September 26 2006: The Mountain Goats, Christine Fellows – Middle East Downstairs, Cambridge MA

I think I was too tired and too coming off a beer buzz (cause I had to drive 2 hours home afterwards) to really appreciate this show on its level, but I’m here to maintain that the level of this show was that of a drunken audience screaming and singing at a band who had no choice but to play along. And drunken singalongs aren’t why I go to Mountain Goats shows.

As far as I’m concerned, the thing that separates the Mountain Goats from the rest of the bands playing today is the subtlety they show in vocal inflection and in the guitar/bass interplay, multiplied by the contrast of decidedly loud, medium and quiet songs, all of which are lost to some degree when the audience feels like making more noise than the band is making. The best Mountain Goats shows I’ve been too have all been crazy affairs in which the audience screams like hell after (and sometimes during) the loud songs (“Death Metal Band,” “Going to Georgia,” See America Right,” etc), but then immediately shuts the fuck up during the medium and quiet songs. And the thing about the crowd tonight was that it really had no desire whatsoever to quiet down for songs that, in my opinion, become utterly sublime only when the musicians on stage have a little sonic legroom. And I’m speaking here of tunes like “Love, Love, Love,” which wasn’t performed as a flowing piece of music so much as it was a soft-loud-soft-loud tune. I mean, it may as well have been “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” because all these folks making noise meant that the little bass flourishes Peter takes to counter the guitar melody in between verses had to be augmented by John hitting his guitar as loud as possible, just so that the music could carry over the noisy audience. And the folks in the crowd ate it up and screamed along and had a great time, but I just kind of missed the subtle little bass part and the sound of John’s voice sounding naked against some minimalist guitar strumming. .

And the band really did seem to be enjoying all the energy going on in the crowd, what with the screaming at every little thing and the ecstatic singing (though thankfully, whether by sheer luck or just by folks just not knowing the words I’m not sure, “It Froze Me” and “Twin Human Highway Flares” were met with silence throughout), but (and like I say, it could well have been my just being kind of tired and sober) I just couldn’t get past the dude screaming the words to “Color in Your Cheeks” and “Song for Dennis Brown” in my ear enough to appreciate the tunes like I’d have liked to.

But it really was a good show. I guess I’m just a little picky when it comes to these things. But I really do think the crowd was more into the concept of John making funny faces and ranting into the microphone than it was into the songwriting being demonstrated onstage.