Send "The Mountain Goats " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 To begin with a reference that avowed metalhead and horror movie fan John Darnielle should appreciate, the music video for Iron Maiden’s 1990 single “Bring Your Daughter… to the Slaughter” alternates concert footage of the band performing the song with clips from the 1960 Christopher Lee horror film The City of the Dead. These ominous black and white scenes of hooded men in a stone dungeon preparing a hysterical young blonde woman for what we are to assume is some sort of ritual sacrifice are, even (or perhaps especially) with a growling metal anthem in place of the film’s original soundtrack, hopelessly stagy and melodramatic. Any believable authenticity they may have had as late as 1990 (if that was ever the intention of the band in utilizing them, never mind the original filmmakers) is further strained by the video’s inclusion of some outdoor scenes of a young man scrambling, presumably, to the heroine’s rescue, thereby establishing the whole thing as part of a larger drama. And yet, jarred from the larger context of the movie itself, there is something distinctly haunting and even deeply unsavory about these fragments of film. Recontextualized here, they function as an object lesson on how even the most sinister of cinematic narratives (and never having seen the complete film itself, The City of the Dead may have very well been the Martyrs of its time for all I know) gain an essential degree of reassuring comfort simply by virtue of belonging to something as complete as a story. If what is unknown can be far scarier than what is known, what is only partially known might be even more terrifying still. For all of its clever mashing-up, however, the video for “Bring Your Daughter… to the Slaughter” still cannot help but add up to something less than the sum of its parts, its failure, oddly enough, being not one of but rather due to context. Heavy metal, particularly the extroverted sort that Iron Maiden deals in, is already swimming in horror imagery from its lyrics on down to its graphic design. Grafting some horror film clips, even ones as spookily suggestive as these, onto a live video of an otherwise standard-issue, if thematically appropriate, metal song amounts to an exercise in redundancy....full text |
| Consequenceofsound |
| Those familiar with John Darnielle’s work under The Mountain Goats umbrella are very familiar with it. It ain’t too difficult to spot a song by the loveable Darnielle. His uncanny, snarl-fueled delivery functions within an anti-formula that only works for him. For 13 full-length studio albums and dozens of cassette and single releases, the guy has pretty much been delivering the same vocal melodies the same way for his near 20-year career. Some would say he’s written the same song hundreds of times. But his entrancing lyricism and subtle growth during that time have proven him to be a consistently endearing figure within the loose genre of indie folk. Underneath his warped narratives of lower-class turmoil, his aesthetic mutation has been gradual, but ever-present. With All Eternals Deck, the 13th LP from the now steady three-piece version of the Mountain Goats, Darnielle roped in Death Metal legend Erik Rutan (Morbid Angel, Hate Eternal) for production duties. When the announcement came, it seemed to indicate only one thing: this album was gonna be a swift roundhouse kick to the face wrapped in Death Metal fury. With all the talk of “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” and other Goats’ allusions to the genre, it made sense. But All Eternals Deck proved something else entirely–that in addition to their normal shredding and headbanging, metalheads also know how to oversee deeply moving records with subtle orchestrations. Go figure. Darnielle stressed two things prior to the release of All Eternals Deck: 1) Contrary to popular expectation, it would not be a Death Metal record. 2) That it would be filled with those moments from which we desperately try to escape: “Reversals of fortune and faces at the window and sudden unexpected screams of triumph here and there. Possible exits from the long-locked basement. These sorts of moments.” (via the band’s official site)...full text |
| Pitchfork |
| It seems a stretch to call John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats an embattled bandleader. After all, from the outside, he's been releasing albums for one of the most respected large independent labels in the world, 4AD, since 2002. The New Yorker has called him one of the greatest living lyricists, and Spin slapped his praises on its cover just last week. He's recently wowed the late-night circuit, sold out three consecutive nights at the Bowery Ballroom, and released his latest album, the masterstroke All Eternals Deck, on Merge Records, the independent label located within walking distance of his North Carolina home that landed a major Grammy last month. That's not bad for a writer who used to howl and strum into the microphone of his Panasonic boombox and opine that a real songwriter wasn't a career-oriented songwriter. But in 2002-- when Darnielle made the leap to 4AD and, more saliently, into a proper studio with an ensemble of backing musicians-- his zealous fans started talking about his music as though it were foreign policy. Some