Mountain Goats as popular as ever
By a certain point in their careers, beloved cult bands usually become a closed circle; everyone who might like them already does. But the Mountain Goats, in the quartet’s third decade of existence, are almost as popular as ever. The group’s 2017 album “Goths” was one of only a handful of the group’s releases to debut on Billboard’s Top 100, and the Goats are the subject of a newish podcast, “I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats,” from “Welcome to Night Vale” co-creator Joseph Fink.
The podcast is a songby-song, week-by-week examination of the band’s 2002 classic album “All Hail West Texas,” hosted by Fink and frontman John Darnielle. The podcast hasn’t hurt, but Darnielle has long been indie rock’s most beloved storyteller, and a best-selling novelist besides.
In a phone interview, Darnielle talked about the podcast and his old life as a psychiatric nurse. This is an edited transcript:
Q: It’s surprising that more musicians don’t take advantage of the (podcasting) format.
A: When we did the taping of the podcast, it really consumed several weeks. During that time, I couldn’t play shows, I was talking all day, I couldn’t really write anything new. I think plenty of people would do podcasts, but to do a good one requires time and care.
Q: How has it been for you to do this podcast, where other artists are singing your songs, and telling you how great they think you are?
A: It is weird. The thing is, if you listen to it, every time we start talking about me, I change the subject. … To me, that’s really humbling, to hear someone take my song to some new place I couldn’t have taken it myself. But to talk about myself, that’s the weirdest thing about the whole apparatus of — I don’t like to say fame, but being public.
Q: When you were working in psychiatric care, did they teach you skills for reasoning with irrational people that
you still use today?
A: I don’t run into a lot of irrational people — well, I have two children, so there’s that. My stance as a nurse was to try to understand what my patients were going through, to be present to hear them talking about their stuff. That’s a skill that’s useful wherever you take it.
Q: When you’re writing an album, are you dying to get back to writing prose?
A: Writing songs is second nature to me at this point. Prose is what I want to be most doing most of the time now. I like to perform, and I love to write music, and I will always do it.
“Writing songs is second nature to me at this point.” — John Darnielle, frontman of the Mountain Goats