It seems a stretch to call John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats an embattled bandleader. After all, from the outside, he's been releasing albums for one of the most respected large independent labels in the world, 4AD, since 2002*. The New Yorker* has called him one of the greatest living lyricists, and Spin slapped his praises on its cover just last week. He's recently wowed the late-night circuit, sold out three consecutive nights at the Bowery Ballroom, and released his latest album, the masterstroke All Eternals Deck, on Merge Records, the independent label located within walking distance of his North Carolina home that landed a major Grammy last month. That's not bad for a writer who used to howl and strum into the microphone of his Panasonic boombox and opine that a real songwriter wasn't a career-oriented songwriter.
But in 2002-- when Darnielle made the leap to 4AD and, more saliently, into a proper studio with an ensemble of backing musicians-- his zealous fans started talking about his music as though it were foreign policy. Some loved the new adventurousness and accessibility, apparent from the great bloom of Mountain Goats fans during the last decade. But there are those who insist that the only real Mountain Goats is the atavistic Mountain Goats, the static-y, crackly, mildly manic stuff that Darnielle made mostly alone for more than a decade. To wit, the Mountain Goats forums, which Darnielle hosts on his own website, are a minefield of hot-blooded criticism about the band's rock music, lobbed not by online trolls but by those who might spend hundreds to track down Darnielle's earliest, most primitive releases. After the band released "Damn These Vampires", the positive jam that opens All Eternals Deck, Mountain Goats drummer Jon Wurster told me the vile was so rich he simply stopped reading the boards.
This matters now because, despite the fan fusillade, Darnielle has pressed on with his rock band, crafting and sharpening his skills and charisma as a frontman. Paradoxically passionate but controlled, uncompromising but instantly likable, All Eternals Deck is a certain career highlight for Darnielle. And, like many of the most memorable Mountain Goats songs, it's also about survival, or battling back from very dark places to "follow the light." Indeed, most every song here holds some key to the future, some talisman meant for perseverance. During "Damn These Vampires" and "Beautiful Gas Mask", it's didactic, warm advice. Occasionally, however, it's a reflection on the past, when some rocky relationship made more sense, when the world seemed framed by more favorable horizons. The poignant "Age of Kings", for instance, reminisces about a wasted love that once suggested a divine blessing. But just as the strings turn anxious, Darnielle remembers the time he might have fixed it all; his regret feels less like self-pity, though, and more like a future lesson.
All Eternals Deck is officially the third album for the rock band the Mountain Goats, or the trio of Darnielle, longtime bassist Peter Hughes, and Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster. On 2009's The Life of the World to Come, though, Wurster and Hughes felt more like plainspoken accompaniment, simply keeping time and stretching the sound around Darnielle when not sitting out nearly half a dozen tunes. After four years of live practice, they now sound like a properly developed unit that's comfortable with its ideas and approaches. There are no ham-fisted reggae rubs or overreaching rock moments; instead, the band simply plays with nuance and purpose, elaborating the lyrics by first understanding them.
Darnielle replaces his rhythm section twice here, and the success of both songs suggests that the evolution of the Mountain Goats doesn't stop with a rock trio. "Outer Scorpion Squadron" should forever quell the gripe that Darnielle can't sing. Above an economical string section, Darnielle speaks of survival with grace and delicacy. The record's one great experiment, mid-album curveball "High Hawk Season", swaps the rhythm section for a harmonizing trio known as the North Mountain Singers. Though Darnielle plays acoustic guitar, they treat the song like an a cappella ensemble would, adding bass and texture against his lead line. A call to power, it's one of Darnielle's pinnacles as both a bandleader and songwriter, and a revelatory break from his past. "Who's going to stand his ground, and who's going to blink?" he sings, as though winking to his detractors.
Three songs on All Eternals Deck lift directly from the lives of veteran American actors-- Charles Bronson, Judy Garland, and her daughter, Liza Minnelli. In each instance, we see a star in peril, whether it's Garland during the overdose in London that killed her or tough-guy Bronson trying to hold it together for one more feature. In both cases, Darnielle invokes their birthplace, their cradle of innocence, again using the past as a catalyst for perseverance. On "Sourdoire Valley Song", Darnielle smartly cuts the other way by referencing the Olduvai Gorge, the Tanzanian ravine sometimes referenced as the birthplace of mankind. An old man struggles and dies, and the world turns. Our struggles, the implication goes, are forever and for everyone-- stars, successful songwriters, ancient hominids thought to be extinct. Even if it means you "crawl 'til dawn on hands and knees," though, you keep going if you can. Lucky for us, the rock band the Mountain Goats have done just that.
