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The Mountain Goats

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The Mountain Goats

The Mountain Goats is a prolific, principally one-man band, comprised of John Darnielle on guitar and vocals. Other musicians have occasionally collaborated with the band, but Darnielle solo is the essential "Mountain Goat." While Darnielle has recently put out several studio albums, The Mountain Goats are a fixture of the lo-fi style of music, having frequently recorded on an 80s boombox and released all 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).

Biography

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, which he presently writes in Iowa, entirely landlocked for the first time since his infancy. [1]

Taking the name from the Screaming Jay Hawkins song "Big Yellow Coat," Darnielle assumed The Mountain Goats identity in 1991 while working as a nurse in a California State hospital. One may ask "Why is one man "the Mountain Goats"?" The official fan site for The Mountain Goats explains this best:

He has such powers that transform "Mountain Goats" into a neuter plural collective noun with reverse rationale -- plural noun, single man -- with the English definite article. Actually, many people (from the Bright Mountain Choir to Rachel Ware to the North Mass Mountain Choir to Peter Hughes) have comprised the Mountain Goats, but they are essentially John Darnielle. [2]

Darnielle released music as The Mountain Goats in various forms. First, released as a quintet including Rachel Ware and the Bright Mountain Choir (even at times with the North Mass Mountain Choir), then later as a duo. Often he recorded by himself, in fact a good portion of all tracks feature only Darnielle's nasal bleat and his frenzied, acoustic guitar. He presently records with bassist and multi-talented instrumentalist Peter Hughes (Nothing Painted Blue, Diskothi-Q, Wckr Spgt). 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 excellent liner notes of "All Hail West Texas." (3)

Lots of people insisted on calling the work made using the Panasonic "4-track recordings," and trying to convince people otherwise has proven utterly pointless.

Since 1994, the general rule has been for The Mountain Goats albums to feature a mixture of home-recorded and studio songs. He graduated from Pitzer College in Claremont, California, in 1995. Early 2002 saw the release of "All Hail West Texas," the first all-boombox Mountain Goats album since 1994's Zopilote Machine." In November of 2002, "Tallahassee" found Darnielle and Hughes using great big pieces of music engineering equipment, and use full potential of studio production, to conjure an album for the first time, completely in a studio. That album was the first of a trio of albums(Tallahassee, We Shall All Be Healed, and The Sunset Tree) to be released on 4ad records.

Discography

Full-length recordings

Singles

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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