Appropriately for a track on Satanic Messiah this isn't a song about satan or anger or anything similar, but is instead a sing about a different kind of universal experience:

Appropriately for a track on Satanic Messiah this isn't a song about satan or anger or anything similar, but is instead a sing about a different kind of universal experience: the gig that is about to change your life. The room and the people where music is about to change

If you were to map out all of the Mountain Goats discography on a piece of paper, or a 3d display, or some other way of doing such an obviously

If you were to map out all of the Mountain Goats discography on a piece of paper, or a 3d display, or some other way of doing such an obviously absurd thing, and on that map or whatever you found Up The Wolves and then you found Training Montage, Wizard

The title track of this album is a great short work of fiction about zealotry and faith and standing for what's right even when the world says you're wrong. It's

The title track of this album is a great short work of fiction about zealotry and faith and standing for what's right even when the world says you're wrong. It's also a great short work of fiction about why those things I just said aren't necessarily always positive. This is

Well, I wrote an entire post for this and the blog ate it. Lost forever, like a sea monster in a Chinese lake.

Well, I wrote an entire post for this and the blog ate it. Lost forever, like a sea monster in a Chinese lake.

Nobody writes a musical obituary like John Darnielle. He has a particular gift for the last moments, for the codas of lives that end up defining or describing them exactly.

Nobody writes a musical obituary like John Darnielle. He has a particular gift for the last moments, for the codas of lives that end up defining or describing them exactly. I'll admit to being unfamiliar with the work of Prince Far I before this, clearly my loss. But I'm aware

Paranoia has a sound. It's something close and noisy and dark and warm. It's too many things too close that you can't see until you bump into them. it's unexpected

Paranoia has a sound. It's something close and noisy and dark and warm. It's too many things too close that you can't see until you bump into them. it's unexpected strings and a voice going from singing to screaming so slowly that you can't say exactly when the change happens.

In the middle period of the Mountain Goats (and it's July, we're well into that) there are a couple of overarching themes that it's worth observing. The songs are more

In the middle period of the Mountain Goats (and it's July, we're well into that) there are a couple of overarching themes that it's worth observing. The songs are more confessional biographically, but they're also often much more nakedly emotional whether what is being talked about is directly an incident

All right, let's be heretics. This song could not be more different from the previous album. Huge, bombastic, drums like gunshots, soaring strings, and a narrative about the focal role

All right, let's be heretics. This song could not be more different from the previous album. Huge, bombastic, drums like gunshots, soaring strings, and a narrative about the focal role of the killer in a slasher film. I love a good villain. And my definition of good villain is very

An interesting, although perhaps inevitable - thing about this album full of songs about loneliness: they're all first person. John's songs tend to be first person anyway, especially the ones

An interesting, although perhaps inevitable - thing about this album full of songs about loneliness: they're all first person. John's songs tend to be first person anyway, especially the ones that are to a degree autobiographical, but it strikes me listening to this one that it would be even more

After several days of solitude songs where the loneliness was the absence of a specific other, we come back to one where the absence is of... everyone. Alone not in

After several days of solitude songs where the loneliness was the absence of a specific other, we come back to one where the absence is of... everyone. Alone not in the crowd but in its absence. It's impossible to say if this is a better or worse loneliness but it

This song is a joyous whisper, a small delight that revels in its own quiet guilt. It's a song - as most of Get Lonely is - about absence, but

This song is a joyous whisper, a small delight that revels in its own quiet guilt. It's a song - as most of Get Lonely is - about absence, but it's a song that carried its own guilt. Not guilt for what the narrator has done, but distinct guilt for

This is a lush dark landscape of a song. It reminded me of some of the early Mountain Goats songs, which was appropriate, as this album seems to be revisiting

This is a lush dark landscape of a song. It reminded me of some of the early Mountain Goats songs, which was appropriate, as this album seems to be revisiting the places in retrospect that the early songs were experiencing as they happened. Fictional but not less real. This is

We reach the album's title track, and every word of it is a body blow. It's a day to day itinerary of things being done by someone who is alone

We reach the album's title track, and every word of it is a body blow. It's a day to day itinerary of things being done by someone who is alone in the sense of without one particular person. And I've mentioned it before on here but there was a period

Our tour of loneliness takes us somewhere quite specific this time: the loneliness not of being alone but of being without one person in particular. And, John being John, it

Our tour of loneliness takes us somewhere quite specific this time: the loneliness not of being alone but of being without one person in particular. And, John being John, it does so in the most jaunty, breathy way possible. There's a curse: life goes on. We can't help it, we

For a summer day this is a cold song, cold and sitting in empty and foggy space. What I get from this song is the ghosts of trauma. Voices in

For a summer day this is a cold song, cold and sitting in empty and foggy space. What I get from this song is the ghosts of trauma. Voices in dreams that aren't really there and don't say what they said. Memories given form and distorted through the process. Those

After an album of deeply personal songs where the identity of the I was known, it's interesting to get to a series of Mountain Goats songs from points of view

After an album of deeply personal songs where the identity of the I was known, it's interesting to get to a series of Mountain Goats songs from points of view that are more distant, more fictional, or otherwise exploring new ideas. John is nothing if not a sucker for a

Second half of the year begins here. This is a cheerful song about a villain, which is always nice to hear. I don't have much for this one today, even

Second half of the year begins here. This is a cheerful song about a villain, which is always nice to hear. I don't have much for this one today, even through this is a song about a pro wrestler and thus very in my wheelhouse. I've had a combination of

The revisiting of demos is one of my favourite parts about the late month in This Year. Rarities, strange versions of things, small pieces of nearly forgotten art, and amongst

The revisiting of demos is one of my favourite parts about the late month in This Year. Rarities, strange versions of things, small pieces of nearly forgotten art, and amongst them we have this: a song that is so perfect in its simple version that any studio version would feel

Before I get into the lyrics I just want to delight in the gorgeous, sumptuous orchestration of this track, which starts and frenetic jangling guitars and grows to a joy

Before I get into the lyrics I just want to delight in the gorgeous, sumptuous orchestration of this track, which starts and frenetic jangling guitars and grows to a joy of brass. And then we come to a fast upbeat set of lyrics about the futility of running from the

It's interesting to move away from the Sunset Tree and towards something that feels a lot fuzzier around the edges, albeit on a number of related subjects. This is a

It's interesting to move away from the Sunset Tree and towards something that feels a lot fuzzier around the edges, albeit on a number of related subjects. This is a song about change and how we cope with it or don't cope with it, and the realisation that the past