The Mountain Goats
Through the Fire Across From Peter Balkan
CADMEAN DAWN

The thought of The Mountain Goats writing a musical is only surprising if you haven’t been paying attention to the band over the past three decades. Ever since 2002’s Tallahassee told the story of the decaying and doomed “alpha couple,” John Darnielle has never been shy about his efforts at thematically intertwined storytelling. That’s only become more prominent over the last 10 years or so with albums like Beat the Champ, Goths, and Bleed Out, all efforts that fall somewhere between songwriting exercises and manifestations of intense obsession.

If you’ve ever heard Darnielle talk on just about any subject, you know how big a driver this sort of passion seems to be in his creative life. There are few artists more prolific: Not only does his latest record mark the 23rd studio album released by The Mountain Goats, but he’s also written three novels since 2014, most recently the macabre true-crime send-up Devil House (while working on this review I discovered that he’s also set to release a near 600-page book covering 365 of his songs in great detail, god bless). So, yeah, the idea of John Darnielle writing his own musical is pretty much as close to the middle spot on a bingo card as you can get.

Through the Fire Across From Peter Balkan tells the story of three shipwrecked sailors slowly succumbing to the harsh elements and quickly dwindling resources. Seemingly an attempt to make his aims as clear as possible, Darnielle and company open the album with a grand, sweeping overture: four and a half minutes of instrumental orchestration that’s about as far as the band has ever gotten from their boombox-and-a-dream roots. It’s ambitious, earnest, and damn good, as is much of what follows.

It’s hard not to harp on how remarkable, and remarkably consistent, The Mountain Goats’ output has been since their formation in the early ’90s. Few people have written as many great songs as Darnielle, so it’s no surprise that so much of Peter Balkan works. “Your Bandage,” which serves as a tender moment of reflection among the wreckage, is a beautiful lullaby whether you can place it within the larger narrative or not. Its chorus—“One day the stars will all go out / And those who can remember when the night sky was a tapestry / Will be acclaimed as prophets then”—wonderfully walks the tightrope between specificity and sage-like ambiguity.

Elsewhere, you have none other than Lin-Manuel Miranda providing vocals to barn-burners like “Cold at Night” and “Armies of the Lord,” not only giving heft to Darnielle’s apparent Broadway aspirations but providing a more rounded feel to the narrative structure of the songs. Through the Fire confronts many of the themes Darnielle has always been interested in: survival, camaraderie, legacy. Universal ideas, to be sure, but Darnielle’s gift has always been in making them feel highly specific. Whether it be a wrestler’s heel turn in the ring or the first days on a fishing voyage, there’s something about the human condition that seeps through. “Some people go down swinging, get in a few punches / Some learn to ride the currents / Some never learn,” sings Darnielle on “Rocks in My Pockets.”

Yet it doesn’t always feel like there’s much separating this exercise—envisioned by Darnielle on the stage as a collection of minimally adorned soliloquies—from previous thematic projects, save for the increased use of orchestration and grandeur. I’d watch any of The Mountain Goats’ concept albums as stage plays, so this isn’t necessarily a complaint so much as it is a question as to where, exactly, this fits into the band’s larger output. It doesn’t seem like Darnielle is preparing to announce that they actually plan on mounting Peter Balkan anytime soon, but who knows. The fact is, by the time I’m done writing this they may have penned their next narrative. Whether Peter Balkan remains simply one of the dozens of creative acts of his career or a legitimate sign of a burgeoning Broadway pivot remains to be seen. Regardless, I am very much seated.

FLOOD

The Los Angeles Issue

Sword II, Electric Hour

Danny Brown, Stardust

The Mountain Goats, Through the Fire Across From Peter Balkan

Hayden Merrick

MUSIC, ART + CULTURE,DELIVERED STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX

MUSIC, ART + CULTURE,
DELIVERED STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX