The Mountain Goats at the House of Blues - 8/1/24
I’ve been going to concerts at Boston’s House of Blues by myself for about twenty years now. I first rolled up to see Josh Ritter on the Animal Years tour, and ever since, I’ve found myself fairly comfortable alone in situations you’d usually bring a friend to—I’ll eat in a restaurant alone; I’ve traveled alone. And last Thursday, I was back at the House of Blues to see the Mountain Goats alone.
The trip was partially research-oriented. Broad Sound (a journal of arts and culture) is doing a special edition next year on the Mountain Goats’ masterpiece, The Sunset Tree, so I was gathering material for multiple pieces, and one of those involved arriving an hour before doors to interview people in line. I made my way straight to the head of the queue and started working my way back. I was struck by a few things as I wound my way down the crowd of fans hardcore enough to line up early. Primarily, I was struck by the diversity of faces I saw. Yes, they were predominantly white, but not entirely. I saw a real cross-section of humanity in that line—people of all ages and basically any demographic you can think of. If you believe you have a sense of what a Mountain Goats fan looks like, the fandom probably represents a wider spectrum than you realize. Further, I was struck by how many families were there—I spoke to about twenty parties, and four or five of those were parents with their teenage or twentysomething children. Some of the parents were there because their kids love the band, and they love their kids. Some of them, though, had been listening to the band since the '90s, and passed the fondness down to the next generation. It’s hard to think of a lot of musical acts you could conceivably pass down to your kids while still seeing them in their prime—essentially, it’s hard to imagine a lot of bands staying cool since the '90s. But there aren’t a lot of bands like the Mountain Goats.
The Mountain Goats are a band; they’ve had a consistent lineup for years. But, primarily, the Mountain Goats are John Darnielle, who’s been recording under the moniker as an indie artist since 1992. The first decade’s EPs and albums, which yielded well over 200 songs in ten years, were mostly John alone with a boombox; he only added other players to the mix once he signed with a major label in the early 2000s. 2002 signaled the start of what feels inarguably like the Mountain Goats’ imperial phase—the solo, lo-fi All Hail West Texas was followed by the full-band, studio albums Tallahassee, We Shall All Be Healed, and The Sunset Tree, each in successive years. It’s dizzying to imagine putting out that density of brilliant music in just half a decade, but John was on a hot streak, and it’s more or less lasted. There are Mountain Goats albums I care for more than others, but they’ve never put out a record you could plausibly call bad. The Mountain Goats are a great fucking band. Always have been, and I don’t foresee a day when they aren’t.
Every morning since the tour began the prior week, I’d been starting my days by scanning the previous night’s set list. They mix it up every night, primarily in the stripped down guitar-and-bass or solo sets in the middle of the show, which are always different, but they do follow certain patterns. The whole first week of the tour they’d been opening with “Lizard Suit,” a logical opener, but not one of my songs. Then, a few days earlier, they’d made a pivot and begun opening with “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero.” That’s more like it. And that’s what they started with on Thursday night—though technically, the night’s set list does start with something unique: they walked out to "What We All Want" by Gang of Four, whom John had apparently just met, an encounter from which he was still riding high. Then it was right into “Chavo,” and John remained visibly joyful in that way my favorite live performers tend to be. They were note-perfect, and during instrumental breaks John prowled the stage, beaming at his compatriots, laughing, and generally looking like a guy on one of his first tours, not halfway through his umpteenth.
The first set was made up of tracks from the band’s last two albums—we heard four songs from Jenny From Thebes and two from Bleed Out—and the anticipation for older songs was palpable. The band was fierce and ferocious, but people were calling out for their favorite deep cuts early on. “I don’t know what you just said,” John told one hopeful, “but I’m gonna play ‘Extraction Point,’” and it was hard to begrudge him given how hard many of the new songs rip onstage.
After the main set came the deep-cut portion of the night, with John and Peter Hughes playing Tallahassee highlight “Alpha Rats Nest,” and then John alone going with “Dutch Orchestra Blues” off the 2000 EP Isopanisad Radio Hour—when they play deep cuts, they mean it. Next, John played a crowd favorite, “Color in Your Cheeks,” off All Hail West Texas. Speaking on stage in 2012, John said “This is my only political song. It's about how everybody should be allowed everywhere.” Thursday, to punctuate the point, he swapped out one geographic reference, “They came in from Paris,” for another: “They came in from Gaza,” which elicited a cheer from the crowd. Finally, John sat at the keyboard, saying he hadn’t done what he was about to do “in a minute.” He wasn’t sure how the performance would go, and someone quickly whipped out a phone, but John chided the fan, telling them it was rude to film someone who’d just admitted they were likely to fall on their face. Yet he pulled it off—he played “Andrew Eldritch Is Moving Back to Leeds” without missing a step. I’m sure every audience feels this way, but still, it was hard not to harbor a sense that this night’s solo set was extra special.
From there, we moved back to more recent material, hearing tracks off of Beat the Champ, Goths, Getting Into Knives, and another cut off Bleed Out. Then, wrapping up the main set, we got two absolute classics, and live standards: “Against Pollution,” which stretched and bloomed to a point that could be called transcendent, and, of course, “This Year,” one of two Mountain Goats songs you could plausibly call “iconic.” The crowd was warm all night, but “This Year” united everyone in jumping, pumping their fists, and bellowing that we were going to make it through this year if it kills us.
The encore brought the first track off Dark In Here, as well as a cameo on “Foreign Object” from Peter Hughes’ cousin, saxophonist Kyle Leonard, apparently quickly becoming a fan favorite at Boston shows. Then came “Up the Wolves,” one of only two Sunset Tree tracks we were treated to, during which John abruptly forgot the words to the second verse—he turned to the band, none of whom remembered them either, and then leaned forward for a tip from a fan, who got him back on track. (I frequently wonder how singers can possibly remember all those words; turns out they can’t always.) Finally, we got the other iconic song: “No Children,” which was preceded by a lengthy explainer from John, who relayed the fact that the song’s “I hope…” structure is a response to the Lee Ann Womack song “I Hope You Dance,” popular at the time he was composing Tallahassee. “I hope you die!” we all sang together. “I hope we both die!” And yet there was a distinct feeling that we were all (to quote Heretic Pride) so proud to be alive, and celebrating the fact that good music—for a modest but by no means unreasonable price—makes being alive all the sweeter.