More recently he's been the subject of Fink's latest podcast, I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats, on which the two dissect his work song by song. He's published a handful of novels, been interviewed by Terry Gross and Marc Maron, had a beer named in his honor.
His band has swelled to a four-piece, with a well-received album every year or two like clockwork. In the years since Tallahassee, Darnielle's life has changed. I just want to feel this painful moment, and take joy in how dark we can make this moment.' " " is a song that says, 'No, I just want to stay in this painful moment. Joseph Fink, creator of the powerhouse podcast Welcome to Night Vale and a Mountain Goats superfan, says the song finds its power as a vessel for catharsis: "I suffer from anxiety, and one of the most helpful things I've learned is that if you fight anxiety, if you start to feel yourself going into a panic attack and you try to stop it, that makes it worse," he explains. Poll the fanbase and, amazingly, you'll find couples who claim it as "our song." Lyric tattoos are not unheard of.
Search for live recordings and you'll hear entire rooms shouting its searing chorus. Within a few years it had become something more. Though the band rarely performed it at first, requests from fans helped turn it into a live staple. "I would really dwell on their desolation," he explained, "and have them celebrating the hard, ugly parts of the time before divorce." With a tinkling piano riff and a bobbing rhythm, "No Children" announces itself as the centerpiece of that story, as one character simultaneously vents frustration, admits defeat and revels in failure, all from the very first lines: "I hope that our few remaining friends give up on trying to save us / I hope we come up with a fail-safe plot to piss off the dumb few that forgave us."
When I reached Darnielle at a studio in Durham, N.C., where he lives with his family, he said the plan was to give these damaged characters the broad stage they seemed to be yearning for. It even had a defined narrative arc, tracing the crumbling marriage of an addict couple, whose story had been hinted at in songs scattered over The Mountain Goats' first decade. Tallahassee was a turning point: Tracked top to bottom in a real studio, with a dedicated backing "band" in multi-instrumentalist Peter Hughes, and released by the storied British indie 4AD. Up to the early 2000s, The Mountain Goats' music was the definition of a cult taste: A nasally voice and bare acoustic guitar, often recorded on a department-store boombox, which wrapped Darnielle's lonely characters in a blanket of tape hiss.
0 kommentar(er)
