The Mountain Goatssure-footedly scale theheights of greatness

Fri 5th Jan, 2007 in Gig Reviews

Is it presumptuous to nominate the ‘gig of the year’ in January? Given that I’m talking about The Mountain Goats at Fowlers Live it may not be. Where do you start? Let’s start with John Vanderslice, the Mountain Goats’ erstwhile producer and sidekick and, as we found out tonight, no mean performer in his own right. This was my first listen to John but it won’t be the last. Anyone who can work Charles Rennie Mackintosh into a song gets my vote immediately. His songs were quirky but not banal and he had a warmth and engagement as a performer that had the audience absolutely with him from song one. Judging by the queues of people waiting to buy his CDs after the set, I wasn’t the only one to be impressed.And then, The Mountain Goats. I was thinking coming to the gig about how to describe the Mountain Goats’ influences but couldn’t get further than long shots like Loudon Wainwright III, Talking Heads, Steely Dan, and Randy Newman. John Darnielle is THAT original, THAT intelligent and so far ahead of just about any contemporary songwriter that he makes most rock lyrics look like the equivalent of the Wiggles’ – “Fruit salad, yummy yummy”.I didn’t even bother looking at the stage for a setlist because when your song catalogue is this good, any combination should make for a memorable night. Well, it couldn’t have been better. They began with an almost whispered ‘Wild Sage’ that was so intense that I could hardly bear to press the shutter on my camera in case the click broke the spell. And then they moved up a few gears. ‘Magpie’ and ‘Crows’ were a great formation and between Goats’ classics such as ‘Dance Music’, ‘Alibi’, ‘No Children’ ‘Game Shows Touch Our Lives’, ‘This Year’, ‘Going to Georgia’ and old rarities such as ‘No, I Can’t’, there was surely something to push the joy button of everyone in the crowd.Nobody of sound mind is going to question John Darnielle’s gifts as a songwriter, but let’s hear it for The Mountain Goats as a performing band. John may downplay it but he is a showman who understands performer-audience dynamics and who can cradle a crowd in the palm of his hand without ever having to resort to the dumbest of rhetorical rock questions; ‘dah ya feel awl-raht’. The last time I saw the Mountain Goats in Adelaide, John was on his own and so tonight confirmed absolutely the pivotal role that bassist Peter Hughes plays in this band. Peter’s performance made you forget every bad ‘bass player joke’ you’d ever heard as he crafted the most exquisite, sinewy, bass lines into a harmonic filigree forming the perfect accompaniment for John’s sometimes soft, sometimes swooping vocals and guitar.Picking the zenith of such a stellar show is near impossible but I’m going for ‘Get Lonely’, the title track from the latest album. I can’t remember the last time I saw a performer still an audience so completely. John didn’t so much sing this is breathed it and for those four or five minutes it was as if a Karner Blue butterfly had rested on your shoulder. When John sang; ‘and I will get lonely and gasp for air.and send your name up from my lips like a signal flare’I swear, the hearts of even the statues in Adelaide were breaking.