The Mountain Goats
St George’s Hall, Bristol | October 7th
Men like John Darnielle are few and far between. Men who can open their hearts, spill over with melancholy and strangle, to the point of rapture, the attention of a 500 strong crowd. Reducing grown men to tears with just a few bars is no easy feat. Not even exaggerating. St George’s Hall is bursting tonight and Darnielle’s famously adoring fans, excluding the one guy reading Tolstoy in the front row, are staring with uninterrupted lust at the stage before them. As the lights dim and The Mountain Goats take the stage the room erupts, in a torrent of enchanted claps and ecstatic uproar. To say John and Peter have been missed in the UK would be an understatement. We doubt Christ himself would receive as warm a welcome if ever he decides to return to pull us out of this mess.
The pair take to the stage in their usual suits and begin with the eye watering ballad Love Love Love. It is, from this point on, clear that the status John employs as leader of emotionally sensitive bespectacled men is one that really has to be heard live, preferably in a centuries old church, to be correctly understood. He has one of those voices that can sound out of key, can waiver hideously out of time and yet is wrought with so much depth and passion that really it doesn’t matter, and with lyrics as personal as “I hope the worst isn’t over, I hope you blink before I do and I hope I never get sober”, who needs technical ability anyway?
When he takes to the piano, John quips that he’s heard the church wants to replace the old Steinway and that he feels it should probably be donated to him. The crowd couldn’t agree more and he starts to play Samuel 15:23 to a crowd who just can’t stop smile-crying. It is, without trying to be too hyperbolic, a beautiful sight. As John walks off stage after playing a few more of his piano based ballads the applause that fills the room is coupled with stamping and chanting. There will be an encore, even if blood must be spilled.
The band traipse back onto the stage, sheepishly laughing off the cliché they have just walked into and launch into a pitch perfect rendition of No Children, a fan favourite and, perhaps, the closest thing they’ve ever really had to a hit. They end with Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton and what better way to end a gig in an ancient house of God than having the entire crowd shouting the chorus of “Hail satan, hail satan, hail satan!” repeatedly at the top of their lungs? The Mountain Goats deserve all the praise and attention they get and probably more. Long may they continue to blaspheme in our churches and make our young men weep on their girlfriends’ shoulders.
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Words: Billy Black
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