Get Lonely (studio album) by The Mountain Goats

This record is deeply personal, and feels like JD waking up and writing his thoughts down. It breaks away from the storytelling of the normal MG material.

From paladisiac 12/09/2011 22:09

Most of his albums are fairly fascinating character sketches, but get lonely feels like more of a personal tale; there's a lot more introspection amidst the loneliness, as on "wild sage" where "somebody stops to pick me up, / but he drops me off just down the block. / and along the highway where the empty sprits breathed, / wild sage growing in the weeds." Nothing but Darnielle and open road desolation. Title track sums up the content -- "I will get lonely and gasp for air.". In "moon over goldsboro" Darnielle does "spend all night in the company of ghosts, always wake up alone". Darnielle chronicles the first day after a breakup in "woke up new" confessing "on the morning when I woke up without you for the first time, / I felt free. / and I felt lonely. / and I felt scared." and "the first time I made coffee for just myself, / I made too much of it. / but I drank it all, / just 'cause you hate it when I let things go to waste." in an "everyman" post-breakup morning after, very human and believable and sympathizable. The other "hit"-sounding song is the third track "half dead" starting "it was raining outside, so I cleaned house today. / spent half of the morning throwing old things away." in the remnants of a break-up later singing "what are the years we gave each other ever gonna be worth?" There's a wolf at the door in "if you see light" where our narrator confides "when the villagers come to my door, / I will hide underneath the table in the dining room" With John Vanderslice co-producing, if you like John's stuff think of Mountain Goats as a little more lo-fi, acoustic version. But it's not that simple -- the songs here (and on other mountain goats albums) permeate a worldliness not found on a Vanderslice album. He's been on a good run from 2000's "the coroner's gambit" and on, and if you like "get lonely", there's a good chance you'll like the rest of his albums in that time span.