The Mountain Goats

Releasing music as The Mountain Goats in various permutations - first as a quintet, then as a duo, often by himself - the songs of default Californian John Darnielle generally dwell on one or a combination of five subjects: conflicts within relationships that lead to irreducible contradictions, food, water, the mythology of pre-Columbian Mexico, and animals that can talk. Since 1995, the general rule was for Mountain Goats albums to feature a mixture of home-recorded and studio songs, but that changed in 2002 with the release of All Hail West Texas, and also saw Darnielle signing to 4AD. The first fruit of this new relationship was Tallahassee, recorded in November 2002 in upstate New York with producer Tony Doogan and released two months later. Second album for 4AD - 2004's We Shall All Be Healed - marked a change in approach by revisiting and reconstructing a dark period in Darnielle’s life. All of the songs were based on people John used to know, most of whom are probably dead or in jail by now. As The Mountain Goats toured Europe shortly after the death of John's stepfather in December 2003, a set of new, intensely personal songs started to emerge, conceived in a Paris hot... more...