The Mountain Goats Tickets

In the beginning there was a boombox. It sat in the Californian home of mental health nurse John Darnielle, who used it to record his short, sharp songs, where his high, nasal bleat rose above his pummelling strums on an acoustic guitar. Those cryptic, vivid, self-referential songs told the tales of reggae stars and wrestlers, black metal bands and pulp horror novelists.

Through the early ’90s, Darnielle released a series of cassettes and 7” singles, all on the small Shrimper label. The first full-length Mountain Goats albums appeared in 1995. Nine Black Poppies and Zopilote Machine attracted significant attention in indie circles, Spin magazine calling the latter “the best album you didn’t hear in 1995”.

Darnielle quickly marked himself out as prolific, even if he dismissed the title himself, often releasing two albums a year through the 90s along with collections of early material. In the early 2000s, The Mountain Goats started to really gather momentum. All Hail West Texas became a firm fan favourite, particularly for the empathetic The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out Of Denton and its “Hail Satan!” refrain.

The band then signed to UK label 4AD and released Tallahassee, Darnielle’s first professionally recorded album, which told of a couple’s descent into alcohol-induced oblivion. It was a critical smash, especially the cathartic No Children.

Tallahassee marked the band’s move away from purview of one man and his boombox and towards more of a traditional band set-up. The harrowing duo of We Shall All Be Healed and The Sunset Tree – Darnielle’s most personal records yet – raised the critical acclaim to fever pitch and the band’s following swelled accordingly.

Following a string of superb albums for 4AD, The Mountain Goats decamped to Merge for 2011’s All Eternal’s Deck. It was around this time that they became an actual band, with Darnielle and long-time bassist Peter Hughes joined on drums by Jon Wurster (Superchunk, Bob Mould). 

Transcendental Youth represented the band’s darkest effort since Tallahassee, albeit with their most varied arrangements. Darnielle then took time out to focus on his family and write his debut novel Wolf In White Van. When the band returned in 2015, it was on a more optimistic note with Beat The Champ, an album that examined the life lessons Darnielle had learned from his obsession with 1970s pro wrestling.

Thematic cohesion remained the order of the day across 2017’s Goths and 2019’s In League With Dragons. In 2020, with plans for their next studio album halted by the global pandemic, Darnielle returned to his old boombox to write and record a song a day during lockdown. These songs then formed Songs For Pierre Chuvin, an album inspired by Darnielle’s research into early pagans.

In late 2020, The Mountain Goats finally delivered their delayed studio album, Getting Into Knives. This was followed in 2021 by Dark In Here, recorded in Alabama with a guest turn from Spooner Oldham.