john darnielle, national treasure
and the hits just keep on coming.
if you don’t already know about the mountain goats, you should. some day i’ll explain why i think john darnielle, who for all intents and purposes is the mountain goats (though he would likely take umbrage at that, graciously sharing the goatness, as he does, with his comrade in arms, peter hughes, and to quote the afore-linked website, “...a litany of drummers we stole from our opening bands.”) is a national treasure. but not today, because i’m wary of unleashing more of those run-on, parenthetical, comma-abusing sentences like the one before this one.
instead, i’ll just post a track from their recent show at the independent. a track that, by the way, serves as a fine example of darnielle’s unique style: an amalgam of simple chord progressions, incredibly personal and confessional lyrics, and a vocal delivery that would take some getting used to if the overall package wasn’t so damn compelling. throw in his self-deprecating and amusing intros when he performs live and you just can’t help but love the guy. well, i can’t, anyway. and clearly i can’t help myself from rambling tonight either.
i first discovered the mountain goats via chat threads on the sick-n-tired mailing list from the early 90s. that led to a chance find of “beautiful rat sunset” in a used CD shop in hong kong and i’ve been hooked ever since. fast forward (i can hear you, by the way, muttering “thank god for that”) to march 8th of this year. which provides a nice segue to the first encore from that night, “this year.” the entire show, by the way, can be heard in a nice soundboard version here. for those of you keeping score at home, that’s jon wurster from superchunk (and the comedy duo, scharpling and wurster) on drums.
