How I Like The Mountain Goats: The Playlist

Anthony Cougar Miccio -

The Mountain Goats! Jenny From Thebes was my 6th favorite album of 2023, Bleed Out my 6th favorite album of 2022. Four earlier albums appear in my Top 300 Albums Of All Time. They compete with Bob Dylan and Electric Six for the silver medal behind Neil Young in my 100 Favorite Musical Acts Of The Pop-Rock Era (In Terms Of Quantity). If I ever regain affection for the music Bob Dylan has made in my lifetime, the younger bands will have to settle for bronze. But still! Coming up behind those boomer rock dinosaurs is no mean feat. Then again, the Mountain Goats have been making quality albums of atypical literary craft for thirty years now. That sure earned you dinosaur status in the 90s!

Someday, I might go into more detail about where I stand with those individual albums, but today is not that day. Today, I am sharing a hypothetical 3LP career overview where each disc would represent a decade of full-lengths. Disc 1 covers what one might call the "cassette" years, where singer/songwriter/guitarist John Darnielle was usually accompanied by a bassist (first Rachel Ware, then Peter Hughes) if anyone, often recording himself on a boombox. Disc 2 spotlights the leap to big indie labels like 4AD and Merge. This meant more studio time, experienced producers, more guest musicians, and eventually full-time drummer Jon Wurster (the first 4AD "full band" album, Tallahassee, is actually represented on Disc 1, for reasons both chronological and qualitative. More on that if I ever do a Rolling Stone Album Guide-type essay about the discography). Disc 3 finds the band becoming a quartet with multi-instrumentalist Matt Douglas, their sonic palette broadening in ways few Shrimper cassette catalog collectors would have ever dreamed way back when.

The Mountain Goats in 1995. I don't recall them being profiled in SPIN or shown on 120 Minutes at the time, so I hadn't a clue they existed.

Despite the structure, this is in no way meant as a best-of. I avoided most concert staples, some I love and some I don't. Every streaming service is happy to let you know what ranks on the algorithmic aggregate applause-o-meter. But what they don't do is structure their playlists for flow and narrative. Ideally, if you were so kind as to listen to the playlist below, you would leave it with a new appreciation for the band's trademark gifts and remarkable evolution. You’d also have more than enough ideas of your own about what to check out next. Where How I Like Lou Reed: The Leftovers, pt. 1 was a fantasy double-disc meant to cherry-pick tunes from albums I can't be bothered to keep, I own over a dozen of the albums acknowledged on this triple. If you like the song, you’ll probably like where it’s from. You could read a little into which full-lengths are represented with two tracks and which aren't, but not much. Don't read a lot into the inclusion of EP tracks and compilation cuts only appearing on Disc 1, either. It just felt more appropriate to the era in question.

Spotify link above, YouTube links below.

Disc 1 (1994-2003)
Side 1

  1. "Cubs In Five" (Nine Black Poppies EP, 1995)
  2. "Downtown Seoul" (Sweden, 1995)
  3. "Alpha Double Negative: Going to Catalina" (Nothing For Juice, 1996) 
  4. "Dutch Orchestra Blues" (Isopanisad Radio Hour EP, 2000)
  5. "Chinese House Flowers" (Full Force Galesburg, 1997)
  6. "Balance" (All Hail West Texas, 2002)
  7. "Standard Bitter Love Song #7" (Zopilote Machine, 1994)

Side 2

  1. "Horseradish Road" (The Coroner’s Gambit, 2000)
  2. "Peacocks" (Tallahassee, 2002)
  3. "Hatha Hill" (Ghana, 2002)
  4. "The Monkey Song" (Protein Source Of The Future…Now!, 1999)
  5. "Shadow Song" (The Coroner’s Gambit, 2000)
  6. "The Sign" (Bitter Melon Farm, 1999)
  7. "Minnesota" (Full Force Galesburg, 1997)

If you know a young bookworm who likes neat videos, show them this one.

Disc 2 (2004-2013)
Side 3

  1. "Sax Rohmer #1" (Heretic Pride, 2008)
  2. "Palmcorder Yajna" (We Shall All Be Healed, 2004)
  3. "Genesis 3:23" (The Life Of The World To Come, 2009)
  4. "Harlem Roulette" (Transcendental Youth, 2012)
  5. "Maybe Sprout Wings" (Get Lonely, 2006)
  6. "Genesis 30:3" (The Life Of The World To Come, 2009)

Side 4

  1. "High Hawk Season" (All Eternals Deck, 2011)
  2. "Lovecraft In Brooklyn" (Heretic Pride, 2008)
  3. "Hast Thou Considered The Tetrapod" (The Sunset Tree, 2005)
  4. "Song For Dennis Brown" (The Sunset Tree, 2005)
  5. "Against Pollution" (We Shall All Be Healed, 2004)
  6. "Transcendental Youth" (Transcendental Youth, 2012)

"Hey kid, you like wrestling...so do the Mountain Goats!"

Disc 3 (2014-2023)
Side 5

  1. "Training Montage" (Bleed Out, 2022)
  2. "The Legend Of Chavo Guerrero" (Beat The Champ, 2015)
  3. "We Do It Different On The West Coast" (Goths, 2017)
  4. "Tidal Wave" (Getting Into Knives, 2020)
  5. "Murder At The 18th St. Garage" (Jenny From Thebes, 2023)

Side 6

  1. "To The Headless Horseman" (Dark In Here, 2021)
  2. "Guys On Every Corner" (Bleed Out, 2022)
  3. "Their Gods Do Not Have Surgeons" (Songs For Pierre Chuvin, 2020)
  4. "An Antidote For Strychnine" (In League With Dragons, 2019)
  5. "Abandoned Flesh" (Goths, 2017)

We Shall All Be Healed, The Sunset Tree, The Coroner's Gambit and Full Force Galesburg are respectively at 161, 167, 192 and 193 on My Top 300 Favorite Albums of All Time. I'm telling you this because I've found people are more inclined to discuss and share reviews if there's a quantitative element at the top or bottom they can easily debate. Prove me right!

All appropriate expressions of awe, confusion and spiritual hunger can be sent to anthonyisright at gmail dot com.