The 2017 good new music parade keeps rolling on.

Part of the concept on this one is that it's a folk guitarist doing an album with no guitar. John's no guitar god, so nothing is lost but the aesthetic of one guy strumming into his boombox, and even short of the orchestral/choral stuff going on here, he hasn't been doing minimalism in years. But I like these arrangements a lot. It turned out to be a good way to get out of the comfort zone, which I thought Beat the Champ lingered in at times. At times, doing songs about '80s goth subculture like "We Do It Different on the West Coast" with everything under the sun but guitars, it feels like he's invented a new genre of music: call it baroque new wave, I guess. "Andrew Eldritch Is Moving Back to Leeds" is so bouncy, catchy, and most of all polished beyond any previous Mountain Goats song that it could actually make rotation on AAA stations. "Paid in Cocaine" sounds like it could have been on Transcendental Youth and it wouldn't surprise me if it turned out this one didn't make the cut but grew into this whole album concept, because on that tour John was already going heavy on piano in the second and third sets. "Wear Black" feels like the thesis statement of the whole album: the chorus is pretty obvious for a song/album about goth kids, and there's no cuteness in the arrangements here, only what's needed.

Kind of a weird complaint, but my only issue is that all these songs run long. Most Mountain Goats songs are in and out in three minutes or less, but nothing here runs shorter than 3:40. Some of these go over five and there's not really anything additional being said, mostly just instrumental codas or repeated choruses. "The Grey King an the Silver Flame Attunement" is a good example, I mean shit, even the title runs long. It's a song that could have made a couple of previous albums, but the last minute+ is just little flourishes of clarinets and Rhodes piano (there's a ton of Rhodes on this album, which is fine by me, it's one of my favorite instruments) and it sounds cool, but stretching songs out to allow little tangents like this is so out of character for John and I'm not used to it yet. And elsewhere, though I love the line "but I have high unicorn tolerance," that's a song that really dawdles. The whole album ends up being 55 minutes, which is long by any standards, and I'll admit that as many times as I've already been through the album, I think I've been through the first 9/12 a lot more. (I don't count track plays because I don't want my media player to know when I've listened to "Don't Stop Believin"" ten times in one day.) Part of me thinks I should savor every recorded minute I get from one of my favorite bands of all time, but in practice, I usually find myself ready for the next song to start. It's such a stupid complaint: I accept excess beyond excess from Stephen Merritt (his album this year has 50 songs! and some of them kinda suck!), but not John Darnielle, I guess?

I wouldn't recommend this as an entry point for the band (that'd be Tallahassee, The Sunset Tree, or even Transcendental Youth), but it's still an AOTY longshot on its own merits and could have locked it up outright if it were just a bit leaner in spots. I heartily recommend it and maybe the long songs won't irritate you like they irritate me.

EDIT: looks like NPR is streaming here, go listen http://www.npr.org/2017/05/15/528276196 ... oats-goths

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Going to give it a full listen tonight

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I am the liquor Randy