The Mountain Goats Show Was a Bit of a Mixed Bag, But For Good Reason
Thursday night's Mountain Goats show was a bit of a mixed bag, but for good reason. John Darnielle was fabulous. Awesome. Simultaneously poignant and funny. What we got of him, that is.
He played for just under an hour, including an encore. When he said, "This is the last song, folks, it's all I got," the crowd was visibly disappointed. All I could think of was he must have been sick. He didn't seem ill onstage, but I can't come up with any other reason why he would cut the show short.
Well, according to this message on his website, it turns out he is ill, sick enough to cancel his Australian tour. In fact he's asking for thoughts and prayers, which makes it sound on the serious side. I'm sending all my positive energy your way, John, and I hope you get over whatever it is that's knocking you back as quickly as possible.
So I'd never seen him before but I'd heard he was a great entertainer, and he was. His banter was sharp and hilarious and he reacted to what the crowd was doing and saying on the spot. And he's cuter than his pictures, younger seeming, too.
I thought his voice was really fine. You know how he can do that intensely piercing nasal thing? He kept that out of his vocals for the most part and sang with a lot of warmth and depth. And his guitar playing, wow. Really beautiful. He did about 6 songs solo with acoustic guitar to open the show and throughout them the crowd was silent, hanging on his every note.
The band joined him for about 6 more songs and then, I'm telling you, it was over. He did two songs for an encore, including "Dance Music," but it was a slowed-down version, although they did rock it at the end.
He was particularly funny when he first came out and told us that when we post the set list on the internet, just as he knew we would, we were NOT to mention that he played obscure tunes. He rattled off a list of songs that we should say he played instead, coz he didn't want it to get out that he was pulling songs from the back catalog. My husband didn't get the joke, so I explained to him that he has such a huge amount of music to pick from and such ardent fans (goaties, I believe they're called) that people very often shout out to him what songs they want him to play, and they're usually very old, seldom-heard songs.
I'm going to come right out and admit I only knew a handful of tunes. I wanted to shout out "Letter from Belgium" or "Your Belgian Things" or "No Children," but I didn't want to be that guy, you know?
Here are two songs recorded at a Daytrotter session in the summer of '07. Also, in the photo above, Peter Hughes is on the left and John Darnielle is on the right.
The Mountain Goats--"Pinklon" mp3 Daytrotter session
The Mountain Goats--"Ethiopians" mp3 Daytrotter session
The opening act, The Moaners, were a female duo who played bluesy rock, and let's just leave it at that. Well I will say this. About three songs in I asked my husband, Do you think they picked them to open so that JD would sound so much better in comparison? I'm not sure who was responsible for the pairing, but it didn't quite work. I realize I'm being a little harsh here, but I would also like to note that those girls are luckier than shit to be opening for the likes of The Mountain Goats and I hope they appreciate it, because I'm not quite sure they deserve it.
Hmmm that is kind of strange. I hope it is nothing serious...
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