Receive Weekly Email and Text Message Updates:
Sign up for latest info on concerts, dining, promotions and more!
Go!

Most Popular

Reader's Picks

Top Recommendations

A short list of San Francisco's most popular hot spots.
user content provided by: LikeMe.net & SF Weekly

National Features >

  • City Pages

    Michele Bachmann, Unmuzzled

    You don't need to read Sarah Palin's book to hear the ravings of a mad woman.

    By Matt Snyders

  • Miami New Times

    Pimp Daddy

    The rise and fall of a chubby sex-cult leader.

    By Natalie O'Neill

  • Riverfront Times

    Babe 'n' Arms

    Tom was a hot-tempered cross-dresser with a garage full of guns--and then he became Rachel.

    By Nicholas Phillips

  • Dallas Observer

    The Fight for Texas

    Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison are locked in a battle over the soul of the GOP. They're also running for governor.

    By Sam Merten

Hear This

On their latest, the Mountain Goats replace dysfunction with – even more dysfunction

Share

  • rss

By Nate Cavalieri

Published on February 04, 2004

Pray that John Darnielle's friends don't crash your party. Pray that they won't show up on your doorstep all strung out, pissed off, and half-cocked, ready to kill or fuck anything in their path. The Catholic who works at the convenience store is a real buzz-kill when he starts bragging about shooting some guy in the face. And the vagabond tweaker in tape-covered sweat pants is kind of freaky when he's chatting about cryptic symbols and invasive carpenter ants.

Count on Darnielle to personally introduce you to all of them when he comes through town in support of We Shall All Be Healed (4AD). This latest record from his band, the Mountain Goats, is like a frat party for freaks. Longtime MG fans will note that Darnielle has abandoned the urgent confessionals of the "Alpha Couple" that dominated his last two offerings, choosing instead to pen tributes to meth-head revolutionaries and paranoid freeloaders. But even though the Alpha Couple has been retired, Darnielle's new material suffers no lack of frustrated dysfunction. "Let's go where the jackals are breathing/ Wrap this bandanna around your head, don't let anyone see that you're bleeding," he half-shouts on the standout "Home Again Garden Grove." Then he explains: "Our dreams were like fugitive warlords/ Plotting triumphant returns to the city, keeping Tec-9s tucked under the floorboards." It's hair-raising stuff to be sure, and when Darnielle spazzes through these monologues live, expect a performance that is jammed with bursts of raw energy. Delivered with the spitty snarl and muscular acoustic guitar that've become Darnielle's calling cards, the Mountain Goats' combustible live sets are a far cry from your average guy-with-a-guitar shtick. Tec-9 in hand or not, you'd better be ready for a trip.