Music I Found Through MusicBanter - Pt. 5/5
The Mountain Goats – Sweet Nothing
How do I love John Darnielle? Let me count the ways.
I love John Darnielle to the depth and breadth and height
His nasally ass voice can reach, when feeling out of earshot
For the ends of production and ideal grace.
I love John Darnielle to the level of every day's
Album consumption, by sun and laptop back-light.
I love John Darnielle freely, as men strive for gigs.
I love John Darnielle purely, as they turn shyly from praise.
I love John Darnielle with the passion put to use
In my own songwriting, and with my youth’s fangirlism.
I love John Darnielle with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost taste in shi
tty music. I love John Darnielle with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if he so choose,
I shall love John Darnielle until death.
Oh John Darnielle. You and your loveable ass face. You with your nasally ass voice and cute ass glasses. You with your incredibly clever, succinct ass, (auto)biographically honest songwriting – oh John Darnielle, the things I would do to marry you.
I really enjoy lo-fi; I really love shi
tty recordings of songs. The s
hitty, lo-fi recordings of The Mountain Goats cause me to imagine John Darnielle as one of those people who absolutely have to create. He doesn’t care about quality of production or the gimmicks that come with it, he just
has to write and he
has to record and he
has to share his thoughts. Some may find this behavior narcissistic or even annoying, and understandably so, but personally this is my favorite form of music: songs that are more about raw expression that have an unabashed shouting out of lyrics that read like a scribbled down stream-of-consciousness, cathartic and satisfying.
That need to create reminds me of the Marquis de Sade a la the film Quills, writing his stories on the walls of his cell with his own excrement…… but that’s a terrible analogy. John Darnielle would probably not like that I just made that comparison. At least it’s original? My point is that I have a soft spot for people like John Darnielle who put out full-length albums recorded on boomboxes and distributed via cassette tape. I do still enjoy the later albums from the Mountain Goats, which tend to be more produced and feature a different tone than the rest of the band’s repertoire, but even on those albums Darnielle’s lo-fi roots seep through every now and then and I'll admit that I hold my breath for those moments.
The first song I heard:
Current Favorite Song:
Current Favorite Album:
Another artist Sweet Nothing introduced me to: Interpol