Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
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Also this issue: Replay Summer Monsters Neil Michael Hagerty Gina Scipione Fast Horse Summer Hootenanny |
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July 25-31, 2002
music
The Mountain Goats
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Speaking only in terms of quantity, 2002 has to be John Darnielle’s most productive year ever. By year’s end, the wailing, acoustic guitar string-breaking man behind The Mountain Goats will have released a collection of rarities called Ghana, a single on Sub Pop, a one-sided 12-inch, a couple songs on compilations, the first complete disc from The Extra Glenns (his collaboration with Franklin Bruno) and two full-length CDs of new material, All Hail West Texas and Tallahassee. The latter will be released in November by 4AD -- Darnielle’s first foray into major labeldom after working with something like 30 collapsible indie imprints. You could also make the case that this is The Mountain Goats’ finest year artistically. The contents of Tallahassee remain a mystery, but if the powerful All Hail is any indication, he has reached a point where he is incapable of writing the standard bitter love song.
Instead, the tortured characters which populate his songs are hell-bent on finding beauty in everyday weather patterns and pretending to still be in love until it kills them. “Going to Marrakesh,” the finest moment on The Extra Glenns record, sums it up nicely, with Bruno’s guitars and keyboards hovering behind an impassioned Darnielle who asserts “Our love is like Jesus, but worse/ Though you seal the cave up where you’ve lain its body, it rises.”
In recent years, Darnielle, a Southern California metalhead currently residing in Iowa, has journeyed into atypical music criticism -- for us, once or twice, but mostly in his tall and wordy zine Last Plane to Jakarta. Just as he elevates the everyday to supernatural significance in his songwriting, Darnielle skillfully gives the same amount of ink and scholastic examination to Peanut Butter Wolf that he gives to The Prodigy. Franklin Bruno and The Mountains Goats will each play separate sets before flooring you as The Extra Glenns at The Khyber this Thursday.
City Paper: What prompted this mini-tour?
John Darnielle: Franklin and I put out [Martial Arts Weekend] earlier in the year, and we didn't get a chance to tour with it. And that seemed like a shame. So we decided to play in two of our favorite places. That sounds like pandering, probably, but it isn't. We had a lot of fun last time we were out in Philadelphia and New York, so we're coming back.
CP: What can you tell us about Tallahassee?
JD: It’s 14 songs long, and all the songs involve the characters who’ve been popping up from time to time in any Mountain Goats song that had the word “Alpha” in the title. They’re a couple permanently on the cusp of divorce who are doing this grim little dance of separation with each other: They drink very heavily and have this blackly comic determination to not be the person who cries “uncle” first as their marriage goes up in flames right before their eyes. There’s a song on it called “Oceanographer’s Choice” that features a full band -- drums, guitars, bass, keyboards -- that sounds kinda like Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The band that helped out with the extra instruments was The Delgados. How’s that?
CP: How has your songwriting changed since the early days?
JD: I think the characters who populate my songs have become more aware of the consequences of their actions. Really, I think that’s the main difference. Of course the musical parts have gotten better as I’ve learned my way around the guitar, but I don’t think people are listening to my stuff for the intricacies of my guitar “technique,” cough, cough. My lyrics have gotten tighter, sleeker -- I can say more with less now -- and when I do spill out a whole bunch of words, I think there’s a higher hit-to-miss ratio nowadays. Evidence of this is on a song coming up called “See America Right” (the single off Tallahassee) but for that you’ll have to wait awhile, I guess.
CP: Does it bug you that everybody tapes your shows?
JD: I am totally in favor of tape trading, and file sharing never did anything wrong by me. People got into The Mountain Goats after downloading my stuff. The only people who are afraid of file sharing are the people whose albums are so dull presentation-wise that nobody cares about owning the actual finished product, and the people who have so little connection to their listeners that said listeners have no reason to care whether the artists they like are getting reimbursed for their efforts. My listeners are very kind to me and have tended to buy the albums whether the MP3s are available for free or not, and I always try to make the albums nice to look at and to hold in your hands while you listen. Usually by going completely overboard with text credits, but you know what I mean.
CP: Ever consider reviewing one of your own albums in Last Plane?
JD: Oh heavens no. Writers are terrible judges of their own work. If I absolutely had to do so, I’d probably do a piss-take on the kind of reviews I used to get all the time: “More four-track bedroom tomfoolery” (I have never recorded Mountain Goats stuff with a four-track) “from San Francisco native John Darnielle” (I am not from San Francisco, I’m from Southern California) “who continues to claim there are five people in the band even though it’s really just him” (the last time I claimed there were five people in The Mountain Goats, there really were five people in The Mountain Goats; from Sweden onward, the liner notes have reflected exactly who’s on the recordings), and so forth. Lots of comparison to Palace and Smog and anybody else who does a one-man band, only with lots of smarmy remarks about how “Goats” is plural but it’s really just one guy. You know the type. But I am really ornery about the way that a lot of critics just look up a review written in 1993 and then crib their data from that, and ornery people should be given some tasty gin and told to calm down. Wherefore I demand some gin, and a beer chaser, right nowabouts.
CP: When you play The Khyber you’ll be competing with the so-called Metal Edge tour. Why should people see you instead of Dokken, Ratt, Warrant, Firehouse and L.A. Guns?
JD: 1. I am prettier than anybody in any of those bands except for maybe Don Dokken. 2. I am more up-to-date on metal than those guys. 3. Stephen Pearcy’s not in Ratt anymore and a guy named “Jizzy” is. There is no guy named “Jizzy” in either The Mountain Goats or The Extra Glenns. Advantage: Goats. 4. The Mountain Goats show is, in fact, Where the Down Boys Go. 5. Nobody really wants to watch a five-band bill.
The Mountain Goats will perform Thu., July 25, 9 p.m., $7, with The Extra Glenns, Franklin Bruno and La Guardia at The Khyber, 56 S. Second St., 215-238-5888.
