The Mountain Goats

In my youth, lyrics were very important to me, as important or more so than any other part of the composition. At some point in my musical journey, their importance dropped off dramatically. I think it was a combination of growing up and also being exposed to more and more great music with terrible or lackluster lyrics.

The Mountain Goats joins the elite few bands/artists that remind me what a joy it is to actually dwell on a songs' content in addition to its sound.

On The Life of the World to Come, John Darnielle takes the inspiration for each song from a different bible verse, and tries to transpose the scriptures meaning into a context relevant to our current world. Some of these are extremely poignant and thought provoking (such as the utterly soul-crushing Matthew 25:21), and some leave you with a quirk of a smile at how he drew the connection (the slightly creepy and off-the-wall Genesis 3:23), but all of them make you stop and think, the seed verse adding an entirely new level of depth to the already well written songs.

Darnielle has been releasing albums under The Mountain Goats moniker for twenty years, and I'd been told numerous times in the last six or seven that it would behoove me to check him out. Well better late than never, and I'm giddy with excitement to dig into the breadth and depth of his massive back catalog. Don't make the same mistake as I did, listen to this immediately.

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