If you were reading this blog earlier this year you may recall my recently kindled enthusiasm for the music of The Mountain Goats. This enthusiasm has not waned as I have explored the back catalog of this "band" of (mostly) one. It has, if anything, waxed.
As I wrote about my delight in this discovery I uncovered the existence of kindred spirits here at Salon, including our jack-of-all-trades editorial operations director Max Garrone, who swears by "The Coroner's Gambit," and our Renaissance-man IT support manager, Jim Fisher.
Perhaps you've read some of Jim's in-depth reporting for Salon on technology and the environment, or some of his great poems that we've published. (I'm not the only one who thinks highly of his work; he has recently won a prestigious Stegner Fellowship at Stanford.)
Anyway, I learned that last year Jim had written an in-depth critical essay on the music and lyrics of the Mountain Goats and John Darnielle. For various reasons the essay never got published in Salon. It is perhaps of more interest to those already hooked on this work than those not yet familiar with it. But the piece deserves a home on the Web, so I've published it in this blogspace, here.
Jim's piece was written months ago, at the time of the Mountain Goats' release of "Tallahassee." Earlier this year saw the release of "We Shall All Be Healed." I'm not sure Jim agrees with me on this, but I think that album fulfills the prediction at the end of his essay of an "all-studio masterpiece" from this artist, much of whose previous work was recorded direct-to-boombox.
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