loved the new adventurousness and accessibility, apparent from the great bloom of Mountain Goats fans during the last decade. But there are those who insist that the only real Mountain Goats is the atavistic Mountain Goats, the static-y, crackly, mildly manic stuff that Darnielle made mostly alone for more than a decade. To wit, the Mountain Goats forums, which Darnielle hosts on his own website, are a minefield of hot-blooded criticism about the band's rock music, lobbed not by online trolls but by those who might spend hundreds to track down Darnielle's earliest, most primitive releases. After the band released "Damn These Vampires", the positive jam that opens All Eternals Deck, Mountain Goats drummer Jon Wurster told me the vile was so rich he simply stopped reading the boards. This matters now because, despite the fan fusillade, Darnielle has pressed on with his rock band, crafting and sharpening his skills and charisma as a frontman. Paradoxically passionate but controlled, uncompromising but instantly likable, All Eternals Deck is a certain career highlight for Darnielle. And, like many of the most memorable Mountain Goats songs, it's also about survival, or battling back from very dark places to "follow the light." Indeed, most every song here holds some key to the future, some talisman meant for perseverance. During "Damn These Vampires" and "Beautiful Gas Mask", it's didactic, warm advice. Occasionally, however, it's a reflection on the past, when some rocky relationship made more sense, when the world seemed framed by more favorable horizons. The poignant "Age of Kings", for instance, reminisces about a wasted love that once suggested a divine blessing. But just as the strings turn anxious, Darnielle remembers the time he might have fixed it all; his regret feels less like self-pity, though, and more like a future lesson....full text |
| Cokemachineglow |
| One of the older secretaries in my office—a grizzled, dexterous office manager and an inveterate whistler—walked through the hallway past my office recently belting out a tune. I recognized the melody immediately but couldn’t place exactly where I’d heard it until a few minutes later. She’d been whistling the song “Home” by LA based hippie collective Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros. Naturally, sitting in my cramped, disorderly little cube I began to think about the enormity of the democratization of music in 2011, and all the innumerable ways in which that movement has rippled out into every facet of the American zeitgeist. See, I know exactly where the grandmotherly secretary in my office came across this nugget of indie-pop psychedelia, but that doesn’t make this scene any less bizarre for me. She no doubt heard the song in the background of the most widely syndicated NFL commercial of this past (and possibly last) season. It’s the one where everybody’s driving to their beloved home stadium on game day to overpay for tickets and concessions so the owners and the players can reward them by not playing while they fight over who gets a bigger piece of the unprecedented profit margin made on the backs of the fans for whom they purport to exist. It’s quite a touching scene. But the question then becomes, where the hell did the NFL—one of the most staid and conservative pop culture organizations in the country—get “Home” from? And this got me thinking about a recent piece that Maura wrote about the Strokes, in which she said, “In another time, Is This It would seem like an accomplishment, but in 2001 it seemed like a miracle.” And that’s when I realized that we music fans here in 2011 are confronted with an absolute glut of good music, literally streaming in from every angle. To paraphrase Eddie Murphy, we’ve got good music just falling out of our pockets....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| Whether reading interviews with Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros frontman Alexander Ebert or simply listening to the last decade of his music, one gets the sense that he's the type of guy who might lean deep into a hammock and-- sans irony, with joint-- say, "Yeah, man, music really is the universal language." That's not to mock Ebert as much as it is to point out that he's a successful songwriter who still seems to have very little sense of the kind of songs he writes. His debut with the Magnetic Zeros, 2009's Up From Below, hopscotched between downtrodden drifters, psychedelic pop, sturdy rock anthems, and the June-and-Johnny stunner "Home". Though enjoyable enough at times, it begged for focus. What's more, Ebert's still the frontman of Ima Robot, the dance-punk band that failed to cash in on the Franz Ferdinand moment early last decade. And now there's Alexander, written, played, and recorded by Ebert at home during tour breaks with the Magnetic Zeros. Equal parts charming and trying, unequal parts soul and rock and folk, it's an album that's as easy to love as it is to hate. In fact, I can't keep myself from doing both at once. Alexander employs the same eclectic, inclusive, and ultimately undecided aesthetic as Ebert's more famous main gig. There's a little reggae here, a little communal Afropop there, all covered in a homespun lo-fi haze. The album ends with a long, sad-eyed ballad that mirrors "A Change is Gonna Come" and a cheery little number that pays Serge