Live Review: The Mountain Goats, Washington, D.C., June 3, 2013

Throughout the first show of the Mountain Goats’ current tour with the Baptist Generals supporting, John Darnielle kept mentioning how nervous he was. “I didn’t use to be nervous,” he said toward the end of the evening, sweaty and smiling broadly. “But there didn’t used to be 1,200 fucking people at our shows.” And the sold-out crowd at D.C.’s venerable 9:30 Club let up a sound that shook the beams.

Darnielle needn’t have worried. The current tour of the Mountain Goats is a two-man affair—the first duo incarnation of the band since 2007, as Darnielle pointed out—and from the moment he and bassist Peter Hughes stepped onstage, both they and the crowd were in it for keeps.

The whole night was a family affair, of sorts. Denton, Texas-based act the Baptist Generals, who released the dark, trippy, excellent No Silver/No Gold in 2003 and then seemed to fall off the map, came roaring out by playing new release Jackleg Devotional To The Heart in sequence, setting out a low-end thunder that rumbled and rattled through the 9:30’s ground floor and two upper decks. After a live soundcheck, the Generals roared into “Dog That Bit You” from Jackleg, and most of the crowd conversation stopped abruptly as singer/songwriter Chris Flemmons led the audience through the new record’s dense tangle of songs about bad love and worse love, while Darnielle and Co. watched happily from the upper-stage left balcony (“You guys look like those old Muppets,” quipped Generals bassist Ryan Williams to loud laughter). Still, by the time Darnielle joined the Generals to play keyboard on “Turnunders And Overpasses,” the repeated coda “What do you want?/What do you want/For your heart?” hinted at the raw, beating pulse beneath the anguish of the thudding arrangements. The mutual respect and affection between the Generals and the Mountain Goats was apparent throughout the set; even fans who’d never heard the Generals seemed to come away impressed.

And then Darnielle and Hughes took the stage. It’s hard to know how to figure Darnielle sometimes. He’s a singer/songwriter whose prolific output and frequently high-verbal lyrics could easily come off in less adroit hands as precious navel-gazing. And yet somehow, this gangly guy who learned American Sign Language in junior high because he thought it might help him meet girls (as he mentioned at this show) is damn near the most affable, most charming frontman in current rock music. Even at the 9:30 Club, which is small but by no means all that intimate, Darnielle and Hughes gave off a vibe like they were playing in the back yard of someone’s house, all high energy, broken picks and even one charmingly flubbed ending. (“That was my fault,” said Darnielle sheepishly. “I forgot how we’d decided to finish it.”)

So the high-energy happiness with which the Mountain Goats invariably perform, like they’re just goddamn glad to be there, is one part of the charm. Most significantly, though, Darnielle’s songwriting—which was, after all, the focus of the evening—is as openly confessional as a Sylvia Plath poem without ever trying to solicit an iota of sympathy from the crowd. That’s the nut of it, I think. When he tries his hand at genuine grownup gravitas, as evidence that night in a tune like “It Froze Me,” he’s a fine enough songwriter. But where he really shines is in those moments where he fully engages the id of the beaten kid in all of us, and the strongest, most riveting performances of the night were those full-throated here-I-am barnstormers: “Ox Baker Triumphant,” “Dance Music” and opener “Pure Gold” aimed for the back wall and trailed fire as they passed overhead. The set list reached back into the crates, but also featured especially riveting performances of “The Diaz Brothers” and “Cry For Judas” from last year’s Transcendental Youth. For the hardcore fans, too, there were treasures, the most electrifying of which was a performance of the legendary, still maddeningly unreleased “Alpha Chum Gatherer,” which appears only on an exceedingly rare bootleg of an early board mix of songs recorded for the album Tallahassee.

When all his cylinders are firing, Darnielle writes like a five-year-old kid would, if that wide-eyed little guy experiencing everything for the first time had a 40-year-old poet’s long-range perspective and razor-keen turn of phrase. I can think of individual songs by certain artists that approach that target, but I cannot think of another songwriter whose body of work pins it as reliably or as extensively as Darnielle, which is likely the reason that people who get bitten by his songs get bitten hard. That connection was apparent in what was likely the evening’s most stunning moment, the air-raid rendition of “No Children,” which the entire crowd seemed to sing (and occasionally scream) in unison with Darnielle in an act of group catharsis, and after which most acts would probably have been content to walk off the stage claiming victory. It was there in the enthusiastically received encore “The Best-Ever Death Metal Band In Denton,” a treat from the upcoming remastered release of All Hail West Texas, as the audience gleefully yelled “Hail Satan!” at all the right moments. It was apparent in Darnielle’s several playfully filigreed pre-song introductions, touching on his well-documented childhood abuse, 1970s-era pro wrestling’s parallels with indie-rock “neighborhood scenes,” and a long, hilarious routine about the worst-attended gig the Mountain Goats ever played (head count: literally zero) at which they encored (!) with absurdist stomper “Furniture Store.”

And since the rhythm section rarely gets its due, let’s give it here. Darnielle often mentioned the absence of drummer Jon Wurster as a minor terror for the duo to overcome. But though he spoke little throughout the night, Hughes anchored the entire set with precise, indeed impeccable timing. Case in point: When the duo set up for “Tallahassee,” Hughes’ loop-pedal bass line got hung up on maybe an eighth-of-a-second delay on each repeat—just enough to notice—and Hughes course-corrected for it , as he had to under Darnielle’s more fluid keys and vocals, every single time. That’s what you call a consummate pro, friends.

In each of their sets, both Darnielle and the Baptists’ Flemmons recounted a somber gig they’d once played together, many years ago, for all of 24 people, most of whom were in the bar to watch football. After the sound faded and the lights came up, Darnielle stuck around like a mensch by the merch table, to sign and shake hands with hundreds of the fans, many of whom embraced him with unembarrassed affection. For a self-described weirdo to have reached this level of artistic skill and popularity ought to give hope to every current weirdo kid in America. And that night, with Darnielle a sweat-soaked mess and the thank-yous passing every three seconds between him and the milling, grinning crowd, it looked like it had.

—Eric Waggoner