The Mountain Goats + Manishevitz

First off, Manishevitz features sax and cello, two instruments sorely lacking in post-millennial indie rock. Manishevitz are touring in support of their third album, City Life, having evolved from singer/songwriter Adam Busch’s pet project into an honest-to-goodness collaborative effort. Giving his band more room was a wise move for Busch, since they can rock out with the best of them, a fact evidenced most fully by their startling, spazzy, yet oddly conventional covers of Brian Eno’s “King’s Lead Hat” and the Soft Boys’ “Tonight”. On these songs, and others, Manishevitz seemed able to channel the aforementioned Eno, Sonic Youth, and the sound of a high school jazz band tuning all at once. Busch takes this mix and somehow jams it into a conventional pop song structure, thankfully keeping the band’s urge to noodle around in check. This combination works out well, for the most part, allowing Busch to make his lyrical point, and allowing the band to make their instrumental point, and not allowing either to get all tiresome about it. However, there’s an inherent problem when a band’s best two songs are both covers, even if they’re fairly drastically rearranged ones. Everything I’ve read on Manishevitz likens Busch’s vocals to those of Mark E. Smith, but live he sounded more like Ric Ocasek. He doesn’t spit on the mic, he hiccups. Not to be glib, but he’s also the worst dancer I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of pasty indie boys up in da club. This would make me like him more, were I not sure he was doing it on purpose. As a singer and as a songwriter, he’s quite inconsistent, and while his band can compensate to a large extent, it drags the band down over the course of a whole set. That said, Busch is a pretty young guy. While his songwriting isn’t up the standards of the guy who came on stage after him, it shows promise, and his willingness to hand stage time over to a cellist speaks volumes about his approach to making music. So, now comes the point in the review where I start to hyperventilate and tell you that, even though it was in February, the Mountain Goats’ set was the best one I’ll see all year. As I noted a few weeks ago, Kill Hannah played without a doubt the worst set I’ll see all year. Looks like my work is done for 2004. It’s worth pointing out, first and foremost, that the crowd at the Empty Bottle really, really dug the Mountain Goats. Anyone familiar with the crowds at 21-and-over venues in Chicago will never believe this, but I promise you, it’s true. John Darnielle, the singer/songwriter/acoustic-guitar-hero who makes up the Mountain Goats, had all of us cautious, over-analytical poseurs cheering, whistling, and sighing. Those familiar with Mountain Goats mythology will know that Darnielle spent many years recording at home, writing hundreds and hundreds of songs, released first only on cassette, then as proper albums in the last five-odd years. Before 2002, the Mountain Goats reveled in the hiss and click of homemade recordings, using them both to complement Darnielle’s famously “nasal” voice and add texture to acoustic-only songs. Darnielle then turned to actual studio production, incorporating more bass, harmonies, and even some well-placed drums and strings. The set at the Empty Bottle was made up mostly of songs from his last two albums, the new We Shall All Be Healed and 2002’s Tallahassee, but with plenty of the old lo-lo-lo-fi tracks added in for fun. One of the many highlights, for example, was the obscure “Commandante”, played at the request of a man who’d just bought Darnielle some whiskey. Darnielle thought for a second, smiled, nodded at bassist Peter Hughes, and launched into the song with: “I’m gonna drink more whiskey than Brendan Behan.” Darnielle also serves up some pretty killer asides, telling stories about some of his songs, and, once, regaling a Cubs fan who predicted an ’05 World Series win: “Where’s your proper sense of superstition? When things go wrong for them, I’m going to hold you personally fucking responsible.” He went on in this vein, finally advising the crowd to “go out and preach the motherfucking Gospel” of caution over the Cubs’ prospects. Of course, this meant we were treated to an encore performance of “Cubs in Five”, in which a World Series win for the northsiders is given the same chances as The Canterbury Tales shooting “up to the top of the bestseller list.” That lyric brings us to the inevitable discussion of Darnielle’s songwriting, where I will breathlessly ramble out words like “complex,” “literary,” “thoughtful,” and, of course, “emotionally charged.” The best thing about Mountain Goats songs, however, is not how many five-dollar words John Darnielle can bust out, it’s the characters that inhabit them: jilted lovers, speed-taking track stars, lovable losers, the Tollund Man, and, of course, the neurotic, abusive, co-dependant, and oddly touching “Alpha” couple. His songs span the country in setting, and are populated by the lost, desperate, and over-medicated eccentrics, who, in reality, make up the majority of 20-40 year-olds in this crazy, post-television nation. And that, finally, is why the Mountain Goats are so important: from Denton to Port Washington, from Garden Grove to Tallahassee, John Darnielle is the first great singer-songwriter to go out and chronicle the New, Weird America.