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Introduction



I first heard The Mountain Goats in 2005, when the song ‘Palmcorder Yajna’ featured on a compilation CD attached to The Believer magazine. I immediately wanted to hear more, especially of John Darnielle’s striking lyrics, and thankfully I was coming in at just the right time. At that point, the band’s most recent albums were the 4AD releases Tallahassee (2002) and We Shall All Be Healed (2004), still two of their very best, and I played them obsessively over the coming months. I was in my early 30s at the time, but in many ways not especially grown-up, and this was adolescent fandom all over again. I bought up the entire back catalogue on CD, finding much to love even amongst the most primitive of Darnielle's early recordings, and when The Sunset Tree (2005) came out was expecting nothing short of a life-changing masterpiece. I was not disappointed. Most days, I would say it is my favourite record of all time. 

There have been eleven Mountain Goats albums since 2005. I've bought each one as soon as I could, playing nothing else for days. The new record - Dark in Here (2021) - is all I want to listen to right now and the previous one - Getting into Knives (2020) - appeared out of the blue to help me survive an extremely difficult few weeks in my life. There have been numerous eps, stand-alone song releases and side projects, most notably the two wonderful albums put out as The Extra Glenns/The Extra Lens. Darnielle has published two novels, one of which I had the great pleasure of teaching to a group of slightly bemused Sixth Form students, and there a third has just been announced for January 2022. When they can, the band also tour extensively, including fairly regular trips to the UK. Since first seeing them as a two-piece (Darnielle and lanky, elegant bassist Peter Hughes) at the Union Chapel in December 2007, I've been at (I think) seven more gigs with various different line-ups. I may never have been more happy than during the gig-closing crowd walk at Brighton's Komedia when the alleged germophobe Darnielle allowed me to shake his large, comforting hand. Unless it was the one time (so far) I got up the nerve to play a Mountain Goats song in public ('Cry for Judas', for the record). 

Clearly, then, this is a body of music that has played a significant role in my adult life and means a lot to me. This makes it worth thinking and writing about, as I plan to do here. The idea is simple: an A-Z of some of my favourite Darnielle songs, from across the whole span of his career and with an eye to representing the range of his stylistic and lyrical choices. I'm going to listen to the songs again, play them myself (privately) and attend to their words more closely than I may have done before. I'm on the look-out for patterns, of course, but as always I'm also trying to understand my tastes and affiliations. What is it exactly about these songs that makes them speak to me so directly, so deeply?

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