The Mountain Goats
All Hail West Texas

THE REVIEW

Given my aversion to many of the acronyms that have been in vogue since the nineties – alt and indie above all – and to their pushers, a character like The Mountain Goats could have caused me various kinds of discomfort; especially because, in an excess of zeal, even the infamous lo-fi is not spared our friend.

However, it went differently and it was love at first listen.

The Mountain Goats is the brand behind which lies John Darnielle, a fifty-year-old wanderer, who started from his native Indiana to land in California, where he makes a living as a psychiatric nurse, while also dabbling as a musician in his spare time.

John begins to record his music in perfect solitude and continues for over a decade, only to later co-opt, always under the same brand, a few companions who history has often labeled as "occasional".

This is the case until «All Hail West Texas», officially his sixth studio album, from 2002, not counting the numerous cassettes, EPs, and singles released since 1991; then, his artistic story reaches a turning point, with the transition under the aegis of a proper record label, first 4AD and then Merge.

In truth, John does not record in perfect solitude but relies on the indispensable "collaboration" of a Panasonic RX-FT500, a cassette radio, a boombox in the lingo around those parts; so indispensable that John invariably thanks it in the credits accompanying his works.

With this device, John records all his songs for over ten years, until it stops working, just like that.

But there are the songs of «All Hail West Texas» to be recorded and the boombox starts up again somehow – or perhaps yes, with effort and sacrifice – and does its buzzing work until it emits its last, mechanical gasp only at the end of «Absolute Lithops Effect», the track that closes «All Hail West Texas».

John, his acoustic guitar, a rickety cassette radio, the bits of time allowed by work at the institute, and his wife at a summer camp: the bare minimum to weave the thin threads of fourteen songs.

Fourteen little noble yet failing stories, about seven people, two houses, a motorcycle, and a correctional center for "restless" adolescents, as the subtitle says; forty minutes just to conclude that every unhappy person is unhappy in their own way, as someone realized well before John; and that it's not enough to jump on the motorcycle of my dreams, clinging to the girl of my dreams, to escape the confusion, when all the confusion is inside me.

Neither the form nor even the substance, but the thought runs to the stories sung by Michelle Shocked in front of a bonfire, and that too was Texas.

Neither alt, nor indie, nor even lo-fi.