Gainsbourg his due, if not his royalties. It begins, though, with a bustling burst of folk-pop called "Let's Win!". All frantic strums, wonky bridges, and staggered harmonies, it's like listening to Stephen Stills in a yellow submarine. That arms-outstretched approach has its moments, for sure: "Truth" is an unlikely hit waiting in the wings, with Ebert whistling around a staggering beat and chalky rhyming that suggest Jason Mraz dazed on Dilaudid. It's sort of perfect. Thing is, most every brilliant turn Alexander makes comes mitigated by some glaring misstep, and vice versa. "A Million Years", for instance, is the type of effortless, tender pop tune that your parents still hum from their childhood memories. It's a portrait of a once-lost soul who has finally found the woman that not only makes him believe in love but also, toward track's end, makes him howl like a Lion King extra. It's ebullient, effective, and unforgettable, but it's certainly editable, as Ebert tacks on a minute-long coda of grunts and harmonies that mostly feel like his request to join Akron/Family. But the Dylan vocal affectations and bland gospel references of "Bad Bad Love" swivel over an interesting mix of Pops Staples guitars and tessellating one-man harmonies. And though the fuzzy R&B traipse "Remember Our Heart" is a bit textbook, Ebert sings it like he feels it, howling about romantic disappointment with the spirit of a better soul singer. But Ebert can only save himself for so long, with some tangent or extraneous touch always curbing his best efforts....full text |
| Dailybeatz |
| This seems odd to be posting this as I just posted a stream of “Million Years” this morning from the upcoming self-titled album from Alexander, the solo project of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros frontman Alex Ebert, but when someone spills the beans that there’s more to be heard, I just can’t help myself. Especially since I had a pretty good feeling that this would be a pretty feel good album, and the perfect thing to bring some excitement into an otherwise lazy Saturday afternoon. Alexander goes through a series of ups and downs with the fun, singalong type tracks that Ebert is so great at, and the slower, introspective tracks whose beauty is only revealed after a few listens. At 10 tracks, this album feels to be the perfect length. The tracks move through a series of emotions both musically and lyrically, and as he so often does, Ebert lays it all on the table. When I’d first heard “Truth” a few months back, I really liked it, but it wasn’t until I saw this album which showed the lyrics and read them that I realized what a fantastic song it truly was, with Ebert bearing his demons to all in his eternal quest for ultimate enlightenment (I swear I don’t mean that in a snarky way). Ebert says that the all important second track, in this case “Awake My Body”, really expresses the feelings that led to the creation of the album, as he was feeling exhausted and wanted to reawaken himself, in the sense of invigorating his individual cells to become a physical representation of his spirit, and then throws in a “whatever the hell that means” for good measure. I say that all the time around here, so I can buy into that. But in that way, you really do get the sense that this album is a physical manifestation of Ebert’s soul, with perhaps the slightly out of control vocals in “Remember Your Heart” representing his potential wild streak (just kidding). As I mentioned in another post, perhaps the most interesting and impressive thing about this album is that Ebert is responsible for every single piece of this album. As a former clarinet player (I’m sure it’s extremely easy to believe that I was in the marching band in high school), I really appreciate that Ebert plays a clarinet, trumpet and even a violin, which he had never played before but had one lying around, at some point on this album (among many other instruments of course). Ebert takes DIY to a new level, and it’s a true, literal example of a “solo record” made even more great by the depth of sound that the album has from start to finish. It’s hard not to imagine that this album as a whole will take the same course as The Edward Sharpe ATMZ album and “Truth” did. At first, I will hear them and think, “That was pretty cool.” And then after repeated listens, I’ll start to really, as Carles would say, “get” it. Even “Million Years”, which I heard once or twice on SiriusXMU and have listened to a few times since then, is already getting better and better with each listen. That’s how I feel right now. It’s a pretty cool album. For now at least, though I’m fairly confident that getting to know these songs a little bit better will let out all a whole new level of appreciation/enjoyment. And I feel like while the upbeat tunes like “In The Twilight” are early standouts, some of the more subtle tracks, like the slightly downtempo “Old Friend” and the soulful “Glimpses” are bursting with potential to become album favorites....full text |
| Guardian |
