My Top Ten Favorite Mountain Goats Songs

I took this photo in South Dakota in 2014 and I’m still proud of it

If you don’t yet listen to The Mountain Goats, you probably ought to. I have been a fan for several years and recently discovered an excellent YouTube playlist entitled Mountain Goats Long Ass Playlist and it is almost always playing while I’m doing clinical notes or other paperwork in my office.

The reasons for my deep love for this band are complex and difficult to articulate. But I think the summary is : John Darnielle (the singer/songwriter/center of the band) is a grown man who sings unflinchingly about past traumas and other difficult experiences in a matter-of-fact way that I find both deeply relatable and rare. I have not found this quality in other music, and it is this quality that I find almost painfully beautiful in Mountain Goats songs. John Darnielle writes beautiful and honest lyrics.

Anyway, my favorites :

(In no particular order) (But #7 MIGHT be my all-time favorite.) (Or #3.) (And #1 is sort of everyone’s favorite, for good reason.)

1. This Year

2. Love Love Love

3. You Were Cool

4. Woke Up New

5. Up The Wolves

6. Damn These Vampires

7. Never Quite Free

8. Hast Thou Considered The Tetrapod

9. Dinu Lipatti’s Bones

10. San Bernardino

David and I just got tickets to see The Mountain Goats this September and I am VERY excited!

(And yes these are YouTube links. In my defense, some are music videos. But more broadly no I don’t use Spotify and I’m sure it’s super great but we’re just not compatible. I don’t know.)