All Eternals Deck
All Eternals Deck
The Mountain Goats’ 2011 album is called All Eternals Deck, which refers to an apocryphal tarot deck.”The songs cluster around themes of hidden things and the dread that hidden things inspire,” says singer/songwriter John Darnielle, “but also the excitement, the attraction, the magnetic draw that scary unknown hidden things exert.” The band approached recording sessions for All Eternals Deck as commando raids on multiple studios with several producers. “We wanted to see how disparate seasons and moods and locations and producers would play out in the songs,” explains Darnielle.
All Eternals Deck
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Underrated,
Odd that this only has three and a half stars. This is the first album I’ve encountered by these guys (this guy?), but the lyrics are the greatest thing I’ve heard since I was a 16 year old kid listening night after night to Pavement’s “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain.” The guy really is America’s Best Living Non-Hiphop Lyricist, as the New Yorker dubbed him– usually I would be skeptical, but Jesus, some of his lines are unbelievable. The track that really got me hooked was the second one, with its line about “the rooms with the heat lamps, where the snakes are born.” Such a wonderful image; like “Suzanne” or “Stop Breathing” I wouldn’t put any money on what the song means exactly, but it is full of mystery and conjures up its own complete world in just a couple of verses.
The music is growing on me, and in fact it gets better with every listen. Like Bob Dylan said in response to an interviewer who criticized his voice, if you listen you’ll hear all the right notes. The bare bones instrumentation, to my mind, adds to things, since what we hear are more the forms of songs that could be performed by many other artists, with different arrangements and points of emphasis, much like Dylan’s songs were. I detect a Warren Zevon influence in places, though I could be wrong.
Anyway, it’s sad that more people aren’t listening to this, and that some of those who have listened to it are giving it mediocre reviews.
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|Forward Motion,
I’ve been listening to The Mountain Goats for years, and each release has been an enjoyable experience. Darnielle has produced a wealth of musical short stories, and he shows no signs of letting up. At first pass this album may seem a bit forgettable, but repeat listens are highly rewarding – yielding musical depth and fantastic lyrics. “High Hawk Season” is a show-stopper, sporting stirring vocal harmonies. And “Never Quite Free” is musically and lyrically moving. There are some duds (“Age of Kings” and “For Charles Bronson”), but overall this is a solid 4-star album, well worth hearing and owning.
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|All of them all of them.,
Wow, after all of the innumerable albums John Darnielle has put out, I didn’t think that I could be surprised. The rock concept has finally come together. If you are new to Mountain Goats, here is a brief recap. All Hail West Texas is a classic of the boombox era, and cherished by lo-fi heads everywhere. Tallahassee and The Sunset Tree are absolute masterpieces. They captured Darnielle’s songwriting and lyrics perfectly, with better production value. Get Lonely is good mood music, but not quite as good as the two previously mentioned. Then, to many Mountain Goat’s fan’s horror, they started making Rock music. Heretic Pride is great at times, but so inconsistent that I have only listened to it start to finish once. The Life of the World to Come is a good offering, but I didn’t feel that it added anything to the catalog, and I almost never listen to it. I bought All Eternals Deck today expecting a similar experience: good, but more of the same. I was wrong. There is a variety of sound here without it wandering or giving it an inconsistent feel. These are some of the best rock songs that Darnielle has written, and probably the most accessible album to date, though I would still recommend Tallahassee and Sunset Tree to newbies.
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