All Eternals Deck - The Mountain Goats

The Mountain Goats release a good-not-great album that is just as exciting as unremarkable. (Still waiting for another All Hail West Texas, or a John Darnielle/Mike Posner collaboration.)

With over a decade's worth of material and recordings, John Darnielle released a new set of lyrically-centered songs for our enjoyment. These songs make All Eternals Deck, an album of perseverance and power that will surely please fans of Darnielle's Mountain Goats. Though I am enticed by a handful of the album's offerings, I find All Eternals Deck to be a tedious listen.

I will probably sound like many people did when they explained to me why my favorite album of 2010, Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, sucked. The inexplicable opinion of these people went something like this: “well, like, a third [or other fraction] of the album was good, but then it just went to shit from there.” I clearly hold bias in defense of one of my favorite bands here, but in regards to the Mountain Goats I was thinking quite the same thing. The album's first track, “Damn These Vampires,” has that type of aggressive, courageous melody where you think you are as emotionally connected with the lyrics as the songwriter. It will have people swingin' and singin' at their shows, and admittedly, it will probably make me do so as well to some degree. This is followed by the moderately-paced, lyrically quick “Birth of Serpents.” This song is cheerful with useful metaphors making it a favorable track.

Songs start being skipped when “Estate Real Sign” comes on. It's INTENSE! Darnielle seems ANGRY! This track, which seems to reflect a sense of tension on the part of the songwriter, lacks the appeal and relevant character of the majority of the Mountain Goats' library. “Age of Kings” does not follow the nature of its predecessor, being a much quieter, mysterious track. However, it appears as an annoying whisper; the kind that you will receive in your ear when being told to wake up before your desired time, as opposed to being whispered a juicy, gossipy secret. “The Autopsy Garland” is the second part to the “Age of Kings” with it's hushed, campfire temperament, although Darnielle seems a bit more, er, unique (?) in this song with his lyrics. I find it amusing. For example, Darnielle sings,“Fat rich men love their twelve-year-olds.” Ha.

“Beautiful Gas Mask” is the next track and it has the same up-lifting, “you can do it!” demeanor as “Damn These Vampires.” Darnielle carries the gas mask metaphor throughout the song, proving that he is able to create resonating songs that have seemingly random objects as their basis; the most powerful lines are probably in the song's conclusion, where Darnielle repeats, “Never sleep/Remember to breathe deep.” Breathe deep, guys.

“High Hawk Season” is one of the most distinct songs on the album. The backing church-like harmonies that are sung during the entirety of the song cause me to recall a local a Capella group known as Throat Culture. The song is so supremely (perhaps painfully for some) goofy that it's true to the semi-unorthodox personality of the Mountain Goats.

My main complaints with the album come with the tracks following this choral great. The album then becomes an uninspired and easily ignorable mess. This isn't to say the songs are REALLY FUCKING BAD, but they are relatively incomprehensible and seem deprived of feeling and memorability. “Soudoire Valley Song” and “Outer Scorpion Squadron” are perturbing piano serenades. “Prowl Great Chain” was hard to define from “Estate Real Sign” save the only slightly muted vocals. Then “For Charles Bronson” was just a fadeout to the moment where this half-sickly porpoise of an album comes up for fresh air with the next-to-last track “Never Quite Free.” Yes, I understand that this song could easily be classified as a “perturbing piano serenade” as well due to its instrumentation. Nonetheless, Darnielle successfully delivers a perfectly sentimental, high-voltage ballad-- this is the song I have in my head when I walk away from this album. Darnielle makes cliché bearable, as he tells listeners what they will never have to fear and what they will always have in the world to appreciate.

Unfortunately, “Never Quite Free” wasn't the perfect ending to the album that Darnielle had in mind, as the smooth “Liza Forever Minnelli” awkwardly attempts to make the album stay awake, like a middle school student who, on one of his first compositions, throws around commas constantly, almost as much as he writes, very, very, agitating run-on sentences.