California based trio Mountain Goats have been going for a while now, in fact this is their sixteenth album. With with main songwriter and brainchild behind the Mountain Goats 'John Darnielle' being known for his hugely literate lyrics and being critically lauded as one of the best contemporary lyricists there is certainly a lot riding on this one but that doesn't seem to have phased Darnielle in the slightest and they certainly haven't lost their touch despite having more albums than Metallica.
In fact 'The Life of the World To Come' is by far one of their best albums, it's actually one of those things that not a lot of bands can get right, after a while their albums either stay the same again and again or they completely go off course or sell out. Mountain Goats have done none of those three choosing to perfect their craft and do things a little differently, this time by writing twelve songs all based around passages from the Bible or rather as Darnielle would say
'twelve new songs: twelve hard lessons the Bible taught me, kind of.' With that in mind this album isn't always as heavy as the Biblical references might suggest, it is a great mix of songs that blend from the more subtle, sparse sounding acoustic ramblings of Romans 10: 9, the rocking Psalms 40: 2 with it's pounding drums or the warming, piano driven numbers such as Genesis 30: 3.
Each song is a reflection of some of those tasks that life seems to throw at all of us told in a rather creative way, recorded in Steve Albini's studio The Life of the World To Come is a far cry from the days when they recorded albums through boomboxes and such but the quality of the recording really brings the album out into new light.
No comments:
Post a Comment