I’m so damned jealous of John Darnielle.
The Mountain Goats, Darnielle’s band, have been one of my favourites for years, and like all the best artists, I’m kind of astounded at how on earth he does it.
More than 20 albums into his 30-plus year career, the Goats began as John and a guitar and a boombox and super crackly low-fi tunes that turned into earworms. He’s become one of the best songwriters in music, with a knack for painting entire life’s stories into a few short lines and always, a comforting intimacy that makes it feel like he’s singing to you alone. With his sing/shout preacher’s cadence, his voice has an insistent hint of a real-life goat’s bleat combined with the familiar tones of someone you’ve been friends with all your life.
Darnielle turned a youth filled with anger, addiction and abuse and made it art for everyone. He once wrote a novel called Universal Harvester, and that’s kind of what his songs do – they harvest the feelings we all have.
The Mountain Goats always feel like one of those “just for you” bands, so it’s sometimes a little strange to suddenly be in a heaving crowd of strangers singing along to every word.
At their gig at Auckland’s Powerstation Friday night – their first in New Zealand in 16 years – the Mountain Goats reminded me why they’re the chosen soundtrack for all of us battered optimists churned up on the beach by life’s wild waves.
It’s been 18 years, somehow, since I last saw the Mountain Goats, at a packed gig at the now sadly demolished Kings Arms pub. I think I could honestly watch him once a month for the next five years and not feel like I’ve had enough yet.
Of course, they played the “hits” – two of the finest songs he’s ever written, “This Year” and “No Children.” But he also hit on titles like “Dutch Orchestra Blues” from his earliest days, while more recent tunes like the superb “Bleed Out” got extended workouts. The quiet “Cotton” blew up into a jazzy epic, while “The Diaz Brothers” – inspired by Scarface, of course – was a roar of energy. A joking rant about Kiwi soda L&P changing their advertising endeared him to the locals, as did his mention of a visit to patron saint of Kiwi music Chris Knox.
Darnielle has written somewhere well over 500 songs – enough that an entire excellent recent book of his lyrics and essays only covered 365 of them. (This Year: 365 Songs Annotated is one of the best books about the creative process I’ve ever read, highly recommended.)
I’m jealous of him because he’s such a friendly polymath – on his social media he’ll tell you about everything from 14th century literature to Danish heavy metal bands and his albums have taken on wide topics from a concept album about professional wrestling to an album about paganism and the Roman Empire.
But the beauty of the Goats’ work is no matter how dense the subject, Darnielle’s songs are sung with a fierce sincerity that makes them feel universal.
While the “Mountain Goats” have always basically been Darnielle and whoever he plays with, his band are fantastic. Matt Douglas provides some amazing jagged saxophone solos that expand the sound, while powerhouse drummer Jon Wurster is the confident pulse of it all. The duo give Darnielle’s intimate songs a wider screen to play on without sacrificing their tone.
Darnielle is full of contagious good cheer, even when he sings about death, divorce and doomed drug dealers. He’s got one of the best shaggy smiles in the business, and when the moment calls for it can pound his acoustic guitar like he’s Pete Townshend at Woodstock, then turn to moments of shimmering closeness at the drop of a hat.
The biggest highlight for me was the highly obscure “You Were Cool,” which packs a galaxy’s worth of cathartic heartbreak into a few short verse. I’ll admit it – this one had me choking up out of nowhere, in the middle of a crowded room.
But hell, I was also shouting along with everyone else at “This Year” and its addictively defiant chorus – I am going to make it through this year / if it kills me. That’s universal harvesting, right there. That’s the Mountain Goats.
You Were Cool, The Mountain Goats:
[Verse 1]
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
Trying to come up with a better way
To say what I want to say
[Chorus]
People were mean to you
But I always thought you were cool
Clicking down the concrete hallways
In your spiked heels back in high school
[Verse 2]
It’s good to be young, but let’s not kid ourselves
It’s better to pass on through those years and come out the other side
With our hearts still beating
Having stared down demons and come back breathing
[Chorus]
People were mean to you
But I always thought you were cool
Clicking down the concrete hallways
In your spiked heels back in high school
[Verse 3]
You deserved better than you got
Someone’s got to say it sometime, ’cause it’s true
People should have told you you were awesome
Instead of taking advantage of you
I hope you love your life now
Like I love mine
I hope the painful memories only flex their power over you
A little of the time
We held onto hope of better days coming
And when we did, we were right
Nik Dirga 