The Mountain Goats - All Eternal’s Deck

If you were to try to search for a singular description for this, the bazillionth (okay, eighteenth) release from John Darnielle’s Mountain Goats, you’d scoot past the old, obvious favourite ‘lo-fi’ tag that has been liberally used to describe them since Darnielle first started yelling into his boom box, and instead have to reach deeper into the Scrabble bag for the letters D I S C O N S E R T I N and G. Which would be cheating, by the way, you’re not allowed that many letters in Scrabble.

A concept album with a difference, rather than a series of songs about a person, place or thing, instead we’re presented with a body of work depicting a feeling, a sense, a mood. Darnielle himself describes ‘All Eternal’s Deck’ as an attempt to capture “themes of hidden things and the dread that hidden things inspire, but also the excitement, the attraction, the magnetic draw that scary unknown hidden things exert.’ To pull off such a feat, you’d need to be nothing short of a veritable poet, fortunately a job title that Darnielle clearly has plastered all over his CV.

It’s easy to imagine that the more produced sound than we’re perhaps used to from previous Mountain Goat’s releases might be a cause for criticism in some quarters, and indeed the first couple of tracks, ‘Damn These Vampires’ and ‘Birth of Serpents’ feel a touch too polished to the ears. But ‘Age of Kings’ is a work of heartbreaking genius, fingers scratch as they slide down the fretboard, whilst intertwined with a simply beautiful string section, all the while Darnielle almost whispering the lyrics; ‘felt your name burning, like a tattoo into my skin.’ By now, ‘All Eternal’s Deck’ is well into it’s stride, ‘The Autopsy Garland’, complete with it’s refrain of ‘you don’t want to see these guys, without their masks on,’ calmly threatening, resonating the impending sense of doom that lyrically litters the album. ‘High Hawk Season’, driven by baritone backing vocals with just a single acoustic guitar and Darnielle’s vocal becoming more disparate, more pushed as the song reaches it’s climax, ‘Rise if you’re sleeping, stay awake, we are young supernovas and the heat’s about to break.’ On paper, the barber shop style backing vocals alone should ensure this doesn’t work, on record, it truly does.

Being regaled as one of the greatest living lyricists, it’s easy to disregard completely the musical elements of the album, focus solely on the lyrical poetry on display, and just dissect Darnielle’s words as though it were an English assignment. And though it’s fair to say that no musical boundaries are being shattered here, to ignore the rest would be an injustice. Indeed, the disconcerting sensation that sets ‘All Eternal’s Deck’ apart from it’s contemporaries is primarily evoked from the contradiction between those lyrics and the musical underlay. What, alone, might sound like fairly standard indie folk fair, drums, keys and guitars skip merrily all over ‘Prowl Great Cain’, and musically it’s quite joyful. But listen more closely to Darnielle, he’s singing about how ‘the sickness howls and I despair of any remedy.’ It’s a tactic perhaps perfected during ‘Outer Scorpion Squandron’, again filled with breathtaking strings and a piano riff that somehow sounds so full of hope, whilst Darnielle ponders how to ‘cultivate a space, for the things that hurt you most.’

Whether ‘All Eternal’s Deck’ produces the commercial success to match the Mountain Goats critical acclaim remains to be seen, and the lack of an obvious single leaves it unlikely. It’s fair to say that, despite not being a massively radical departure from recent outings, it won’t dent their perceivable legacy, and eighteen albums into their career, that alone is no mean feat.