The Mountain Goats

Haha I thought Steely Dan as soon as I heard that piano! Weird song though -- it's so diffuse & (as you said) drifting, I don't really feel like I have a full grasp on it yet.

Probably goes without saying but "Choked Out" & "Werewolf Gimmick" are the songs that send me careening around the room looking for things to break.

It's "Heel Turn 2" with the piano outro I'm crazy about.

throw my better self overboard
shoot at him when he comes up for air

"Heel Turn 2" is, so far, the most devastating song of 2015 that isn't Bjork's "Stonemilker"

yet the president of the fan club always makes me lol

Yeah that's one of the big laugh lines of the album for me, along with 'Get told to maybe dial it back...'

"The Ballad of Bull Ramos" punches above its weight & feels like it could be the album closer, if you're the happy-endings type

haha, the very content line in this one about letting his hair grow long makes the actual album closer more devastating. btw the brief climactic switch to first-person in "hair match" killlllllllllllllls me, it's like if a helpless observer said one line as the head was submerged in "in corolla", except who would that be, it would have to be, like, god, and that would be gross, and here it's so natural.

O good I've been waiting for this thread to go all inside-baseball :)

The line that really got me on "Bull Ramos" is Rise & rise, surrounded by friends, because it so nicely mirrors Soar ever upwards on air gone black with flies at the conclusion of TY

On Seth Meyers tomorrow:

https://twitter.com/mountain_goats/status/584747088728195072

Annnnnd

http://www.nbc.com/late-night-with-seth-meyers/video/the-mountain-goats-performance-foreign-object/2857402

http://www.nbc.com/late-night-with-seth-meyers/video/the-mountain-goats-performance-pigs-that-ran-straightaway-into-the-water-triumph-of/2857388

And of course album out today.

i wrote about this, in retrospect wish i'd said more about the arrangements (like, wurster & hughes have been really important to the sound for a lot longer than just the past few albums) but yeah this album's pretty all right http://www.treblezine.com/reviews/22545-mountain-goats-beat-the-champ-review/

Good read here: http://thetalkhouse.com/music/talks/tim-showalter-strand-of-oaks-talks-the-mountain-goats-beat-the-champ/

nice to see one of my good buddies playing sax in that clip. :)

i stopped listening to NPR advance streams, something about listening to an album there (especially loading the full album where you can't tell what track is playing) makes it blur together in my head and not go back to it. but once i download something and listen to it piecemeal i usually end up loving it.

i guess this goes for all album streams, but NPR's presentation is so boring that it doesn't help at all.

Great review, sloth!

'hair match' is legitimately terrifying & gorgeous, perfect execution on that song imo

Yeah, it's haunting. I ignored this thread for a while once everybody started talking about the songs I hadn't heard yet because, yeah, I can't stand npr streams either. But I'm glad to see that other people were thinking Gaucho upthread too. This is definitely my favorite since Heretic Pride. I've been out-of-phase with tMG in the past few years, but I know I'll be listening to this album a lot.

Hey, so, I did this

http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/q-a-the-mountain-goats-john-darnielle-on-pro-wrestling-1696283941/

what's he REALLY like

Yo' man what do you expect the guy's a giggolo man
You know I mean?

don't get fresh with me pal

Oh my

"The next Mountain Goats record will be about wrestling" - I am 100% on board with this.

"The next Mountain Goats record will be 50% jazzier" - uhhhhh

This thread has been useful in coming to terms with that; I tend to blame Steely Dan for a lot of things - I should possibly blame them for more things.

idk dude, each of the last 3 or 4 albums has been 50% jazzier than the one proceeding it

Some of it is actually hearing the live version of Southwestern Territories and falling for that one, then first thing on the record bam - here's that track you liked, with some clarinet or such.

Kind of odd to be in the position of "I'm really looking forward to hearing that one live, in its incomplete state" (partly jk, I don't think J0hn thinks that the live version is in competition with the record)

My god, a clarinet

last night a clarinet part was applied to an older song and i told a friend "oh this is like 'say hello wave goodbye'"

yes!

