post-boombox era album I still haven't connected with very well.

Good news - it's probably the best "late period" (post-Sunset-Tree-or-so) Goats album. (Obviously that's my opinion but it's definitely one of the more popular ones).
posted by atoxyl at 11:33 AM on April 8, 2018

I should definitely make an attempt to listen to the Mountain Goats, especially since I did an internship with Scott Solter, who has worked on their stuff. I have a picture of some tape masters at his studio, with the Mountain Goats and Kaki King on the right. It’s not a very exciting picture, mind you, I just think it’s neat.
posted by gucci mane at 4:24 PM on April 8, 2018 [1 favorite]

Apparently I will get a real good chance to get into Transcendental Youth, because that's going to be the next season of the podcast!
posted by jason_steakums at 9:12 PM on April 19, 2018