THE NINETIES-IST
One Saturday night about six months ago, I was standing outside Academy Records in Williamsburg. It was one of those rare Saturday nights in New York, one where everyone you know decides to go out of town and, just as you get all set to go party, you find yourself in the middle of the perfect stay-at-home-and-catch-up-on-Grisham night. Not one to sit at home on a Saturday night, I found myself hanging around N. 6th Street, trying vainly to stir up a ruckus.

While smoking a cigarette on the street, I happened to overhear a snippet of conversation that set my teeth on edge. Two girls in their early twenties, obviously from money and most likely on vacation from some exclusive private college, walked past Academy. One girl said to the other, “So…do they still make records? And do people still buy…music?” The surprise and disdain in her voice were such that she might as well have been saying, “Remember when people thought the Earth was flat?”

My heart sank at the tone in her voice, because she’d illuminated the problem without even knowing there was one. The mainstream music industry, comically flawed since its inception, has been a creative wasteland for years. While I would posit that the old model for promoting and distributing mainstream music has been showing stress fractures since the fake “vinyl shortage” of the early 70s – in which albums by fringe bands like the Modern Lovers were shelved, the excuse being there wasn’t enough vinyl to meet production demands – it is my astute opinion that the old standard of modern pop music breathed its death rattle in 2003. Sometime after the White Stripes’ Elephant and before Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief (and, in fairness, the industry’s corpse may have kept flopping until Good News For People Who Love Bad News came out in April ’04) the rock-music-as-big-moneymaker model jumped the shark. The last wave of new, compelling rock music (aka the garage rock movement of ’01 – ’03) had failed to ignite: The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and their ilk had all somehow managed to follow up stunning debuts with tepid sophomore efforts. The lifers – bands with no real hits but respectable catalog sales and devoted followers – began jumping ship from their respective labels (either by necessity or design), many realizing the benefits of working with a small organization, many more marginalized by the continued consolidation of the big label infrastructure.
More on #1: A Prologue

DAILY NEWS PICKS

Pixies Confirm Dates For U.S. Doolittle Tour!!! [Tiny Mix Tapes]

The Mountain Goats Get All Biblical On Us With “Genesis 3:23” [Prefix]

Check Out Schedule For Wavves’ Massive Fall Tour [Pitchfork]

Sidewalk Café’s Antifolk Festival Coming Up (Aug 7 - 16) Featuring, Among Others, Our Favorite G Train Busker! [Brooklyn Vegan]

Fiery Furnaces Cover Fiery Furnaces, and So Can You [Pitchfork]

“Todd P Goes To Austin” Documentary Premiers At The Delancey Tonight [FREEwilliamsburg]

Former Panic! At The Disco Members Get a Name (The Young Veins), a Myspace, and a Single, “Change,” Therefore Officially Exist [Idolator]

Monsters of Folk NYC Tickets Now On Presale [Brooklyn Vegan]

Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys Binges On Sugar, “Goes Mental” In Order to Write Song for Kids’ TV Show “Yo Gabba Gabba” [NME]

compiled by Erin Sheehy

FRESH BAKED
The Mountain Goats and John Vanderslice
Moon Colony Bloodbath
2009 | 4AD
B-

Another quarter, another Mountain Goats record. On the heels of their one-two Satanic Messiah EP and Kaki King collaboration, Black Pear Tree, they’ve got another tour-only release, a collaboration with songwriter, producer, and Tiny Telephone Studio owner John Vanderslice. I’ve always loved – loved – Vanderslice’s production technique, and the sounds produced through Tiny Telephone. And way back when, I was pretty impressed by Time Travel is Lonely and Cellar Door. But neither held my attention for very long. I’ve yet to explore his more recent, even more acclaimed, albums. I will now. Moon Colony Bloodbath isn’t very good. It feels strange typing that – it is a John Darnielle project – but it’s true. It’s pretty slight. It’s still good enough to warrant a serious listen though – and Vanderslice is good enough to shame me for ignoring him.
More on The Mountain Goats and John Vanderslice | Moon Colony Bloodbath

FRESH BAKED
The Mountain Goats
Satanic Messiah EP
2008 | Cadmean Dawn
A-

It seems an unnecessary exercise at this point, to attempt to convert any of John Darnielle’s disbelievers. He’s really only one of two things: either the best young songwriter of the past decades, or a cloying and over-hyped nasal howl, keening along in the general din. His adorers are fearless and devoted, while those unengaged or disinclined are viciously stubborn and unforgiving. So, while I could attempt proselytizing, while I could quote “Going to Georgia” or “Broom People” or “Quito” or that perennial crowd favorite, “No Children,” it seems safer to assume that The Mountain Goats’ output is polarizing in the truest sense and that no conversion is possible. You either hold Darnielle’s songs in your heart as living beasts, or you dismiss him as just another songwriter. He is either one of the true great living authors, or simply another dude with a guitar.

So, I’ll assume that if you’re reading, still, then you want to read about The Mountain Goats, that you track their progress as ardently as a God-fearing congregant, that the release of a four-song EP, like Satanic Messiah, is of utmost critical interest. Because that’s what Darnielle inspires: disinterest or (perhaps) overzealous enthusiasm.
More on The Mountain Goats | Satanic Messiah EP

Hidden Gem:
The Mountain Goats
Get Lonely
2006 | 4AD

This was one way out of left field: John Darnielle, leader of The Mountain Goats, went soft. The band best-loved for acoustic guitar anthems largely dedicated to mutually acrimonious couples descending into pits of fear and alcoholism - with fist-pumping choruses! - wrote a song cycle about the aftermath of such an acrimonious descent, minus all of the fist-pumping triumph and indignance. Surprisingly, it worked, to an extent: Get Lonely is a logical extension of its immediate predecessors, Tallahassee, the dying bond between a pair of Alpha drunks, We Shall All Be Healed, a eulogy to a house full of speed freaks in Oregon. And The Sunset Tree, Darnielle’s first wholly autobiographical work, chronicling his relationship with his stepfather in mid-70s California.
More on Record Review: Get Lonely

The Mountain Goats will be releasing one-and-a-half EPs. We already knew about the one. But the “half” is news: a six-song John Darnielle & Kaki King collaboration, entitled Black Pear Tree EP. In the words of Darnielle himself:

Photo by Wesley Verhoeve. For more photos from this shoot click the image.

“The new Mountain Goats EP– the one I mentioned a few weeks back, with the limited gatefold vinyl and the special cover art and the pay-whatcha-like download option (about which we’ll tell you more once we sort everything out)– is called Satanic Messiah. It has four songs on it, one per side at 45 rpm, the way God intended. Two songs are mainly piano and voice; the other two are mainly acoustic guitar and voice… The other news– at which I hinted on my Flickr, here– is that Kaki King and I, under a cloak of great secrecy, snuck into Baucom Road studios in western North Carolina last month and recorded the six-song Black Pear Tree EP together with Scott Solter producing. The record is presently at the pressing plant and the idea is to have copies ready on vinyl for tour, with a sleeve designed by Horse & Buggy press, and the first 200 on colored vinyl. People who know how I feel about Kaki’s music can imagine what an honor it was for me to get to work with her… We are both really excited to share this record with everybody. So excited in fact that here’s one of the songs. On this one, I played piano and sang; Kaki played drums and glockenspiel, and also sang harmony. The song is sung from the point of view of Toad. If you know who Toad is, that’s all I’ll need to tell you. If you don’t who Toad is, you better recognize.”

With King in tow, The Mountain Goats will tour the U.S. beginning October 13. Go here to see the dates.