The morning after playing the last show of The Mountain Goats’ tour at the Oran Mor in Glasgow, John Darnielle, the man behind the American lo-fi folk stalwarts, stands outside a travelodge smoking and wearing a pointy brown woolly hat.
The crazy hat bobs up and down as John goes hunting for coffee inside the hotel, looking like one of the seven dwarves gone wrong, as he stands around six feet tall and swears at the lack of coffee in the lobby, “Fuck it, lets go to my room.”
Darnielle sits crossed legged on the edge of his unmade bed, on which lies his bulging tour bag, copies of The Guardian and the heavy metal magazine Terrorizer, and now his pointy hat. The 40 year old ruffles his short jet-black hair and touches the sides of his glasses while he talks about The Mountain Goats’ new record, Heretic Pride, which comes out in February this year.
“We think it’s really good, we’re really happy with it. It feels old school to us. The last four albums have a distinct and connecting thread. Tallahassee (2003) had a single story, We Shall All Be Healed (2004) is in some ways a drug themed record and Get Lonely (2006) was very much about isolation.
“This is just a collection of stories, they’re not linked by any big theme, just small little compact narratives. Like my old tapes used to be.”
The “old tapes” are the scores of albums Darnielle recorded with others on a boombox from 1995 until 2002’s All Hail West Texas. The songs tell stories about countless things; from drug paranoia to Cicero, to teenage love to failing marriages to John Coltrane, and even, in one early recording, the recipe for good chicken soup.
A fansite (www.themountaingoats.net) lists 499 that Darnielle has recorded and released since he began. With such a massive output he admits that he can’t remember around half of the back catalogue, but can he say which album is his favourite?
“Your favourite is always the new one. And I think when people say that you think, ‘Oh they’re just trying to sell a new record,’ but it’s true, because it’s the one I’m most involved with right now. All my metaphors are sexual and bad,” John laughs, “But you know how, once you’re done for the evening, you don’t go out on the hunt.
“If somebody says ‘Hey, you wanna have some?’ you’d say ‘No, I just had some.’ It’s like that with records. The old ones, I enjoyed making them, but I don’t listen to my old stuff. There’s so much great music out there, I know the secrets in mine so I look for other people’s.”
(pause to view the video for Sax Rohmer #1)
The move into full studio recording with Tallahassee in 2003 was a result of John getting fed up with the limitations of the boombox and since then has been joined permanently by Peter Hughes on bass and most recently drummer John Wurster of Superchunk. But, Darnielle says that he is still always writing.
“I’m too busy to set aside periods of time for it. I don’t say, ‘Now I’m writing,’ because I think that’s a jinx. You run the risk of repeating yourself. The last album’s very contemplative, and the new one’s very spastic. Like night and day really.”
The range of references in The Mountain Goats’ work is wide, from obscure reggae singers to ancient Latin texts, but who would he say had the biggest impact on his music?
“It’s not for me to say really, who ‘influenced’ me. That’s more up to the listener. I know what I read and like. People always try to name stuff that they think is great as their influences, but I don’t know if it works like that. Sometimes you can be influenced by stuff you don’t like. The stuff I listen to – metal, classical, jazz and hip hop – doesn’t sound anything like what I do.”
Asides from writing songs John also keeps a music blog, Last Plane to Jakarta, and has been known to pen the occasional poem. He says it all seems like the same thing to him.
“They’re all slightly different, but writing is a sort of muscle spasm. It’s just something you do and it comes out in certain aspects here or there. If I’m writing criticism or something, I’m more willing to speak from the perspective of the person you’re talking to now.
“Writing songs is more like play-acting. In a sense I’m putting on some sort of mask. I think there’s a degree of that in any form of writing, but in song writing especially, you’re very much assuming a role and playing that.”
However, this wasn’t the case on Sunset Tree, the autobiographical record Darnielle made in 2005 about his abusive childhood.
“That was an experiment for me. When I started to write the songs they just came up naturally, a different way of writing than normal. I was very, very nervous writing those. It felt really strange. For that reason it seemed worth following and checking out.
“You’ve got to assume – when I was younger I didn’t want to accept this – that some of you comes out in anything you do. No matter how much you protest that you’re not writing about yourself, to some extent you must be. But, I’m not writing about my experiences. The part that’s me is at the core of the song.”
John now lives in Durham, North Carolina with his wife Lalitree. The real life truthfulness of his songs doesn’t matter to him, “Whatever truth is in them is more an evanescent sort of truth, rather than me talking about my life. If I was talking about my life then I’d be talking about vans and hotels and shit.”
But, John says, he can look back and track creative growth in his work: “For me the big contrast in my songs are the club bangers, where I stomp my feet and yell, and the softer ones, which tend to be darker and more wistful. Tracking that contrast is interesting.
“At points it sounds like I was flirting with the possibility of doing things a little differently, and you can see I was trying to get more economical. I guess it’s the issue most writers face. I don’t know why that is. It seems to be of value if you can say more in a small space. But then why don’t we all just write haiku?”
The Mountain Goats have always been involved with new bands like American indie groups The Bowerbirds and Bellafea, who they’ve toured with. John’s blog also reflects his eclectic knowledge of contemporary music. From reviewing up and coming guitarist Kaki King to writing thirty poems about Drastus, an unknown French black metal band, John knows his stuff. So what does he think about the current shape of music?
“I think music is always in the exact same state. I think trying to describe where it’s at is a fool’s game. There’s always plenty of good music being made. Maybe the charts are in a bad way and the underground is good, or vice versa. There’s a lot of good music coming out. It’s true that the market is so segmented and the condition of the industry is such that it can be harder to find the stuff. But there’re plenty of good bands.
“I get a little cantankerous when people say, ‘The condition of the music industry is poor.’ No, your ability to seek out music is waning – you are failing. If you don’t find good music, that’s on you because it’s out there. Maybe you have to dig for it.”
John is going to start the long journey home in less than an hour, but what are his thoughts on Glasgow and Scotland?
“I don’t get too much of a chance to look around, but I understand Edinburgh is the home of the chip buttie, so I’ve got to give them credit for that, because it is the apex of cuisine. But I hear Glasgow are big on their deep fried pizza which I’ve got to try, it sounds really advanced.”
He laughs and puts on his daft brown hat as the interview ends. Anything to add?
“People always ask that and I never do. In hip-hop interviews, people always say, ‘Be sure to peep my new album.’ Well yeah, be sure to peep my new album. February 19th on 4AD, Heretic Pride. Artwork by Vaughan Oliver, featuring the Bright Mountain Choir who I haven’t recorded with in ten years. Got to give a big shout-out to my bassist Peter Hughes, keeping it real up there in Rochester, give love to all those involved – keep it warm. Peace!”