Things I Love: The Mountain Goats

The Mountain Goats are, simply, amazing. Amazing lyrics, amazing music, amazing emotional power, amazing live shows. I remember the first time I heard Tallahassee, in my last year of college, during a cold winter in upstate New York (are there any other kinds?....) and, maybe the nostalgia is coloring it, but it captures so much of the joy and freedom and fear and emotion I felt graduating from undergrad. I remember driving around in my little car, listening to the album on tape, and just feeling so completely satisfied by the music. It's not an album I listen to a lot these days, and I think the power of it is why. It's not background music for me because I want to listen to the lyrics, and sing along to the words, and hum along to the sparse melodies. I feel similarly about All Hail West Texas and Sunset Tree, my other favorite albums of theirs. I'm so grateful every time I rediscover The Mountain Goats in my library and so grateful that it was during one of their shows that I befriended my beloved Phoebe, who is, on a totally unrelated note, busy kicking serious science butt at a conference in Houston right now! Go Phoebs!