Transcendental Youth
Merge
2012
Rating: 7 pieces of hard candy out of 10
I never feel smart enough to review The Mountain Goats, as I'm quite sure John Darnielle is doing and saying things much more complex than what I get from his music. I'm not a big lyrics guy, mostly focusing on melody, and Darnielle is probably one of the best lyricists around. Or so I'm told, cause really, unless the words to a song are Top-40 brain dead stupid I'm probably not even registering them.
But I have listened to a lot of Mountain Goats records, so I can at least compare it to those. This one continues the hi-fi, mature version of the Goats that has been going on for the last few records - full band, recorded in a studio and not on a boom box, all that sort of thing. No matter how much you might like the old version of the group, it's gone - you gotta love them this way or I guess not love them at all anymore. "Transcendental Youth" had two instantly strong, very upbeat tracks that I was struck by immediately - "Cry for Judas" and "The Diaz Brothers". Two of the better Goats songs in a few years IMO, I skipped back to both multiple times. The rest of the album is fine - pretty, mellow, a little adult contemporary even, but mostly exactly what you expect from Mountain Goats.
No comments:
Post a Comment