Sometimes a great wave of forgetfulness rises up and blesses me
And other times the sickness howls and I despair of any remedy

"Island Garden Song" by the Mountain Goats

So I just got The Coroner's Gambit. The nice thing about being addicted to the Mountain Goats is that with such an expansive discography alongside his still prolific album-almost-every-year production, I can pretty much count on listening to new stuff (and you can bank on having to hear it from me) for years to come.

Anyway. This song is marvelous and, despite sounding like so many other of his songs, it also sounds somehow completely different and unique. That's the beauty of the Mountain Goats. He only has about five or six different songs that he's written a hundred times each, yet every single one of them is unique. This, like so many others, is a treasure.

"Romans 10:9" by the Mountain Goats

The kids won't let me post any more Mountain Goats. So.

This an amazing song, a musical Jim Shepard story, only with (very) grim hope.

One of those things I'll remember after my grandchildren's names have collapsed into demential sludge

I keep revisiting a few moments from Friday's show.

The girl had her phone up directly between herself and John. I could see her looking at mini-digital-John on the screen. Smiling, off mike, John softly but firmly telling her, 'Put the camera down.'

John slowly quieting into dead silence over a hundred of the 150ish fans in the place.

A moment I didn't witness but Tom told me about: Peter, returning to the stage shortly thereafter, mouthing unrepeatable epithets at the morons in the back of the venue.

'Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?' 'No Children.' 'Old College Try.'

And when, as he played the opening chords, he leaned in to chat off mike with a handful of us and then asked us to sing along. Which we did, mightily.

Sufjan Stevens with Sean and Julie. The Walkmen with Sam. To which you may add: the Mountain Goats with Tom.

"I checked into a bargain-priced room on La Cienega..."

Those opening lines greet me like the warm embrace of dear friends. I've had the kind of day that demands this album.

"Song for Dennis Brown" (live) by the Mountain Goats

This is a companion post to my thoughts on The Sunset Tree I posted elsewhere. I felt I had to give this amazing performance it's full due rather than simply embedding among a number of other links.

At work Friday night, talk turned to my German farm. I was reminded of the last few lonely weeks. More specifically, I remembered falling asleep almost every night to The Life of the World to Come, an album marvelous for its appreciation of Christian Scripture from an outsider's perspective and one of my top five favorite albums from 2009.

The bed in my upstairs room was certainly the hardest one I have ever slept on. Further, it was partially broken, tilting a few degrees to away from the wall. I slept like a rock.

More often than not in the last month on the farm, this song was the last thing I heard before sleep:

(I've posted this over at the old blog before)