All Hail the Mountain Goats

All Hail the Mountain Goats

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1. The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton
[This is it!
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Geoff Sanborn
2. This Year
The session drummer, Alex Decarville, gives us eight flat beats per line on a snare and sixteen beats per line on a hi-hat.
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Geoff Sanborn
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3. No Children
In August 2001, Darnielle was driving from Ames, Iowa, to the airport in Des Moines and Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance” came on the radio.
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Geoff Sanborn
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4. Going to Georgia
The acoustic guitar stumbles a little on the way to the song’s three-note riff: A (open), B (hammer on), D (open).
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Geoff Sanborn
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February 2022

5. Matthew 25:21
In September 2007, the Mountain Goats cancelled a tour date in Northampton, Massachusetts, and Darnielle flew immediately to Ventura, California, where…
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Geoff Sanborn
6. Oceanographer's Choice
“What Mountain Goats Song Should You Be Listening To?” the writer Emma Stanford asks in the title to a really funny list of life situations and the…
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Geoff Sanborn
2
7. Minnesota
Heat and humidity somewhere near a lake in Minnesota and a house where some packets of seeds have just come in the mail.
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Geoff Sanborn
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8. Palmcorder Yajna
“When I was a heroin addict,” Darnielle said in an interview with the writer Tobias Woolf in 2009,
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Geoff Sanborn
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9. From TG&Y
In December 2006, Darnielle played a solo show at the new Pitzer College student center, a few hundred feet from the old one, where he had gotten his…
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Geoff Sanborn
10. Harlem Roulette
“It’s about the last night of Frankie Lymon’s life, Frankie Lymon who sang ‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love’ and had one of the most beautiful voices ever…
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Geoff Sanborn
11. You Were Cool
This is the kind of thing that you’ll find if you browse the YouTube comments sections under videos of “You Were Cool,” the Mountain Goats’ most famous…
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Geoff Sanborn
12. See America Right
“I do not like year-end lists,” Darnielle wrote in an article entitled “Some Albums John Darnielle’s Dug in 2004.”
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Geoff Sanborn
© 2025 Geoff Sanborn
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