I like jazz and clarinets. What's wrong with jazz and clarinets?

Clarinet is the only instrument I play, so I'm biased.

talking of jazz, Beat The Champ outtake 'Blood Capsules' has a really cool jazzy intro. This is definitely new territory for tMG.

http://egoaticon.tumblr.com/post/115770368137/i-could-almost-smell-the-fear-on-the-lunch-hour

hmm i could see how it would be disruptive or distracting to have prior knowledge of the song sans wind arrangement -- but i love the wind arrangement so y'know i'd probably be the guy complaining about how the live version was missing something

The extent to which I'm expressing universal truths here is at an all-time low, I'm aware.

I like the album but draw back from the bits that get me drifting off into thoughts of all the short stories, movies and songs about decaying regretful sports performers---there are some great examples of course, but mostly not musical. They tend to be tasteful-to-tearjerky, and very predictable: Paul Simon's "The Boxer," of course; In this category, though, Waits' voice kinda works for me: at least he *sounds* like a broken down old mug with a cauliflower ear and bent brane, subsisting on Lucky Strikes and undershirt sandwiches. Not that I want that from this album, but the chamber-y bits bring it all to mind (well written, arranged and played, but can be a bit much in this context)(like maybe why Dylan ultimately decided against crowding "Sign In The Window," a song about feeling utterly alone, with Al Kooper's consort of instruments, in that excellent out-take)

with the clarinets etc
like i said i upthread i hear more randy newman (or maybe even nilsson in parts) than steely dan

when i made the dan comparison it was kind of an exaggeration. randy newman is definitely there, and in the interview with ned he mentions learning duke ellington pieces which probably contributed to the jazz vocabulary of this record more than anything

ah well duke, a guy that i would imagine both fagen and newman worship that makes sense

Clarinet is the only instrument I play, so I'm biased.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, April 10, 2015 8:45 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

clarinet is literally the only instrument i like! throw all guitars and synthesizers in the trash! #bennygoodman

clarinets rule

they make me feel like me and my gal are rowboating on a pond

Always liked the Dan's arrangement of Ellington's "East St. Louis Toodle-oo," a wry farewell to a notoriously ill burg. An appropriate cover for SD, with nuances nicely sliced by that Coral sitar or whatever: sharp wings of the mechanical insect, seeking its prey on the summer wind. It's mostly dismissed on our Steely Dan thread (not Gaucho enough, you know).

I always want woodwinds in my rock music. Especially cor anglais or flute, shortcut to my pleasure centers. Clarinets are dandy of course. And pretty underused in this context!

as a wrestling fan it's really hard not to identify deeply with this record in a way that, say, i couldn't with "the life of the world to come." (i got starrcades in place of catechesis as a kid, what can i say.) some really beautiful character studies on the b-side - "luna" just kills me

very pretty live with the horns + clarinet though; coming onstage with the dusty rhodes "hard times" promo booming through the club was a nice touch

Huh.

xpost Yeah, after All Eternals Deck, Transcental Youth, and Wolf In White Van, seems like he wanted to take it in a different direction.

"Werewolf Gimmick," though, might be the closest that Darnielle has come so far to writing what could conceivably become an actual metal song.

True identity = surf song.

lots of that old black metal stuff gives me kind of a dick dale picking vibe

... please, tell me more

British Isles dates announced today for November, including the O2

... Shepherd's Bush Empire.

"The next Mountain Goats record will be about wrestling" - I am 100% on board with this.

