The Mountain Goats

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Image:Mountain goats 02-10-05.jpg
The Mountain Goats is the musical project of singer, songwriter and guitarist John Darnielle. Other musicians have occasionally collaborated with the band, but Darnielle solo is the essential "Mountain Goat." While The Mountain Goats have recently put out several studio albums, they were originally a fixture of the lo-fi Shrimper scene of Upland, California, having frequently recorded on an 80s boombox and released early work exclusively on cassette tape. Darnielle's lyrics are highly literate, full of metaphor, and present a skewed take on the mundane. Many of the individual songs fit together to form a larger narrative (see: The "Going to..." series, the "Songs for..." series, the "Alpha..." series, "Standard Bitter Love Song #..." series, "Orange Ball of..." Series, "Pure..." series, and the "Quetzalcoatl..." series).

Contents

History

Part One: Urgency 1991-1996

According to his current label, 4ad:

John Darnielle was born in Bloomington, Indiana, during one of the state's periodic locust infestations. His family drove out to California in a blue Chrysler convertible with John, as yet unable to walk or speak, riding in the back. He spent most of the next twenty-odd years in and around California, buying Gun Club albums and weird Hawaiian guitars from a couple of blind brothers who ran a music store in a strip mall in Norwalk, California. California's position as Last State Before You Fall Off The Edge Of The World looms large in Darnielle's songs... [1]

Darnielle began performing under the name The Mountain Goats (a reference to the Screaming Jay Hawkins song "Big Yellow Coat”) in 1991 in Claremont California where he attended Pitzer College, and worked as a psychiatric nurse. John became friends with Dennis Callacci who ran a local cassette only record label, Shrimper records. Dennis convinced John to release an album of recordings he had made on a boombox, entitled Taboo VI: The Homecoming. Many of the first recordings and performances of the group featured Darnielle accompanied by a members of the all-girl reggae band The Casual Girls, who became known as The Bright Mountain Choir. One of the members, Rachel Ware, accompanied Darnielle on bass, live and in studio for the next several years. Often he recorded by himself. In fact, a good portion of all tracks feature only Darnielle's nasal bleat and his frenzied acoustic guitar. At the time the focus of The Mountain Goats project was on the urgency of writing (Brown, “Sermon on the Mount”, sfbg.com, June, 1999.). If a song wasn’t recorded adequately to tape within days of being written it was forgotten. Darnielle's songs generally dwell on one or a combination of many subjects ranging from, conflicts within relationships that lead to irreducible contradictions; to food, water, the mythology of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, animals that can talk and more. His early tapes on the Shrimper label were low-tech presentations, recorded on a Panasonic RX-FT500, a dual-cassette recorder with built-in condenser microphone that doesn't condense. The engineers designing the recorder also placed the microphone next to the cassette wheels, which is the source of the "wheelgrind"-like noise that is present in many of the recordings. The boombox is a classic example of machinery taking on and embuing organic qualities. No one could duplicate it's ferocity in a studio. For Darnielle's own encomium to his old friend, see the liner notes of "All Hail West Texas." (3) The first five years of The Mountain Goats career were marked by a prolific output of songs on cassette, vinyl, and CD. These releases spanned multiple labels and countries of origin. Every release contained new songs, so that owning only the full length albums would be insufficient. Each EP, album is a project to be understood alone and as a part of an inter-related whole. Scattered among the releases were song series. The two main series were the “Alpha” series and the “Going To” series. Releases would often contain quotes, mostly in Latin, that gave hints as to the theme of the piece. A tight knit group of fans formed who were dedicated to tracking down every song in order to piece together a cohesive story (such as that of the couple portrayed in the “Alpha” series). Since a song might show up in any country, on any label, and any format it was essential that fans work together to obtain a complete set of works. In this way Darnielle is engaging the listener in a conversation, and a game that is in sync with his own obsession with finding and collecting music.

Part Two: Experimentation and Collaboration 1996-2002

Since 1994, the general rule has been for The Mountain Goats albums to feature a mixture of home-recorded and studio songs. Darnielle graduated from Pitzer College in Claremont, California, in 1995, moved for a short stay in Chicago before eventually settling in Ames, Iowa. At this point, Ware left the band. The recorded output of the band slows down, but albums and EPs become more focused. Darnielle begins experimenting with the Mountain Goats' classic sound, and abandons the boombox altogether for a while. This period is marked by collaborations with other artists including Australian Alastair Galbraith (Orange Raja, Blood Royal), Simon Joyner, and Franklin Bruno.

Part Three: The Studio Album 2002-Present

2002 was a banner year for the Mountain Goats, which saw the release of three albums including: All Hail West Texas, Tallahasee and Martial Arts Weekend by The Extra Glenns. These albums mark the present focus of the Mountain Goats project, being the first in a series of concept albums which explore aspects of the Mountain Goats' canon in depth. All Hail West Texas marks the resurrection of the boombox for a complete album. Darnielle consider's this album to be the culmination of his lo-fi recording style. Tallahasee explores the relationship of the Alpha Couple as they attempt to escape their fate by moving to Florida (one could argue that this exodus places the album simultaneously within the "Alpha" series and the "Going To" series and marks the end of both projects, at least for now). Martial Arts Weekend is a collaboration with Franklin Bruno, a project which previously had seen a handful of releases and performances. Since The Extra Glenns full length, Bruno has joined Darnielle in the studio along with bassist and multi-talented instrumentalist Peter Hughes (Nothing Painted Blue, Diskothi-Q, Wckr Spgt) who is currently the second official member of the band and accompanies Darnielle on tour.

In 2004 The Mountain Goats released We Shall All Be Healed. The album marked a couple firsts for The Mountain Goats: the first time working with producer John Vanderslice and the first album of autobiographical material. Darnielle's confessional sounding lyrics have often been wrongly assumed to be self referential. A quick examination of lyrics would dissuade such an assumption and yet the idea has persisted. We Shall All Be Healed chronicles Darnielle's life with a group of friends and acquaintances with a taste for drugs and dreams of imaginary lives in Belgium. In 2005 The Mountain Goats releaesed their second Vanderslice produced album, The Sunset Tree. Again autobiographical, Darnielle tackles the subject of his early childhood spent with an abusive stepfather. Darnielle had previously dealt with this subject in what he often refers to as the only autobiographical song he had written before 2004, the unreleased song "You're in Maya."

Discography

Full-length recordings

Singles

  • Philyra - 7" EP (Theme Park, 1994)

EPs, 10"s, one-sided 12"s

Compilations

  • Ghana - CD (3 Beads of Sweat, 2002)


Other compilation appearances

  • "Noche del Guajolote" on I Like Walt - 7" EP (Walt, 1994)
  • "Flight 717: Going to Denmark" and "The Admonishing Song" on Corkscrewed - cassette (Theme Park, 1995)
  • "The Last Day of Jimi Hendrix's Life" on Cool Beans #4 7" EP (Cool Beans, 1995)
  • "Creature Song" and "Pure Sound" on Goar #11 - 7" EP (Goar, 1995)
  • "Going to Kirby Sigston" on Hey Dan K. (Ajax, unreleased)

Cassettes

Related Bands

Sources

External links

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