The Mountain Goats - Goths (320 kbps MP3 FLAC Leak Download)

(see also: http://paperstreetleakco.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-mountain-goats-goths-high-quality.html)

Well, I like the first song more than any of their last few albums out of the gate. I'm live-reviewing my experience for you in an effort to totally spoil the album for anyone who isn’t a HIGH QUALITY MP3 DOWNLOAD.

1.  Rain In Soho

2.  Andrew Eldritch Is Moving Back To Leeds

No guitars is working all right so far. Song one broke it up with a chorus of voices and song two has a marimba.

I hope song three uses armpit farts. Weird Al did it with hand farts: https://youtu.be/beTsDOBRs8I

3. The Grey King And The Silver Flame Attunement

No farts in three. But a pretty hardcore refrain.

That's an inside joke for when you do listen to it.

This is going really well for me.

4. We Do It Different On The West Coast

Three and four should have taken some time off from each other. Smooth jazz bass (which I feel is technically a guitar) is a little too smooth to put side-by-side.

I appreciate that they rediscovered the concept of repetition for this album. My ability to enjoy music is now based on "do they repeat something as many times as Taylor Swift so that it's easy to sing along?" The answer so far is "yes".

Extra points for song four's repeated line also being the song title.

5.       Unicorn Tolerance (the formatting got screwed up here but I don't care)

Song five is the biggest cop-out so far with this "no guitars" shtick.

Five is a poop. Which is too bad because it talks about unicorns a lot and has some good horn work. Obviously.

6.       Stench Of The Unburied

Hitting a low point. Too many mushy minor notes in song six and they forgot about things like choruses and rhyming.

And it's about half the tempo it should be.

7.       Wear Black

I hope I'm just missing a larger arc in the album that's not clear the first time through. Song seven sounds like half a song idea running under the same two words.

GOOD GOOD SURE OK POOP BLAH WHAT

That's my seven-word review of the first seven songs.

8.       Paid In Cocaine

Song eight must be a Christmas song. There's no way this wasn't originally a Christmas song. Except for maybe the part where it's called "Paid In Cocaine". But I guess that's Christmas for some people. The smooth jazz saxophone is getting excessive.

9.       Rage Of Travers

Put away the sax, song nine. I might not have hated this song if it opened differently. Mercifully, the sax player went off to enjoy his Christmas cocaine after the intro.

This experience is really taking a turn for the worse. I'm reminded that I don't like John's "whisper singing" voice, but especially not when it's followed by EVEN MORE SMOOTH JAZZ SAX.

10.   Shelved

No sax to kick off song 10. GETTING BETTER.

It has a good beat, and you can dance to it. Normal singing, clever writing. I can dig it. Whether or not there's a chorus will make or break this one. It doesn't help that I listened to old Mountain Goats last night. Why isn't the whole album just "Up The Wolves" repeated over and over?

Hey, eighties style chorus with just enough modern Goat-like sensibility to make it stand on its own. Great job for finishing on a decent note, Goat.

11.   For The Portuguese Goth Metal Bands

…song eleven, singing in high voice, sing it highhhhhhh…

But no saxophone, piano is nice, conga conga conga lightly in the background. I'll take this sleepy near-ending. Maybe John just brought me down so he could bring me back up again. I'm holding out hope that the whole album comes together in an arc.

12.   Abandoned Flesh

The instruments are faded nicely into the background so that even the goddamn saxophone isn't bothering me. This sounds a lot like prime Mountain Goats but the lyrics are a little trite. I think John is just flipping through his early 80s albums and reading song names and liner notes. Not bad, but  everything he's mentioned is a list of my old friendboss’ favorite bands from back when she did a lot of meth. So I can't get her bug eyes out of my head listening to Red Lorry Yellow Lorry references.

                In Summary

It's over. Initial assessment, on par with Beat The Champ but different enough that I won't write it off. Definitely looking forward to listening to the first half again, maybe not so much the middle half. The last half could be OK again.

Post-Live Review Live Review (Three Listens)

Tracks 11 and 12 have really grown on me and I feel like they do a great job of recovering from the smooth jazz crap interlude in a way that makes sense in the context of the overall album narrative. I realized when I was listening to it that my issue with the last few Mountain Goats albums has been that they stick too closely to their concept. I think a concept album can absolutely have a track that diverts from the subject as long as it retains the theme/emotion. So for this one it’s an arc of someone’s life and career….great. There’s probably a way to keep that feeling in the second act without literally describing all aspects of that slump period.

 I was finally able to listen closely to the lyrics all the way through and there are some solid parts even in the crappy musical section. There are some nice recurring lyrical themes throughout the album that reminded me he can still write poetically. My favorite line right now is “everybody tests the membrane/but no-one pushes through” from the second song but in “Stench Of The Unburied” I love the way he delivers “And outside it's ninety two… degrees/And KROQ is playing Siouxsie and the Banshees” because it messes with the sense of time to keep you in line with the character. Is it the eighties or the nineties? Who knows at this point! Drugs!

 Also, they really should have appropriated the Willie Nelson line “Be careful what you’re dreaming, or soon your dreams will be dreaming you.” in some way for this album.

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