While John Darnielle's cassettes and studio albums are delightful in themselves, the only real way to take in the Mountain Goats is through live recordings, of which I have plenty. Around 80 shows, by my count.
It's the only real way to experience the band. Darnielle's studio work creates the blueprint for his live performances. He'll draw out emotion in the live performance of a track that you couldn't even begin to see in the recorded version. Albums like Sweden are great examples of this--sub-par as a cassette, but immaculate when performed live.
Darnielle and company have a knack for never performing the same song twice. Granted, this works better with some songs than others (I'll take "The Sign" over "Dance Music" any day), but it always remains true. No matter how many different live versions of a song I have, each one remains a unique experience. Not only is no Mountain Goats show the same, no performance of a Mountain Goats song is the same either.
It's obviously more difficult to write about a live performance than it is an album--or at the very least, writing about it is a different task altogether. I'll try to set a template here, but I imagine I'll focus more on setlist, audio quality, stage banter, and other elements, in order to differentiate it from other live shows, as opposed to other albums. I think those differences should be rather obvious.
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PLAYLIST:
The Black Crowes - The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion
I've already explained my love for the Black Crowes, which I still stand by. Southern Harmony, I think, is a much easier album to defend than most of the others--save for Shake Your Money Maker, which is a stone-cold classic. This album just straight-out rocks, and songs like "Thorn In My Pride" and "Sometimes Salvation" are among the band's best. As always, I'm hindered somewhat by the fact that this is exceptionally unoriginal music. But they wear their bluesy influences proudly, and the result is thoroughly entertaining. (3.5 stars)
999 - Separates
999 is a punk band in the loosest possible sense. Apparently, if you started a rock band from 1976-1978, you were instantly deemed "punk," no matter what you did after your one youthful debut, which probably wasn't even that punk. Separates is a superb new wave album, sporting a single, "Homicide," that rightly charted in the Top 40. The only problem is, the rest of the album is basically a rehash of that single. Which you can hardly blame the band for--it's a damn good song. (4 stars)
The Mountain Goats - Live: 2003/09/27 - Mercury, Austin TX
2003 was a great year to be in the Mountain Goats. A year earlier, they had released two superb albums, All Hail West Texas and Tallhassee, closing off the boombox era and starting a string of fantastic studio efforts, both to huge critical acclaim. The setlist rightly reflects this fact, loaded with hits like "Jenny," "No Children," and the immortal "The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton," songs that had yet to reach the level of fervor held by the fanbase today, but were nonetheless sung out with remarkable zeal. John littered a few rarities in the mix as well, including All Hail-outtake "Waco" (one of only three versions I own), and the drunken ode "You're In Maya." Speaking of drunken, John is rather sauced throughout the set. Par for the course for 2003 shows, however, and not a particularly drunken one, but still entertaining to listen to throughout. Peter joins him halfway through the set, and together their boozy crowd interactions are simply delightful. The encore combination of "Cubs In Five" (hot off the Cubs clinching the pennant), "Terror Song" (one of my favorite versions ever), and a booming "Death Metal Band" is phenomenal, topped off with a rendition of "2/3rd Jim's Head" by the Baptist Generals, one of my favorite Goats openers by a mile. Solid, solid show. (4 stars)
Sunny Day Real Estate - LP2
Sunny Day Real Estate originally struck me as a band that was monumentally overrated, the kind of band that was constantly thrown out there along with the phrase "life-changing" or the cringe-worthy sentence "Music saved me life." I thought they were just fine, listened to "Red Elephant" a hell of a lot, and life went on. But as I get older, I find myself listening to Diary and LP2 more and more, and enjoying them more and more, when the exact opposite is supposed to happen. You're supposed to get older and look back at your emo phase and cringe. Somehow, I'm listening to it now more than I did when I was 18, and I see no reason to cringe at all. Wonder what that says about the state of my life. (4 stars)
Owen - No Good For No One Now
I'm not a fan of the Kinsella brothers. I think Cap'n Jazz is okay, I hate American Football, and can't even get through a Joan of Arc or Owls album. This is the only Owen album I can tolerate, because I am an absolute sucker for gratuitous melancholy. And boy does this album have a lot of that. (3.5 stars)
Beach House - Bloom (First listen)
Beach House is commonly pigeonholed into the "dream pop" genre, which, if it actually exists in any real sense, probably suits them perfectly. Much like a dream, I find myself getting to the end of Beach House albums wondering what the hell I just experienced. It's not bad music by any stretch, and anyone who says so is just trying too hard. But so too is anyone who says they love Beach House. (3.5 stars)
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CHANGES:
- For some reason, "The Hours" on Bloom was missing the last thirty seconds. Re-downloaded it.
- For another reason, my download of Where You Want To Be contained four tracks listed at #1. One of the strangest errors I've come across so far.
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DELETIONS:
- The Compulsive Gamblers - Bluff City. The Compulsive Gamblers are the poor man's Oblivians. Deleted Crystal Gazing Luck Amazing as well.
- MC5 - Back In The USA. Kick Out The Jams gets all the praise it rightly deserves, but for some reason this album gets praised as well. It's a bunch of crappy R&B covers delivered with less force and persuasion than the originals. Completely unessential.
- Boogie Down Productions. I never liked KRS-One, and the Golden Age production is a turn-off. No idea how this lasted this long.
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ADDITIONS:
- Lightning Bolt (#488). Added new-ish album, Oblivion Hunter.
- Blacktop (#99). Added re-issue tracks from I Got A Baaad Feelin' About This.
- Art Brut (#38). Added Art Brut Vs. Satan and Brilliant! Tragic!.
- Squirrel Bait (#760). Added Squirrel Bait.
- Ludacris (#501). Picked out the singles I liked from his discography. How does this man not have a greatest hits album?
- Trash Talk (#815). Added Trash Talk, 119, and Eyes & Nines.
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