"The next Mountain Goats record will be 50% jazzier" - uhhhhh

― Andrew Farrell, Friday, April 10, 2015 4:00 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Totally the reverse for me!

lots of that old black metal stuff gives me kind of a dick dale picking vibe

― kurt kobaïan (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, April 13, 2015 12:01 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

... please, tell me more

― bernard snowy, Monday, April 13, 2015 1:16 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Basics Of Black Metal
author: Morgal date: 04/23/2009 category: music styles
rating: 9.4 / votes: 34

black metal:

Hi readers! I wrote this article because I would like to help for beginners who already know the basic metal music techniques but want to learn the basics of black metal guitar playing. I playing black metal music for years and I have realized many things about this style of guitar playing. My lesson is about the 2nd generation of black metal (it's the 90s).I don't like the early black metal music (except Bathory by Quorthon). I think the early "black metal" music is rather heavy metal music with dark lyrics than black metal. The 2nd generation of black metal has begun with bands like Darkthrone, Mayhem, Burzum etc. To play in this style I recommend tune your guitar to standard tuning. The black metal guitar playing is mainly based on tremolo picking. It's very important technique. The most beginner guitar player cannot perform this correctly. In black metal you have to follow the blast drum beat with tremolo picking. The key to master this technique is: you have to do the up and down strokes ONLY with your wrist. Never use your arm, only the wrist moving. To play accurate with this technique, you have to stay your wrist somewhere. I tries many variations, but I think the best for me is when I play on the E-A-D string my wrist stay on the thinner strings ( G-H-E), when I play on the G-H-E strings my wrist stay on the thicker strings (E-A-D). Black metal songs' tempo is from 140bpm (Mayhem, Nargaroth, Gorgoroth) up to 200+bpm (Satyricon, Dark Funeral, Dimmu Borgir). First time practice with slower songs here comes two details of famous songs from Darkthrone and Mayhem.

dick dale (from guitar player):

Recorded by his band the Del-Tones in 1961, Dick Dale’s earliest signature instrumental “Let’s Go Trippin’” is widely considered the first surf-rock song. While it contained none of his soon-to-be trademark tremolo picking style (more on that in a minute), the song resonated with the California beach crowd and climbed the charts to #4 regionally....

tremolo picking (he even titled a song on 1994’s Unknown Territory after it) certainly lives up to its name. Dick Dale’s single most famous signature move has to be his semi-muted, trem-picked even glissandi up or down the low E string. To illustrate, try using Ex. 4a as either a one-bar pickup, or dropping it into the last bar of a song’s progression, which essentially creates the same effect. Next, Ex. 4b’s Terra Dicktyl intro riff comes on strong with non-tremmed, descending chromatic eighth-notes on beats one and three of each measure interspersed with trem-picked, open-E dotted quarters acting as pedal points.

the technique is pretty similiar obvious the musical vocabulary/sound very different but that always stuck out to me.

now this is different than everything that I was told from guitar mags during the trash metal era, black metal's tremelo picking is a distinct break from bands like Slayer who always made a big deal about using ONLY downstrokes...here the wiki entry on "downpicking"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downpicking

Downpicking, sometimes referred to as Downstroke picking, is the technique used by musicians that perform on plucked string instruments in which the plectrum, or pick, is moved in a downward motion, relative to the position of the instrument, against one or more of the strings to make them vibrate. If downstrokes are played without the addition of upstrokes (as in alternate picking), the tip of the pick never comes in contact with the strings during the time the hand is moving back up to repeat the downstroke.

....

Extremely fast eighth-note downstroke picking was used in the mid 70's and beyond by famous punk guitarist Johnny Ramone, who used the technique to play full live shows at fast tempos (usually around 180 to 200 bpm). This required extreme levels of stamina, but produced a very high-energy, aggressive sound. This extremely demanding, then-uncommon and somewhat innovative style contributed to Johnny Ramone's reputation as a legendary guitar player, and it influenced many now-famous rock guitarists. Downstroke picking has become a common technique in metal and thrash rhythm playing, notably exemplified by Metallica's James Hetfield, Megadeth's Dave Mustaine, Slayer's Kerry King, and Anthrax's Scott Ian among others. The popular, easily recognized guitar work of Metallica's "Master of Puppets" is almost entirely played using downstroked eighth-notes at a tempo of 212 BPM (about 7 downstrokes per second).