Fuck Yeah The Mountain Goats!

30 January 12

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

The Mountain Goats - Soft Targets

“This is on a 7”, a split 7” with John Vanderslice, which is already sold out and I don’t have any copies to sell to you, so I’m sorry about that, alright… Anyway, it’s a love song, after a manner of speaking, it’s called… well, here’s the thing… in, you know, the US military has this way of coming up with nice ways of describing bad things, so, you have “hard targets,” that’s buildings, and military installations, and streets, right? And then you have “soft targets”…and that’s PEOPLE, right? This song is called soft targets…” —John Darnielle, 2003

20 December 11

Comments | 121 notes

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

issueproblems:

John Darnielle - Get Your Mom Some Pie for Hanukkah

I don’t know what this song is (the album field is tagged “Goblins: Ha Ha Hanukkah” and I don’t think it’s technically a Mountain Goats song), but it exists. And it’s Hanukkah. And even though neither I nor John Darnielle is Jewish, I guess if there was ever going to be a remotely appropriate time to post this, it’s probably now?

5 December 11

Comments | 77 notes

lalitree:

Seventy degree December day in Durham (Taken with instagram)

4 November 11

Comments | 48 notes

Ivories

kristeljax:

dear power metal bands
it’s important to use real pianos

I really can’t stress this enough
we play a low-stakes game

a trillion years ago power metal might have meant
a paycheck

now it’s craft for the love of craft
which means that if you’re going to do it

you have to be willing to bleed for it
or else why bother

those of us who respond to what you do
with hearts still keen to feel wonder in this world

are offended by these digital pianos
seriously

get a studio with a big honkin’ grand
and unleash your inner Liszts

put a candle on the damn thing
and let the wax drip

do the damn thing
do the damn thing all night

but of this patchy depthless grand-piano-setting style
let us hear no more

and meanwhile
tell your vocalists who think we don’t notice little autotune fixes

that I will have words for them
in Hell

-John Darnielle

2 November 11

Comments | 85 notes

JOHN DARNIELLE | Autoclave — A Take Away Show

25 August 11

Comments | 18 notes

digitalfaun:

This hopefully happens soon, as much as I love his music and all.

3 August 11

Comments | 97 notes

“ I wrote that song while I was recalling working with a bunch of kids when I was a psychiatric nurse. I worked with these kids and their parents would blame the music they listened to for the problems they had in their homes. I would see a lot of this, but I think that music is an entire net good in the world; no child has ever been harmed by music. So, I wrote a song about a couple of guys that get in trouble for playing death metal and get sent off to hospitals.

— John Darnielle on “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton”

13 July 11

Comments | 242 notes

(Source: likeapairofbottlerockets)

12 July 11

Comments | 124 notes

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

atomofconsumption:

John Darnielle || “No Surprises (Radiohead cover)”

Part two in the series is this cover of “No Surprises” from Radiohead’s (best album, yeah I said it) The Bends Ok Computer. (No idea which synapse misfired to produce this mixup, mea culpa maxima, etc.) Once again, Darnielle’s delivery and mode of recording is wildly different from the original, but the sheer fragility on display makes the song his own.

(Source: sprezzatur-ish)

26 June 11

Comments | 127 notes

“ So this is a song about a couple of people in a car, and it’s kind of hot in the car, though it’s cold outside. And the reason it’s hot in the car is the seething temperature of their hatred and the sort of, like, you know, it’s one of those situations where you really—let’s say you’re in this car. You have probably at some point, the odds are pretty good you’ve been in this car at some point, right? And at one point or another you look over at the speedometer and it says 75; you’re riding shotgun and you think, you do this sort of quick calculation, and you don’t really know; you’re not a physicist, you know, much less a criminal investigator or anything like that. You’re just a person in a car that you wish you weren’t in, but you think ‘If I pop the door and drop and roll, and I tuck my elbows in, between here and the bushes at the shoulder, what’s the damage I sustain?’ and you picture your lifeless, unconscious body rolling down the beautiful hill, and you see yourself as though in a Japanese film and think ‘But the—you know, I might make it, and maybe I will look up and I will see the last bit of the car speeding away from me and I will count that as a victory.’ This song is about people who have chosen whatever the opposite of victory is.

— John Darnielle introducing Family Happiness @ the Wexner Center 2011-04-11 (via valerie2776)

Themed by Hunson. Originally by Josh