Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is In Another Castle

The only thing better that a Mountain Goats show is a Mountain Goats show. Bad joke. So I just saw the Mountain Goats with Kaki King tonight at the Fillmore. Always an incredible showman, John Darnielle once again put on a spectacular performance. I'll start with Kaki King though.

First off, the drummer is so very metal, it completely blew me away. Awesome to hear such heavy drumming blended with well crafted songs that fall somewhere in that ever broader category loosely referred to as indie. Never have I seen such incredible thrashing and double bass action with what would otherwise be pretty calm music. I like calm music. I love calm music with metal drumming though. Kaki was extremely talented, she had a unique voice and played her guitar about 20 times better than I could play mine. The hands down best part of their set though was the final song. Out of nowhere the entire band was caught up in the spirit of metal, loud guitars and growling and screams and all that is unholy. It was awesome.

The Mountain Goats as always were completely badass. They were so badass that John pointed out that their drummer was badass. The set was incredible, and included a Carpenters cover of a song I do not know, and a Morrissey cover, Suedehead, both of which brought a large smile to my face. Energy. No one has energy in a folk based indie rock sort of band like that displayed at every Goats show. I've seen them every year for the last several and I must say that however much you expect after listening to their albums, they will blow those expectations into tiny little fragments of nothingness. They kick. No joke. Too awesome. How a band that is so lyrically fantastic and so many many times depressing can always come out and put a smile on every single face, come out so blissfully happy and really make a joyous event out of songs that listened to alone in a room can make every painful feeling valid, will always make them worth seeing, for it will always be something special. Kaki King came out somewhere near midway of their set and played several songs with the band, which was a treat. The encore included my personal favorite, and quite a popular song among fans, "No Children", and John told a story of a show I was at! He was saying he was sick from a show in Portland and came into town against the doctor's orders. He played a set and he was quiet, couldn't sing loud as he usually would, but that he did the whole show somewhat quiet and near the end everyone wanted to hear that same song, "No Children", and that he said he would play it, but only if everyone would sing along. (That was my first Mountain Goats show, I remember singing along with the widest grin I could have possibly had.) So anyway, he says this, says how awesome it was to have everyone sing, and then he says how great it would be if everyone could do it again. Then he played it, and of course, everyone sang, and it was the moment. It was my favorite point of the show. I could write more, but that pretty much sums it all up.

All I have to add is a small explanation of the title. The title is a pretty clever title, so it is probably fairly obvious that it is not my own. I read it off the back of the EP they had at the show, which features songs written jointly by The Mountain Goats and Kaki King. I read it and thought, hey, that's a good title. And so it is.