| In some quarters, singer Katy B is seen as a fifth columnist. Her rise is cited as proof of the inexorable creep of commercialisation, in which musical subcultures inevitably become assimilated into the mainstream. Last year, the south-east Londoner had two top 10 singles to her credit, and one more in the top 20. That triptych of tracks – "Katy on a Mission", "Lights On" (featuring the long-lost Ms Dynamite) and her guest turn on Magnetic Man's "Perfect Stranger" – marked a specific moment in pop in which as yet unannexed sub-genres from Britain's clubs made the leap into the aisles of Asda. Suddenly, thanks to Katy Brien, dubstep was no longer the preserve of serious guys with a bass fetish, and funky house (the latest permutation of UK garage) had found a voice. Brien's mixed sang-froid with warmth, and clarity with a zeal for hedonism. Now that it had tunes, of course, dubstep was corrupted (or so the logic ran), and now that the broadsheets were talking about it, funky must be over. But one of the best things about UK pop music is its greedy embrace; how it operates a flawed, cynical, but supremely broad-minded open door to all tuneful and canny comers. UK pop is all the better for receiving its grime injection over the past two or three years. Fans smitten by Katy B's three landmark singles will be a little disappointed to learn that there is nothing on her debut album that beats them. The propulsive "Broken Record" is the next best tune on here, but it shares too much DNA with "Let Me Be Your Fantasy", the 1994 hit by Baby D that brought junglist breakbeats out of the pirate radio stations and on to the pub jukeboxes (that open-door policy again). There are the ghosts of at least half a dozen genres rattling around here, beginning with the R&B towards which Brien's vocal most often gravitates. The sultry drag of "Disappear", meanwhile, even channels a little trip-hop. Becoming bogged down in genre distinctions is not the point, however. One of the more remarkable facets of Brien's ascent is the fact that she has made an entire album at all, let alone one as cogent and listenable as this one....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| Last year, Katy B was widely credited for bringing vocal finesse and feminine pop appeal to an increasingly aggro dubstep-crossover arena. She dropped a fantastic Benga-backed debut single, "Katy on a Mission", that vocally wrung out both elation and longing over his abrasive, buzzing stutter-step. And she kept that streak going with a couple of guest spots on Magnetic Man's self-titled record: The eerie come-on "Crossover" and the ecstatic jungle throwback "Perfect Stranger" were album highlights that proved her voice could breach the barrier of heavy-duty bass and plant its feet firmly atop it. Two UK top 5 hits later-- "Katy on a Mission" and the Ms. Dynamite collaboration "Lights On"-- and members of the English music press started to peg her as the next singer to bring crossover legitimacy to bass music. Turns out that'd be selling her a bit short. After pairing up with Rinse FM's tastemaker station head Geeneus and co-producer Zinc, Katy B has used On a Mission as a chance to posit herself as a genre-spanning pop singer who isn't tied down to a single thing, no matter how well it suits her. It's a move that makes a lot of sense, since versatility is the key to a good dance album-- let the voice establish itself, and the niche will either find itself or get broadened in the process. "Katy on a Mission", "Lights On", and "Perfect Stranger" reappear here in radio-edit lengths, and these three tracks help define her as someone who can play off dubstep and funky basslines with a tone that drips with cool defiance, stings with melancholy, and still grabs at you when it's being reduced to a skeletal echo. But there's enough stylistic extension here that Katy finds a way to transcend enough signifiers to call herself pop above anything else....full text |
| Bbc |
| It’s easy to believe that Katy B was born to be a chart-topper. That giant beaming grin, the boundless impishness of her vocal; how she stamps her personality all over her music with such ageless excitement. On her debut album On a Mission, she sprints towards the PA for its entire 55 minutes with such a natural thrill that only those with hearts of steel won’t find something to love. Katy B is the poster-girl for a new type of pop, and then some – she’s the poster-girl for herself. Far from an Auto-Tuned mannequin, she’s self aware and an effortless star. And there’s humour too, neatly evidenced in the sharp wit of her casual rhyme on Easy Please Me, which features the lyric "Standing in the bar / With my friend Olivia". This kind of edgy, fresh sound hasn’t been seen on a pop debut since Sugababes and Artful Dodger first landed in the charts. On a Mission moves through house, dubstep, drum’n’bass, rave, UK garage and RnB with ease, attacking each with such accessibility it’s not hard to imagine each track topping the singles charts. Early single Lights On is bold and oh-so-catchy, while Witches Brew adds a more vicious, cluttered sound to the mix. The production is sharp and cutting throughout, never losing its feverish hi-NRG. DJ Zinc adds a smattering of 90s house and Benga splices her songs with clattery sounds; Rinse FM co-founder Geeneus’ addition is a deep house groove which translates perfectly to Katy B’s warm vocal. The way she feels each note emulates less obvious artists, at least from this side of the Atlantic – the likes of Marsha Ambrosius and Jazmine Sullivan are all fair reference points for the soul in their voice....full text |
The Mountain Goats lyrics
