One Way In, No Way Out

For other fans of the Mountain Goats only: One of the members of tMG forums started a blog with review-essays about Mountain Goats albums. At first it seemed as though that would be an ample category definition, since John “New Father” Darnielle has released about 3,158 albums, EPs, supplementary collector’s item cassettes, and one-off fundraiser recordings. But I’m complicit in an overlap already — forum colleague Fever and I both offered to write about We Shall All Be Healed. Fever’s essay is more of classical a song-by-song analysis, a kind of essay I specifically didn’t want to write because I feared that I’d make it boringly didactic (a danger Fever deftly avoided); Wild Creature (the sponsor of the enterprise) has in turn now posted my contribution over at Sad Young Cardinals”, and if I hit the correct note, it’s more of a free-prose impression of the narrative world that the album’s songs populate. Anyway, if you like the Mountain Goats, or are just curious to see what my reflection on the world of WSABH (and, for good measure, of Philip K Dick’s A Scanner Darkly looks like, the link to my piece at Sad Young Cardinals is here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *