The Mountain Goats’ Music Finds Meaning in the Chaos of Human Existence

You could say The Mountain Goats, one of the best-loved indie-rock groups of the past three decades, write songs about lots of things: professional sports, the Bible, cars, music fandom, magic. But at their core, the hyper-literate lyrics of singer-songwriter John Darnielle are all about exploring the rich strangeness of human life — a collection of experiences that adds up to so much more than the sum of its parts. 

Darnielle is the core of the project, and he’s been its only participant at various points since its inception in 1991. But for several years, The Mountain Goats have been a quartet, including Jon Wurster, Peter Hughes and Matt Douglas, and they’ll play a sold-out show at Cannery Ballroom on Friday. They’re touring behind In League With Dragons, a studio album released in April that touches on Major League Baseball, Dungeons & Dragons, heavy metal and much more. We take a look at seven songs from the Goats’ oeuvre that highlight the special qualities that have built their devoted fan base:

“Cubs in Five”

The opening track of the 1995 EP Nine Black Poppies features the sonic hallmarks of the first decade of Goats releases: extremely lo-fi production, minimal instrumentation and Darnielle’s singular vocal style, which walks a line between singing and speaking with giddy enthusiasm. The lyric includes rekindling of love among a litany of unlikely events, including the then-remote possibility that the Chicago Cubs would win a World Series. (The Lovable Losers didn’t win a championship between 1908 and 2016.) It’s a pitch-perfect example of Darnielle’s facility for relating figures and stories from pop culture to the fortitude required to navigate interpersonal relationships.

“There Will Be No Divorce” 

The Mountain Goats’ catalog is full of love songs, but this cut from 2000’s The Coroner’s Gambit is among Darnielle’s best. The word “divorce” is absent here, but as in so many Mountain Goats songs, there’s a great deal of power in what’s left unsaid. The title adds context to lines that evoke intense love and longing, like when Darnielle sings: “If I ever want to drive myself insane / All I have to do is watch you breathing.”

“No Children”

And then there are Goats songs that are very much the opposite of love songs. This one from 2002’s Tallahassee is one of the band’s best-known, and it’s a showcase for Darnielle’s id reveling in fatalism as he sings with gleeful rage: “I am drowning / There is no sign of land / You are coming down with me / Hand in unlovable hand / I hope you die / I hope we both die.” In the middle of something as messy and painful as the end of a romantic relationship, Darnielle manages to shine light on truths about our flawed human nature, including the scars left by deep-seated anger.

“This Year”

Darnielle can write the hell out of an introspective ballad, but he also has a knack for fist-pumping anthems. “This Year” from 2005’s The Sunset Tree is a fine example of the latter category, thanks both to its jaunty, piano-forward arrangement and to a refrain — “I’m going to make it through this year if it kills me” — that finds the sweet spot between hardscrabble determination and world-weary resignation. The album revolves around autobiographical details from Darnielle’s youth, and this song specifically focuses on his desire to escape his abusive stepfather. But like many much-loved songs, it has become a rallying cry for fans enduring many different kinds of hardships.

“Philippians 3:20-21”

One of the band’s most compelling releases is 2009’s The Life of the World to Come, which features 12 songs inspired by passages from the Bible. The titular verse here assures believers of their place in Heaven after death, but Darnielle questions the certainty of that belief through the story of a man who takes his own life. In an interview with punknews.org, Darnielle explains that the song is a response to the suicide of author David Foster Wallace. Darnielle didn’t know Wallace, or much of his writing, but he did admire Wallace’s worldview and its effect on his readers, which led to a potent question about belief, as Darnielle explained in the interview: “How can a good God unleash Hell inside a good man’s head?”

“The Legend of Chavo Guerrero”

The role of sports in culture is a common theme in Darnielle’s songs, and The Mountain Goats’ 2015 LP Beat the Champ is an entire concept album inspired by professional wrestling. Standout song “The Legend of Chavo Guerrero” examines the immortality of the titular hero (a member of one of Mexico’s most revered wrestling dynasties) through the eyes of a young Darnielle, who sorely needed someone to look up to: “I need justice in my life / Here it comes / Look high / It’s my last hope / Chavo Guerrero / Coming off the top rope.”

“Waylon Jennings Live!”

Folk is a foundation of The Mountain Goats’ catalog, but the band hasn’t spent much time exploring country music. It was an exciting surprise to encounter the deliciously twangy “Waylon Jennings Live!” on In League With Dragons. The tale of an arms dealer taking a break to watch Waylon Jennings play at a casino is the kind of haunted narrative that Darnielle excels at, brimming with surface detail that tells you about what’s going on underneath without having to be explicit. It’s the kind of inspiring magic we can get up close to with help from great storytellers of all kinds.