Track This: Mountain Goat's Cubs in Five
The Mountain Goats have long been critical darlings, but, more recently, they have found a wider fan base. Always consisting of John Darnielle, and in the last number of years, Peter Hughes and Jon Wurster (Also of Superchunk, Bob Mould's backing band, and the Dead Milkman song, Stuart), they put on a rocking show and turn out album after album of literary indie rock. Since 2002, particularly with the release of Tallahassee and the start of their tenure at 4AD , their output has been far more polished and now consists of more instrumentation. Darnielle's early recordings were recorded on his Panasonic RX-FT500 boombox and are very raw and immediate, often just nasally vocals and acoustic guitar. Once in awhile keyboards or backing vocals pop up. Albums like Sweden and Coroner's Gambit primarily rely on Darnielle's impassioned delivery and clever lyrics. On All Hail West Texas and Tallahassee , the sixth and seventh albums, Darnielle started exploring album leng...