"The Most Remarkable Thing About You Standing In The Doorway…"

Mountain Goats – Doug Fir – 6.10.2006

By no means did I take this picture. I took pictures, they came out terribly. Thanks, don’t be mad.

My writing about the Mountain Goats has been a long time coming. His (Their? His? Their? Let’s say “his”) shows almost demand a certain amount of inner monologue. What’s more, I spent much of last fall dissecting how John Darnielle and recent collaborator John Vanderslice became more than the sum of their parts. Somehow each, in their working together, brought out the best in one another, as Darnielle’s sound got bigger, wider, and Vanderslice developed a grace in his lyrics that lent justification to his clichés – they’re earnable, I think (though some disagree), if you bring something sensory to them, back them up with enough narrative truth or supposed truth, and Darnielle helped JV do that. Anyway, Sunset Tree and Pixel Revolt were among my favorite albums of last year, and each man’s influence on the other really enhanced that.

It’s completely amazing to me, the ways in which John Darnielle is self-aware. There was a point in the show when he talked about his upcoming record Get Lonely and how, basically, it is an exploration of sadness, how sometimes we feel sad, sort of, but we don’t feel all-the-way-sad and we need that one certain record to help us follow our sadness down the rabbit hole to see just how far it (the sadness, the rabbit hole, take your pick) will take us, which is past the bottom because it’s bottomless. I’m paraphrasing, but not by much. The thing is, all his music is like that. For me, he’s simply so articulate, so precise in his language and imagery that his music absolutely brings forth a visceral version of feelings, particularly feelings about memories, that I just don’t have the words for. “No Children” is among the easiest examples, “Pale Green Things” (mp3) is among my favorites.

I don’t know if the rest of the crowd felt exactly the same way, but I’ve never really seen a Portland crowd so devoted to any other band except maybe the Decemberists, and all the other usual suspects that tend to bring out the fanatic in people (Death Cab, Bright Eyes) have come up short by a few miles. I’ve certainly never heard a Portland crowd do anything quite like THIS before. Darnielle was right to only bring bassist Peter Hughes on this tour, too. The last show I saw had a full band, and that was nice for that time and worked given that he was touring on Sunset Tree. But the great strength of the Mountain Goats is-has-been-will-be-always Darnielle’s acute understanding and the grace with which he lays it out, so keeping the show to him and one teammate helps showcase that even further, lets him improvise more, switch up songs and set lists. Hughes said at one point that he wanted to play a song they’d never played together before, and a moment later (as I tried desperately to remember that “Recognition Scene” is called Recognition Scene, but couldn’t remember in time) they played “Monkey In The Basement” before launching into the end of the set, and playing three (3!) encores.

He talked about the song “Dance Music” and about cutting your losses, and how that’s essentially impossible, because they won’t cut. “You can’t cut your losses,” he says, “…they bleed, but they don’t sever.” He talked about living in Portland as some of his dark years, and how we’ll all understand once we move to a new town, which is probably true. He talked about being 14 and being beat up and teased by jocks, but knowing that he was on his way to a two-door Honda Civic to have sex during recess, and that they wouldn’t get there for years, and I got the sense that he’s always known, even when he didn’t know, that if he endured for long enough that he’d show the world a thing or two.

The second encore featured an acapella rendition of “I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone,” which I never knew was a Billie Holiday song, and which was beautifully rendered (almost reimagined?) in Darnielle’s somber aching tone. By this point my head was sufficiently swimming that I began to draw parallels between Holiday and Darnielle, their understanding of a particular moment as it relates to a culture as it relates to a collective mood as it affects a audience or like-minded group of people. The third encore, which was well after the lights had come up and half the crowd had given up, was a cover of a song from Hughes’s old band, and was hilarious, and the perfect way to end the show, with the lights up and everyone squinting.

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

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Thanks to Matthew for hosting because I’m hosting-stupid. If you’re in NY you should thank him for me, tonight, here.