January 2012, 40 Watt, Athens, Ga.
John Darnielle stunk, and he knew it.
“I’ve been wearing this shirt for nine days, and I smell worse than a pig,” the affable leader of The Mountain Goats noted at the outset of encore number two. “Sorry to the group of people in the rows by the stage.”
He then smiled and ripped into “Going to Georgia,” a perfect ending for a night at the 40 Watt. “Forty miles from Atlanta, this is nowhere,” Darnielle belted out to the raucous crowd. “Going to Georgia.”
Darnielle, in tow with Jon Wurster on drums (he of Superchunk fame) and Peter Hughes on bass, played an hour and a half of favorites and newer tunes, moving from quiet landscapes to frenzied flourishes. At times at odds with the talkative crowd (this happens too often at the 40 Watt), Darnielle was able to say his piece and rock the mic, giving the people what they want on a constant loop. He opened the night with “In Memory of Satan,” moved on to “See America Right,” “For Charles Bronson” and the excellent “Songs for Lonely Giants”. A story about berries and meeting sages prefaced “The Game Show Touches Our Lives,” a rollicking song that served as a gateway to a four-song solo set.
It was in the solo set where the true power of Darnielle showed itself, for there are few performers armed solely with a mic and a guitar that can top him. His chords stern, his lyrics spit out with purpose and meaning, Darnielle is the underdog who kept his head down and stayed true to himself, no matter the consequences. One of the night’s most poignant moments was during “You Were Cool,” as the rapt crowd hung on each word, screaming approval at chorus breaks. “It’s good to be young but let’s not kid ourselves/It’s better to pass on through those years and come out the other side/With our hearts still beating,” Darnielle sang to a room who knew exactly how he felt. These were his people, and it must be a comfort to him to know his way worked, even though an undercurrent of pain continues to run across the lyrics to many of his songs.
Following his solo set (which also included “Ghosts,” a song he noted was never properly released, “The Day The Aliens Came” and the fantastic “Woke Up”), Darnielle brought the band back out for new material (“Like Cedar,” “Transcendental Youth,” “The Diaz Brothers”). There’s a sharp difference between the new and old songs, as the fresh batch was more piano based, with Darnielle singing not spitting. The songs were strong, but different, and it was noticeable.
But he returned to the old stuff soon enough, ending the main set with a quad of monsters — “International Small Traffic Arms Blues,” “Counterfeit Florida Plates,” “Hast Thou Considered a Tetrapod” and “No Children” — the latter prefaced by a story of how some of its lyrics were written in Athens. He plays “No Children” live often, but the times I’ve seen him it wasn’t part of the set (I figure he may alternate between playing this and “Denton”). But to hear it live on this night was a piece of magic (scratch off another on my live music bucket list), as it came across as angry and freeing as I thought it would be.
The first encore paired “This Year” with “Houseguest,” a song written originally by Nothing Painted Blue (of which Peter Hughes is a member), which saw Darnielle, sans instrument, rolling about the stage and playing to the audience like a writhing lead singer. “I bet I’m the best houseguest/Houseguest you ever had,” he yelled on his knees while grabbing a cell phone from the audience.
On this night he was right.
