The Mountain Goats
Corner Hotel
April 14, 2010

L
“Hail Satan!”

The very first time I heard the Mountain Goats’ ‘This Year’ I was in the middle of one of those years where everything keeps piling up, and I quickly became a fan. Like a shepherd for misfits, frontman John Darnielle herds us disgruntled folk together by singing out the unspoken kinship between people caught in the rain, heavy traffic or stuck at an airport with delayed flights; airing our frustration, dread and bitterness and mixing them up with a dry, sardonic twist.

The Mountain Goats show at the Corner Hotel sold out weeks prior, probably by the same fans who were disappointed by Darnielle’s sudden cancellation of a 2009 tour, which includes your reviewer. Shortly after appearing on stage Darnielle thanked the crowd profusely, confessing that his first ever gig in Melbourne was played to an audience of twenty.

The audience tonight, whilst numbering plenty more than twenty, was a motley crew of dudes with bad hair cuts. Actually I was amazed at how many guys were in attendance — and not “emo” guys, but the sort of blokes who read Zoo magazine unashamedly in the news agency. I joked with my friend that perhaps we were at the wrong gig and the “Mantel Ghats” were going to come onstage instead.

All of this was a delightful contrast to the nerdy, bespectacled Darnielle who, tall and thin, ambled on the stage with the grace of a giraffe (I really wanted to say Mountain Goat). Yet his band, like his audience, was consistently diverse. The drummer looked like an extra from Bold and the Beautiful and appeared to sing every drum beat, his lips clearly mouthing “bam, bam, bam…” Only the rhythm guitarist was on par with the kind of hipster-dom I have come to expect from American indie bands, with his pink shirt, pink jeans and delicate quiff of blond curls.

Darnielle is known not to play crowd favourites, yet we still eagerly shouted our requests to him. You could see him scowl as he joked back that he couldn’t play ‘Golden Boy’ at the start because he had nothing to follow it with. Still, it didn’t take him long to whip out a personal favourite; with the first few chords of ‘Cotton’ I was singing with the rest of them. Darnielle seemed so ecstatic every time the crowd cheered, as if he was still surprised that anyone knew his songs.

As the set flowed on the songs varied from the well known to the obscure. With ‘This Year’ the room shouted passionately, “I’m going to make it through this year if it kills me.” Even during the quieter ballads the crowd’s enthusiasm never dipped — it actually became more intense as each little prologue was usually a major bummer. One song was introduced as “a song about harming your self and how practicing the dark arts can open the portal to hell…” Another song was about “huffing cans of spray paint until you vomit”. It’s pretty grim stuff, but the clean guitar strumming, complimented by the simple methodical drumming and a twangy, nasal voice, some how brightens it up, and us with it.

A lot has been said of the academic element to the Mountain Goats. Darnielle’s lyrics are complex and poetic; they read as well as they sound and as a result he has been hailed a modern day Leonard Cohen. Darnielle is the one constant against a background of changing musicians throughout the band’s two decades, during which the Mountain Goats have released 16 studio albums and numerous split albums, singles and compilations.

I’d like to have known every song he sang, or to be able to break down the significance of the “going to” series or the “alpha” series (check out the band’s Wikipedia entry if you want to geek it up). But personally I really just like their sound and when you’re at a gig that’s the most important bit. Judging by the reaction from the crowd, they were doing a great job.

Two hours and two encores later they came to their final song, ‘The Best Ever Heavy Metal Band from Denver’, which had the whole room singing and punching their sign of the horns into the air. Finally the crowd dispersed to their varying places of origin and I was touched that someone like Darnielle existed to bring this random bunch together. Where else could I chant “Hail Satan” sandwiched between a man clad in leather and a boy so pretty and elfin that I had to hear him yell to know he was in fact male.