On The Morning When

IF FALL HAS COME EARLY THIS YEAR, if the air has begun to crisp and the evenings have been reeled in from infinity, it is because the Mountain Goats' Get Lonely has willed this to happen. This is an album full of the season's quiet and ghosts and still water, devastating in a different way than those before it, more restrained and far scarier. Here chill air is an instrument, the weight of hush and dark are heard in the strings and strain, and when I listen I imagine a sky full of black anchors, nothing else.

Appreciating Get Lonely has required the mental fortitude usually reserved for more urgent endeavors than listening to a pop album, but hearing it any other way was like peeking through my fingers. I think the incredible, unrelenting sadness here comes from the songs sounding newly forceless and resigned; gone are the manic moments, the triumphs and the intensity and the wild decrees - all replaced by a light shuffle of instruments and a strange half-falsetto.

Darnielle once sang "It's a bad place I'm in" while recounting darker days in his life, now we have only his wandering observations to tip us off. And perhaps the most difficult thing about this album is the too-real feeling of concern I get when I listen, a feeling usually far removed from this context. But whatever - to empathize with something is to love it, and that's why Get Lonely is a truly remarkable album.

The Mountain Goats - Woke Up New [mp3]

The Mountain Goats - Wild Sage [mp3]

The Mountain Goats - Woke Up New [video]

Visit the Mountain Goats online, and buy Get Lonely here.

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Not much to say after my week away (I was backpacking) - what did I miss?