Or the Whale's Self Titled

Track List:

1. "No Love Blues" - 3:34
2. "Datura" - 3:08
3. "Rusty Gold" - 3:43
4. "Never Coming Out" - 3:45
5. "Count the Stars" - 5:08
6. "Keep Me Up" - 4:15
7. "Black Rabbit" - 4:14
8. "Giving Up Time" - 2:36
9. "Shasta" - 4:13
10. "Terrible Pain" - 3:55
11. "No Death" - 3:49

The accessibility and timelessness of Americana, as a genre, is its best and worst quality. The simplicity can lead to very relaxing and enjoyable music, but it can also lead to the dreaded “easy listening” classification. It is not a controversial statement that music ought to be engaging, and often that means challenging genres. At their best on the debut Lights, Poles and Pines, Or the Whale are downright jug-bandian. Tracks like “Threads” and “Bound to Go Home” demonstrate the appeal of their live performances, which are unquestionably their bread and butter. Over the banjo hooks, and the bouncing bass lines with shuffling percussion, the band layers 5 and 6 part harmonies reminiscent of Tilly and the Wall. “Gonna Have To” exemplifies their ingenuity with preexisting templates, using dueling slide guitars to set off the heart string tugging vocal duet, pulling it all together with a humble organ riff. Though they never really push the envelope too far, they kindle enough requisite melody to pull it off.

It’s been 2 years and countless gigs since the debut, and Or the Whale have evidently learned the value of fastidious arrangement. Maybe a band like the White Stripes can get away with laying down an album in an extended weekend, but with Or the Whale’s sheer mass as a seven piece, these things take time. The result is a much smarter album, largely sidestepping the pratfall of the sophomore slump. The band has demonstrated an aptitude for more than the primal porch stompers, whether it’s the transformation of Led Zeppelin’s murky rock ballad “No Quarter” into the mournful pedal steel tinged “Keep Me Up,” or the manifest maturity of the hopefully future prom closer “Count the Stars.” The full color of their musical spectrum can be determined between the unflinching rock-star swagger of “Black Rabbit” and the disarmingly effortless country crooning of “Datura.” The problem is they both come off, in not contrived, at least a little forced. Each track is one or two riffs away from being something really special, but as it stands, they both fall a little flat.

While Or the Whale remain head and shoulders above many of their Americana contemporaries, they still haven’t realized their full potential. The care they’ve taken on this album to highlight each instrument has transformed the Americana patchwork of the debut into a rich tapestry of musicians who sound like they were born playing together. But while every defining moment of their earlier work was a hand wrought marvel, this album’s moments seem more mechanical. While the end result is much smoother and efficiently produced, you can’t help but yearn for that old world craftsmanship. Once these guys figure out how to infuse their understated concurrence with their organic off the cuff charm, they’ll truly achieve the folk juggernaut status they deserve.

The Mountain Goats' The Life of the World to Come

Track List:
1. "Samuel 15:23" - 4:09
2. "Psalms 40:2" - 3:16
3. "Genesis 3:23" - 3:13
4. "Philippians 3:20-21" - 3:06
5. "Hebrews 11:40" - 2:51
6. "Genesis 30:3" - 3:27
7. "Romans 10:9" - 2:45
8. "John 4:16" - 3:11
9. "Matthew 25:21" - 5:50
10. "Deuteronomy 2:10" - 3:26
11. "Isaiah 45:23" - 3:40
12. "Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace" - 4:48

Don't believe anything you read about the Mountain Goats.

For that matter, don't believe anything you read about any band with 10+ albums. John Darnielle has been experimenting with his sound since the wild and woolly days of cassette tapes. Remember those? Me neither. Well since Taboo VI: The Homecoming, The Mountain Goats' first album, there has been a range of band mates, so the easiest thing to do is to look at the lo-fi Darnielle versus the modern, or post 2002. He has always been very literate and often mythological with his lyrics and it essentially goes without saying that he is a fan of words, as it does with anybody this prolific. The good news is there is a lot of material out there to experience, the bad news is it can be a little exhausting. Personally, I've always had trouble deciding whether to judge a band by the quality of their albums or the quantity of enjoyable songs. Funny that I should mention judgement since that's exactly what lies at the heart of The Mountain Goats' 17th proper, The Life of the World to Come.

Tallahassee in 2002 officially put to rest the hitherto career spanning saga of the Alpha couple, and so it made sense that this was the beginning of the electric. There had been some bass work from Rachel Ware in the early days, but The Mountain Goats were never really a band, so to speak, until Tallahassee. The new found cohesiveness of the band induced a much tighter album structure, however intentional that may have been. It also led to some of the best Mountain Goat tracks, "The Mess Inside" and "No Children" in 2002, "Woke Up New" in 2006, and "How to Embrace a Swamp Creature" just last year. The Mountain Goats have always had a touch of the epic, but now they're officially biblical. It's hard to know what to expect when you look at a track listing composed of Bible verses, but despite my natural aversion to religion, I had high hopes for this album.

"Psalms 40:2" corroborates these hopes embellishing the verse into the sort of narrative we've come to expect, using the actual Bible verse as the chorus. Darnielle's religion isn't so much a belief or devotion so much as an intense fascination with, and hunger for acquiring such comfort in his own life. Using the idea that God is not above the phrase "keep your friends close and your enemies closer" as his derivation, the perpetual outsider describes a man binging on crime and general debauchery to bring himself closer to God. This concept is not unlike Squints' method of getting Wendy Peppercorn to give him mouth to mouth in "The Sandlot" having no other means of kissing her. The music builds from the chugging riff in the beginning mirroring Darnielle's growing ambitions to be touched by God the best way he knows how. Sticking with the outsider theme, "Genesis 3:23" deals with Adam's banishment from Eden, or as Darnielle sees it, breaking into his old house just to look around. The chorus echoes this sentiment descending and reascending behind the apathetically delivered "I used to live -- here" finding meaning between the words and recalling the eloquent understatement of "The Seed Song". On "Philippians 3:20" the meaning is even more elusive relying heavily on the instrumental chorus to contradict the placid melody of the verse. Darnielle conveys his own skepticism of the "nice people who say he's gone home to God now" not having the words to express the discomfort with our Earthly confinement when there's a palace waiting on the other side.

This is a very dense album, but it's also Darnielle's most earnest and vulnerable. Unless you're an evangelical, it will probably necessitate googling some Bible verses to get the full effect. Darnielle quite successfully bridges the gap between his own life and something much bigger. Most of the musical intrigue lies within the first half of the album, but if ever there was a band that requires multiple listens, it's The Mountain Goats. The storytelling and lyrical mastery of the whole album is enough to earn those repeats. I'm not saying I don't miss the listless charm of the pre 2002 lo-fi Darnielle, but this is the next step, and it's in the right direction.