The Mountain Goats

i really like this
i definitely like MGs when there's a concept or theme to the record, or those tend to be my favs

(thinking about ordering Master of Reality)

absolutely order this immediately. can't recommend that book highly enough.

yeah i just started reading it last week and it's great --- esp poignant as i am currently working in a psychiatric hospital

so uh, NYC, does City Winery have a standby line?

https://twitter.com/speaakeasy/status/583710484165177344

I had to make myself listen to the npr stream a second time, but sure glad I did. Initially, it just seemed wayyy too refined and introspective, in a chamber-y way, for an album about wrasslers (long ago, I reviewed a collection of wrestlers' entrance themes etc., back when The Rock and Mankind were first hittin' it big, and the refinement was there, but had to go w deft, deadpan flourishes of grandiosity, re art metal and soundtracks, like John Carpenter's music). The opening track still seems a bit too much like early Randy Newman, maybe, and could also live without the coda to "Heel Turn 2," but otherwise---with the volume way up on non-audiophile headphones---really liked the rest (well the one about San Juan still seems a bit diffuse lyrically, but music no prob). That Wurster's a pretty good drummer, hey.

Some of the piano flourishes are exquisite. What's the song w/the extended piano outro?

Heel Turn 2

"Heel Turn 2," isn't it? A little too exquisite here, for me.(Overselling; I get the nuances already.)
Bout time for an MG tribute album, also occasional covers hither and yon. I like his voice, but wouldn't hurt to hear others. Red Hot Mountain Goats? Let's do it!

"Heel Turn 2" definitely the highlight for me so far, though I've lived with that song longer than most of the others on the album (it has floated around online for about a month or so). Agree that some of it sounds a bit too restrained on first pass, but its early yet. "Werewolf Gimmick," though, might be the closest that Darnielle has come so far to writing what could conceivably become an actual metal song.

what a great album!

hit me hard on the first few passes; the big moments (chavo guerrero, heel turn, werewolf gimmick) had me giddy like college+healed but the opener+closer both rly got me too. (have been into mtn goats/randy newman correspondence since the "in germany before the war" cover on the extra lens album.) "exquisite but restrained" is what i thought of the last two albums, tho it may have been bad timing or inattention; anyway they really have been a gorgeous-sounding band on these last few and this one to me sounds exquisite+unrestrained.

(not that like "estate sale sign" is restrained.)

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

"foreign object" sounds like weird al; mean this as flatteringly as possible to all concerned

i don't love any song on this record as much as i love a few of the songs on transcendental youth but that may be a product of this one not coming out during my nervous breakdown. i really love the way some of these songs drift and distend

the instrumentation on "fire editorial" is gaucho as hell

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)