Current Events > I saw The Mountain Goats live tonight. AMA.

(+) Yeah! (+)

It was fucking rad. songs like No Children and This Year as well as obscure classics like The Alphonse Mambo and Steal Smoked Fish.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9Iq6LA7sZI

Never heard of them. What would you recommend listening to by them to try getting someone into them?
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Gen_Lee_Enfield posted...

Never heard of them. What would you recommend listening to by them to try getting someone into them?

It depends on what you're after.

A lot of people, myself included, got into them based on a series of spiteful love songs based off a fictional couple. I'd highly recommend No Children and Old College try to that end. There's also a great older song called the Alphonse Mambo, which has a chorus of "It's gonna be just you and me, today/ waiting for the other shoe to drop, in Tampa Bay". These songs work well for when you're just fed up with someone, or if you're feeling self-destructive and bridge-burny.

They do a few peppy, upbeat numbers - The Diaz Brothers is a good up-tempo celebration of the eponymous duo from Scarface. Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is In Another Castle is a silly little song sung from Toad's perspective from being in Bowser's castle in SMB1. White Cedar is a noble-sounding song about rising up and standing against the fear that comes with potential opposition.

There are two eras of The Mountain Goats - the professionally recorded albums that began with Tallahassee, and the boombox-recorded to kinda rough-sounding produced albums beforehand. The above examples are from the former category (aside from The Alphonse Mambo) - if you were ever interested in listening to the earlier, more staticky versions, I'd recommend No I Can't, There Will Be No Divorce, Snow Owl and Snow Crush Killing Song. anything from Isopanisad Radio Hour, Devil In The Shortwave and New Asian Cinema.

But ultimately, the band's most popular songs are ones that hit close to the general populace. One of those songs is "This Year" - an autobiographical tale about pinching your stepdad's car, getting drunk on scotch, playing arcade games then driving home drunk - all set to a chorus of "I'm gonna make it/ Through this year/ If it kills me" - because despite how the premise might sound, the context is that the singer was physically abused by his stepfather during his childhood, and he acted out as an expression of that. If you're going through hardship, related to abuse or not, please listen to The Sunset Tree - if nothing else, listen to This Year and Pale Green Things, both personal songs from the lead singer about his abusive stepfather.
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Did they play any new stuff?
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MaxEffingBemis posted...

Did they play any new stuff?

Yeah. They played a song called "They Do It Better On The West Coast", and another one I don't entirely remember. No "Andrew Eldridge Is Moving Back To Leeds". but they did two songs from Goths. I got a recording of that second one, but I had to stuff my phone into my pocket so I could clap along.
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