Album Review: The Mountain Goats - Transcendental Youth

The uber-prolific John Darnielle (he's up to something like album number 14) certainly hasn't gotten sappy after becoming a father, and manages to, as always, throw in enough genuinely catchy pop songs to stop Transcendental Youth becoming a complete misery-fest.

Centered on a cast of mentally troubled characters, Transcendental Youth, says Darnielle, involves “whether anybody has the right to tell people whether their visions are sick or not.” Take In Memory Of Satan, with the narrator waking up in a funk, looking at his filthy room, and deciding he'd rather not deal with people and will tape up his windows. Or opener Amy, about a girl whose behaviour is a series of silly cries for help. But this gets balanced out with The Diaz Brothers, an anthemic number about a couple of characters from Scarface who are mentioned but are killed without ever appearing on screen. In concerts, its rousing chorus, simply “Mercy for the Diaz brothers” should create as much excitement as that of No Children.

Production-wise, this is the most polished the band have ever produced, with guest horns and the odd spot of programming to add colour here and there, and things in general sounding nothing like their “militantly lo-fo” older albums.

The Mountain Goats, despite Darnielle's always-excellent work as a story-teller, are known as a band with patchy albums. TY probably won't change this, with a few plodding cuts in-between some very strong, hooky folk/pop tracks. In short: this will satisfy most fans, but it has fewer really good songs than Heretic Pride or The Sunset Tree.