Mountain Liiu Cixin

On the first of March, 2020, John Darnielle, Peter Hughes, Matt Douglas, and Jon Wurster, aka the Mountain Goats band, visited legendary studio Sam Phillips Recording in Memphis, TN. Darnielle armed his band with new songs and reunited with producer Matt Ross-Spang who engineered last year’s In League with Dragons. In the same room where the Cramps tracked their 1980 debut album, the Mountain Goats spent a week capturing the magic of a band at the top of its game. The result is Getting Into Knives, the perfect album for the millions of us who have spent many idle hours contemplating whether we ought to be honest with ourselves and just get massively into knives. Getting Into Knives includes guest performance on Hammond B-3 organ by Charles Hodges (of numerous Al Green records) and guest performance on guitar by Chris Boerner (of the Hiss Golden Messenger band).

Sony repackaged and re-released five LPs by Mountain on Windfall – Climbing!, Nantucket Sleighride, Flowers of Evil, Twin Peaks, and Avalanche – as a slipcased box set. It's not a bad way to acquire the albums if you don't already own them, but isn't recommended for the casual fan.

One song about preparing to exact bloody revenge begets another song about the act of exacting bloody revenge and then more songs about the causes and the aftermath of being driven to exact bloody revenge, each delivered with the urgency and desperation deserving of their narrators and circumstances. John Darnielle & the Mountain Goats present Bleed Out, a brand new collection arriving on August 19th.

Three prior Mountain collections, 1973's THE BEST OF, 1974's ON TOP, and 1995's box set OVER THE TOP, left few stones unturned in their overviews of these short-lived yet successful power rockers. If you're looking for a succinct collection of their best-known tracks, then 1998's budget priced SUPER HITS is recommended. Containing 10 tracks, SUPER HITS features such classic rock radio standards as "Mississippi Queen," "Never in My Life," "Theme for an Imaginary Western," and "Flowers of Evil." Although THE BEST OF may have a longer track listing, SUPER HITS contains several tracks not included on the former, which rank among some of the band's best–"Flowers of Evil," "Blood of the Sun," "You Better Believe It," and "The Great Train Robbery."

Mountain was the combined forces of Leslie West, a gigantic guitarist/vocalist who had played with New York garage-psych rockers the Vagrants, and Felix Pappalardi. Pappalardi had a slightly more impressive track record, coming from the modern East Coast folk-rock movement (the Youngbloods), before he applied his production skills to Cream. Through this, Felix never really stopped playing and eventually formed Mountain. Often billed as a junior-league version of Cream, Climbing!, Mountain's debut, had a lot of things going for it as well. Indeed, West was a changed man from the moment he saw Clapton play, and Pappalardi was able to help him achieve the exact same tone Clapton employed on Disraeli Gears…

Coming on the heels of their live Twin Peaks, this release features more of a guitar-oriented sound than previous efforts. Highlights include their cover of Jerry Lee Lewis' "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and "You Better Believe It," the latter sounding like a return to the Climbing days. The rest, however, sounds like it could have been left buried under the Avalanche. Everything was downhill after this.

Following the success of Climbing! and appearances at Woodstock and other outdoor festivals of the day, Mountain recorded more of the same for Nantucket Sleighride. The title track is a nice mixture of classical-leaning intertwined with moderate rock; both "Don't Look Around" and "The Animal Trainer and the Toad" continue on the hard rock path so well-worn by this band. Not groundbreaking, but it is well worth listening to.

When the Mountain Goats got together in March 2020, it was to make not one album, but two. The idea was to again work with Matt Ross-Spang, the dashing Memphis wunderkind. Matt pitched we spend a week at Sam Phillips Recording, his home base in Memphis, followed by another at the storied Fame Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a plan that dovetailed nicely with John’s notion of corralling these songs into two complementary batches: one light, one dark. The Memphis album Getting Into Knives, would be brighter, bolder, marked by rich and vibrant hues; the Muscle Shoals album Dark in Here, is quieter, smokier, but more deeply textured and intense.