{"id":825,"date":"2012-01-27T01:34:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-27T01:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=825"},"modified":"2026-06-27T01:35:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T01:35:53","slug":"the-mountain-goats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=825","title":{"rendered":"The Mountain Goats"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

January 2012, 40 Watt, Athens, Ga.<\/strong><\/p>\n

John Darnielle stunk, and he knew it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been wearing this shirt for nine days, and I smell worse than a pig,\u201d the affable leader of The Mountain Goats noted at the outset of encore number two. \u201cSorry to the group of people in the rows by the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

He then smiled and ripped into \u201cGoing to Georgia,\u201d a perfect ending for a night at the 40 Watt. \u201cForty miles from Atlanta, this is nowhere,\u201d Darnielle belted out to the raucous crowd. \u201cGoing to Georgia.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u201cIn Memory of Satan,\u201d moved on to \u201cSee America Right,\u201d \u201cFor Charles Bronson\u201d and the excellent \u201cSongs for Lonely Giants\u201d. A story about berries and meeting sages prefaced \u201cThe Game Show Touches Our Lives,\u201d a rollicking song that served as a gateway to a four-song solo set.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s most poignant moments was during \u201cYou Were Cool,\u201d as the rapt crowd hung on each word, screaming approval at chorus breaks. \u201cIt\u2019s good to be young but let\u2019s not kid ourselves\/It\u2019s better to pass on through those years and come out the other side\/With our hearts still beating,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Following his solo set (which also included \u201cGhosts,\u201d a song he noted was never properly released, \u201cThe Day The Aliens Came\u201d and the fantastic \u201cWoke Up\u201d), Darnielle brought the band back out for new material (\u201cLike Cedar,\u201d \u201cTranscendental Youth,\u201d \u201cThe Diaz Brothers\u201d). There\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

But he returned to the old stuff soon enough, ending the main set with a quad of monsters \u2014 \u201cInternational Small Traffic Arms Blues,\u201d \u201cCounterfeit Florida Plates,\u201d \u201cHast Thou Considered a Tetrapod\u201d and \u201cNo Children\u201d \u2014 the latter prefaced by a story of how some of its lyrics were written in Athens. He plays \u201cNo Children\u201d live often, but the times I\u2019ve seen him it wasn\u2019t part of the set (I figure he may alternate between playing this and \u201cDenton\u201d). 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.<\/p>\n

The first encore paired \u201cThis Year\u201d with \u201cHouseguest,\u201d 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. \u201cI bet I\u2019m the best houseguest\/Houseguest you ever had,\u201d he yelled on his knees while grabbing a cell phone from the audience.<\/p>\n

On this night he was right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

January 2012, 40 Watt, Athens, Ga. John Darnielle stunk, and he knew it. \u201cI\u2019ve been wearing this shirt for nine days, and I smell worse than a pig,\u201d the affable leader of The Mountain Goats noted at the outset of encore number two. \u201cSorry to the group of people in the rows by the stage.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":489,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[45,103],"class_list":["post-825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-concerts","tag-40-watt","tag-mountain-goats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":826,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825\/revisions\/826"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}