Fair warning: I'm a die-hard Mountain Goats fan. Die-hard as in I listen to more live recordings than I do actual albums. Die-hard as in I knew John was going to play "Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton" a good twenty seconds before he did because I saw him tune down to dropped-D. (For some reason that really freaked out the people around me.) So don't expect any sort of that journalistic fair-and-balanced nonsense in this here review.
I had only seen the Mountain Goats once prior to this show, when John Darnielle and John Vanderslice did a joint acoustic tour in 2008. This show couldn't have been further from that night at the Sixth & I Synagogue, for better or worse. But I feel confident in saying that the 9:30 Club show was at least 16x better than the Synagogue show (give or take).
The full-band Mountain Goats performance is still a rather recent phenomenon. For the better part of a decade, John played almost exclusively with bassist Peter Hughes, with scattered solo shows thrown in. Aside from encores where he would steal the drummer of his opening act, it was very much a minimalist act--even songs that he recorded in studio with a full-band would be broken down to guitar and bass. Around 2006 (to my best estimate), John began drifting toward more full-band performances, especially after 2007, when he recruited Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster as a full-time member. There was still the odd acoustic tour (hence the show I saw), but they were no longer the norm.
It was a bitter pill to swallow for a lot of Mountain Goats fans, many of whom had been following him since his cassette days. Many of his early full-band performances included jeers similar to what Bob Dylan received after going electric, though certainly never to that venomous extent. (I can remember several shows where people actually yelled "Judas," comments that John was none too amused by.)
I was admittedly saddened to learn this tour would be performed by a full-band. My fear was that John would abandon his earlier acoustic songs, playing exclusively post-All Hail West Texas material, leaving the majority of my favorite songs in the dust. I really don't think I could've been more wrong on that front.
Being that the tour was promoting All Eternals Deck, there was obviously a lot of new songs in the setlist. But John knows his core audience well, and he threw in a collection of older songs worthy of a "greatest hits" album. I knew every word to every song they played aside from the new material, and my cranky veteran superiority complex couldn't have been more placated. (I'll include a fractured setlist at the end of the post.)
The opening act was a band called Megafaun, an indie-folk band out of Durham, North Carolina. This was only the second night of the tour, and these guys were clearly still in awe of the whole experience. The traditional scorn and indifference given to most opening acts is nowhere to be found on Mountain Goats tours--we're some of the nicest people around, bar none. The group's Appalachian sound rubbed me the wrong way (honky-tonk just makes me uncomfortable, I can't explain it), but they were undeniably tight, nice as hell, and just a joy to watch on-stage. Definitely a band worth checking out if you're into rootsy country rock.
The Mountain Goats took the stage shortly after, with a brief death metal track introducing them, all four members clad in wonderful black suits. John and Peter Hughes were familiar sights, and the band was filled out by Jon Wurster at drums and Yuval Semo on keyboards and occasional guitar. (Yuval contributed organ, keyboards, and string arrangements to All Eternals Deck.) John, Peter, and Jon are still as in-sync as ever, but Yuval was clearly still working out some of the songs. The only noticeable slip-up was on "No Children," when he jumped out of the chorus a few measures early, but Peter set him straight from across the stage. There were several times when John had to teach him songs on the spot they hadn't rehearsed, but Yuval picked up on them seamlessly.
John Darnielle is simply the most entertaining frontman in music today. He's a joy to watch on-stage, his vocal delivery absolutely reeks of emotion, and his stage banter is on a whole different level from anyone else in the game. His best moment came during a rant against bands writing encore songs on the setlist, when he used Weezer as a hypothetical example.
"We don't say beforehand 'Oh, we'll play "The Sweater Song,"' a statement the audience cheered surprisingly loud for.
John seemed to realize almost immediately what he'd done, as did Peter. "You'd better get on Twitter after the show," he said to much laughter.
"I have no prior knowledge of that band," John maintained, though he was still clearly not backing down from his example. (I can only hope this leads to some kind of bizarre Mountain Goats/Weezer passive-aggressive feud.)
The band opened with several full-band tunes, before the rest of the group emptied, leaving John on-stage to play a few songs solo. The set alternated back and forth in this fashion for the most part, largely split between newer and older songs, though the band did play several old-school songs in full arrangement, including "Minnesota," and "Going to Georgia"(!)
Your average Mountain Goats show is better than anything else in the world, but this show was extraordinary even by the lofty expectations John's set over the years. As I rushed to jot down the songs I could remember after the show, I quickly came to the realization that this was one of the best setlists I'd ever seen from the band, and this is coming from a guy with around 50+ live recordings. I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss the immediacy of his old acoustic format, but I was still floored by the full-band format. This will definitely go down as one of the best tours the Mountain Goats have ever done.
If you can get tickets, for the love of God do it. Now. Travel as far as you need to go to see them live. You will not regret it.
I don't have a perfect chronological setlist, so I won't try to recreate the exact show. Instead I'll just list what I have, divided between new and old songs. (I'm fairly confident that I wrote down every song they played, though I certainly could've missed a few.)
NEW:
Damn These Vampires
Birth of Serpents
Estate Sale Sign
Beautiful Gas Mask
Outer Scorpion Squadron
For Charles Bronson
Never Quite Free
Liza Forever Minelli
SOMEWHERE IN-BETWEEN:
A Silkworm cover I couldn't quite place. It was fantastic though.
OLD:
Broom People
Dino Lapati's Bones
Minnesota
Family Happiness
Island Garden Song
Southwood Plantation Road
Seeing Daylight
No Children
Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton
This Year
The Sign
Going to Georgia
I'm not fucking with you. They played "No Children," "Death Metal Band," "This Year," "The Sign," AND "Going to Georgia" on the same night. A decent Mountain Goats show in the past had two of those songs as encores, but I can't remember ever seeing a show that had all of those songs together. I winced a little when John started off "Going to Georgia"--John's admitted in the past that that song became the bane of his existence--but it surprisingly turned into a jaunting full-band song that John actually seemed to be enjoying, which was a wonderful change.
On a side-note: I bought a CD copy of All Eternals Deck at the show and listened to it for the first time on the ride home. My initial reaction when it was finished: "That was pretty terrible." My reaction after giving it a second listen today: "Damn, that was really good." So take that as you will. Definitely worth a purchase.
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