John Darnielle is a Man of Musical Genius

As promised (albeit a day later than planned), a bit more on the man who so effortlessly combined Thin Lizzy with R. Kelly in Friday’s post.

A friend of mine recently made the assertion that John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats is the greatest songwriter of our generation, or is at least fighting Sufjan Stevens tooth and nail for the title. While I couldn’t say that for certain, I can say that he’s pretty damn brilliant and criminally overlooked. Part of this is no doubt due to his eccentricities: aside from the whole billing yourself as a band but really only being one guy thing (granted, its something that hasn’t stopped Bright Eyes or Dashboard Confessional), there’s the fact that for the majority of his career, his preferred method of recording was via boom box—just pop in a blank tape, press record, and start strumming, I kid you not. Even after succumbing to the pressures of the studio, it hasn’t been until his most recent work that he’s added anything to the mix other than his guitar and his nasally yet incredibly intense vocals.

This might in fact be the greatest testament to his songwriting abilities: the music is pretty simple and the voice takes some getting used to, but the words suck you right in from the first listen, and have a way of hitting the nail on the head when it comes to emotional resonance. Take the song “Jenny” for example, off his album “All Hail West Texas”. Have I ever dated a girl who pulled up to my house in a motorcycle and rode off into the sunset with me? Of course not. Is this song still the perfect embodiment of what it feels like to be in love? Absolutely.

The Mountain Goats- Jenny

While his more recent material has become more slickly produced, Darnielle has lost none of his intensity, and has in fact gone even deeper and more personal in his writing. His most recent release “The Sunset Tree,” chronicles his adolescence living with an abusive stepfather, a topic which he manages to make appropriately dark while empowering and hopeful at the same time. Darnielle sums it up nicely in an interview describing the beautifully haunting song “Love Love Love" off the album:

"the point of the song is we are very well damaged by the legacy of the romantic poet, that we think of love as a thing that is with strings and is this force for good and then if something bad happens that’s not love...I don't know so much about that. I don't know that the Greeks weren't right; I think that they were, that love can beat a path through everything, that it will destroy a lot of things on the way to its objective which is just its expression of itself. You know my stepfather mistreated us terribly quite often, but he loved us and that to me is something worth commenting on in the hopes of undoing a lot of what I perceive is terrible damage, yet we talk about love as this benign comfortable force: it is wild."

Filled with biblical and literary allusions, It’s quickly become one of my favorite songs in recent memory.

The Mountain Goats- Love Love Love

So is John Darnielle the greatest songwriter of our generation? Its becoming harder and harder to disagree, and with a new album due out in a few months, I don’t think its going to get any easier.