The Mountain Goats

Talk about a receptive audience. Vanderslice started off to a reasonably good crowd, and seemed to enjoy himself playing solo, although he told us he was nervous. His chilled out manner and fun loving sense of humour went down well with the crowd and he picked up the flow towards the end and finished off with convincing audience involvement, something which is rare for a small venue like Capitol where people prefer to listen passively.

Up step The Mountain Goats. Cheering. They stride into “Wild Sage” and the whole place is silent listening to Darnielle deliver those hauntingly passionate vocals. The atmosphere is absolutely electric, so silent that when I get a text message I am embarrassed because it is loud enough to interfere with the song, even though the whole bar is packed. Even the tills are annoying despite the fact that I am all the way over the other side of the club. This was not a sign of things to come though, as they cranked things up with some faster numbers, notably “Dance Music”, easily my favourite of theirs. “Lion’s Teeth” was also brilliantly delivered, humminh along with that marching tune like beat. Perhaps my only gripe for the night was the lack of percussion in parts, but overall, the energy was more than enough to keep my feet tapping.

A definite surprise for me personally was the comic manner in which Darnielle delivered his explanations of songs and the stories he told between performances. Listening to his lyrics on record and some of his interviews, I was expecting a lot more intense personality, telling deep, serious stories, not joking around and pulling the piss, and doing it well too. This isn’t to say he was all fun and no seriousness, because at times it was obvious that the songs were particularly meaningful to him, and this built the effect.

It was clear that the crowd appreciated the fact that they were witnessing a rare event too, seeing an artist perform songs he still truly believes in. Darnielle seemed to feed off this, and the energy flowed. The closer was anti love song “No Children”, ironically delivered to a crowd mostly consisting of couples, but they seemed to enjoy it anyway, and it ended the night with a reminder of why Darnielle is so brilliant: Who else can say the things bouncing around in our heads so eloquently and with such conviction?

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