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The Mountain Goats

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The Mountain Goats
Background information
OriginCalifornia, USA
Years active1991 – Present

The Mountain Goats is the name of prolific American singer-songwriter John Darnielle's long-running musical project. Darnielle began recording in 1991, and has become known for his highly literary lyrics and, until 2002, his lo-fi recording style. Currently, when the band plays live, it comprises John Darnielle and Peter Hughes, but Darnielle has worked with a number of other musicians when recording albums under the Mountain Goats name.

History

Darnielle began performing under the name The Mountain Goats (a reference to the Screaming Jay Hawkins song "Big Yellow Coat") in 1991 in Claremont, California, where he attended Pitzer College and worked as a psychiatric nurse. Darnielle released his first album, Taboo VI: The Homecoming, on Shrimper Records. Many of his first recordings and performances featured Darnielle accompanied by members of the all-girl reggae band, The Casual Girls, who became known as The Bright Mountain Choir. One of this group's members, Rachel Ware, continued to accompany Darnielle on bass, both live and in studio until 1995.

The first five years of the Mountain Goats' career saw a prolific output of songs on cassette, vinyl and CD. These releases spanned multiple labels and countries of origin; many were unavailable to the majority of fans until recent reissues.

The focus of the Mountain Goats project was on the urgency of writing (Brown, "Sermon on the Mount", June, 1999.). If a song wasn’t recorded adequately to tape within days of being written it was often forgotten.

Darnielle graduated from Pitzer College in 1995. Most of what could be considered classic Mountain Goats conventions (boom-box recording, song series, Latin quotes, and mythological themes) were abandoned in favor of a more thematically focused and experimental sound. This period was marked by Darnielle's collaborations with other artists including Alastair Galbraith and Simon Joyner.

2002 saw the release of two Mountain Goats albums: All Hail West Texas and Tallahassee. These albums mark a distinct change in focus for the Mountain Goats project, being the first in a series of concept albums that explore aspects of The Mountain Goats' canon in depth.

All Hail West Texas featured the resurrection of Darnielle's early boom box recording for a complete album. Darnielle considers this album to be the culmination of his lo-fi recording style.

Tallahassee, recorded with a band and in a studio, explores the relationship of a couple whose lives were the subject of the song cycle known as the Alpha Series (see Alpha Series below for a full list of songs in this cycle).

Martial Arts Weekend, also released in 2002 under the band name The Extra Glenns, is a collaboration with Franklin Bruno on several previously unreleased Mountain Goats songs. Since that recording, Bruno has joined Darnielle in the studio along with bassist Peter Hughes, who is the second official member of the band and accompanies Darnielle on tour. These three musicians form what may be considered the Mountain Goats studio band.

In 2004, the Mountain Goats released We Shall All Be Healed. The album marked a couple of changes for the Mountain Goats. It was the first time Darnielle worked with producer John Vanderslice and the first album of directly autobiographical material. We Shall All Be Healed chronicles Darnielle's life with a group of friends and acquaintances addicted to methamphetamine in Portland, Oregon, though the album is set in Pomona, California.

In 2005, the Mountain Goats released their second Vanderslice-produced album, The Sunset Tree. Again autobiographical, Darnielle tackles the subject of his early childhood spent with an abusive stepfather. Darnielle had previously dealt with this subject in what he often refers to as the only autobiographical song he had written before 2004, the unreleased song "You're in Maya."

In 2006, the Mountain Goats issued Get Lonely, which was produced by Scott Solter, a man perhaps best known for his engineering work with Vanderslice on various projects, including prior Mountain Goats records.

Band Members

Former Band Members And Collaborators

Discography

Albums

Singles and EPs

Other compilation appearances

Collections (of previously released material)

  • The Congress (John Darnielle with Mark Givens and others)
  • The Extra Glenns (Darnielle with Franklin Bruno)
  • The Seneca Twins (Darnielle with Lalitree Chavanothai and Chris Butler)
  • The Bloody Hawaiians (Darnielle with Joel Huschle, Mark Givens and Caroline)
  • The Salvation Brothers (John played drums for the band's live sets)

Song Series

Scattered among the releases are song series: thematically interconnected ruminations on a single theme. Each EP and album is a project to be understood alone and as a part of an interrelated whole. Releases would often contain quotes, mostly in Latin, that gave hints to the theme of the piece.

Alpha Series

Songs in this category concern the same fictional couple, described as a heterosexual lower-middle-class man and woman who originally loved each other genuinely and held generally ordinary concerns for one another's well-being but whose relationship has degraded for a variety of reasons, most often a series of fights or drug and/or alcohol abuse, possibly both. Whatever the causes for their current situation, their love has not so much died as warped into the sincere, all-consuming desire of each of them to see the other drink themselves to death; thus, to facilitate this "walk down to the bottom," as described in the liner notes of Tallahassee, the couple keep whatever liquor they can afford on hand for each other and stay together.

The album Tallahassee, being entirely about the Alpha couple, begins with the pair buying a run-down house in the eponymous capital of Florida, follows their degradation, and ends with a vision of the house and both of them being consumed in flames. Other songs not found on Tallahassee, however, usually named "Alpha" in part to signify that they're about the couple, deal with similar situations, if not the same situation. The songs below, not found on Tallahassee, fit into the series:

Going to...

Songs in this category are generally about needing to get out of a place and/or thinking life will magically improve by moving somewhere new. The characters are not the same from song to song.

Orange Ball Series

The title of this series comes from a book by Don DeLillo in which the sun is repeatedly described as an "orange ball".

Quetzalcoatl Series

Quetzalcoatl ("feathered serpent" or "plumed serpent") is the Nahuatl name for the Feathered-Serpent deity of ancient Mesoamerica, one of the main gods of many Mexican and northern Central American civilizations and also the name given to some Toltec rulers, the most famous being Topiltzin Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl.

  • Quetzalcoatl Comes Through
  • Quetzalcoatl Eats Plums
  • Quetzalcoatl is Born

Pure Series

  • Pure Crystal
  • Pure Gold
  • Pure Heat
  • Pure Honey
  • Pure Intentions
  • Pure Love
  • Pure Milk
  • Pure Money
  • Pure Sound

Standard Bitter Love Songs

  • Standard Bitter Love Song #1
  • Standard Bitter Love Song #4
  • Standard Bitter Love Song #5
  • Standard Bitter Love Song #6
  • Standard Bitter Love Song #7
  • Standard Bitter Love Song #8

Song For Series

Star Series

These songs all seem to be about spending time with a girlfriend/love.

  • New Star Song
  • Star Dusting
  • Collapsing Stars
  • Stars Around Her
  • Stars Fell On Alabama

References

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