Goat Stories

Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle has taken on plenty of
heady topics—death, drug abuse, loneliness. Not necessarily happy
themes, but very real ones nonetheless. Well, some of them. Darnielle
spins yarns that—especially in recent years—blur the line
between fact and fiction. And he has an uncanny ability to make you
care about a character, no matter their background, over the course of
a three-minute pop song.

On the Mountain Goats’ latest, The Life of the World to Come,
Darnielle tackles the most epic and verbose story of all time: the
Bible. No, Darnielle hasn’t found God (he considers himself an
atheist), but he did find the aesthetic of naming all 12 songs on the
record after bible verses appealing.

“I’ve occasionally written songs like that over the years,” he
explains. “And I wrote one about a year ago, and I was like ‘Hey, I
kinda like that song.’ The next time I wrote a song I did the same
thing, and once I had two then I started picturing a whole list of them
and how bitchin’ that would look.”

Straightforward enough. But the biblical connection doesn’t just
come from a purely artistic standpoint. As with “I Corinthians 13:
8-10″ from 1996’s Nothing For Juice album, the title implies
that there’s something much bigger happening within the song. The
characters on the new record are still dealing with life—and
death—and some of the stories are ripped directly from the pages
of Darnielle’s own life. In “Matthew 25:21” he deals with the tragedy
of watching his mother-in-law succumb to cancer. He also revisits an
old apartment building in Portland (where he lived in the ’80s) in
“Genesis 3:23.” It’s a place Darnielle says he nearly died “doing the
things that train wrecks do—crashing into things.”

It’s a time in his life Darnielle doesn’t care to dwell on, although
perhaps—as the Bible does for many—the song is a way of
grappling with his own questions.

“Where’s that person who stood in that hallway years ago? Where is
he now? You can’t find him. He doesn’t exist. I had a big moment with
that,” Darnielle recalls of standing outside his old room. “The first
couple of times I went to Portland I had to methodically revisit every
spot that I used to go. I don’t have to do that anymore.”