The Mountain Goats

The Mountain Goats are, for all practical purposes, the infinitely creative and prolific John Darnielle and whatever musicians he surrounds himself with, which means that although the soundscape may vary from project to project, the overall tone and feel of Darnielle's work remains surprisingly constant. At its finest, he writes finely observed, slightly surreal, impressionistic vignettes that manage to blend life as we live it. He has more in common with a novelist than with a traditional singer/songwriter, which is apt, as he is also a published author.

Darnielle's early Mountain Goats releases were lo-fi, cassette-recorded efforts cut with a rotating lineup of musicians, such as 1995's Nine Black Poppies and 2000s The Coroner's Gambit. By 2005's The Sunset Tree, his recordings had become cleaner and less cluttered, but his characters studies were just as vivid. As the Mountain Goats finally cohered into a stable lineup (with Darnielle joined by Peter Hughes, Matt Douglas, and Jon Wurster), they recorded tuneful, thematically unified albums such as Beat the Champ (2015) and Goths (2017) that ranked with their finest work.