I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: January 24, 2025] The Mountain Goats

Back in I have been wanting to see The Mountain Goats for a long time (my friend Andrew got me into them, jeez, like ten years ago).  They have played in the area nearly every year since I first heard about them but for one reason or another I never saw them. Usually it’s scheduling conflicts and occasionally the show sold out before I heard about it.

I had even more or less given up on seeing them (if you miss a band more than half a dozen times it’s practically a sign from the universe).  But here they were opening for Guster!

I was really excited to finally see them, and I was equally excited/surprised to see that the drummer for The Mountain Goats is Jon Wurster who I have seen with Superchunk and Bob Mould and have therefore seen him five times!  (I thought I’d be seeing him with Superchunk again this fall, but I didn’t realize he had left the band!)

The band was a three piece with multi instrumentalist Matt Douglas playing everything and John Darnielle (the master Goat) singing and playing guitar and keys.

Having never seen them I don’t know what Darnielle is like on stage but he sure seemed to be having a lot of fun up there.  And the crowd was berserk for them.  The crowd was quite young and I wondered how 20something people found out about The Mountain Goats.   But those there were totally into them and knew every word.

Even though I like them, I don’t know individual songs very well–I just like their vibe.  So I didn’t care what they played.

The Mountain Goats have been making music since 1994 and they played a song from that debut album!  They have released over two dozen records and they played a nice sampling of ten of them.

The one thing that surprised me was how jovial John was.  I tend to think of his songs as being if not “serious” then at least “thoughtful” and certain well written. So it was really fun seeing him enjoy himself and bounce around.  He smiled at his band mates when they added new (I assume) flourishes to songs.

And I think there’s something especially fun about playing outside to a large group of people on a lovely summer evening.  We all basked in the fun of the fantastic band.

And it was cool to see them come back later to play a song with Guster.