Under his Mountain Goats moniker, John Darnielle has produced
an inspiring body of work, and he’s on engaging form tonight – joking with the
audience, telling stories, and visiting just about all corners of his
voluminous discography. Yet a mild disappointment colours the evening – or
perhaps it’s a feeling of opportunities lost.
For one thing, The Arches proves
ill-suited to an all-seated, acoustic gig in which there are few sounds remotely
loud enough to disguise the rumbling of trains overhead (though this does
produce one nicely atmospheric moment, adding dramatic backing thunder to
Ezekiel 7’s stormy narrative). Then there’s the brevity of the performance:
with a corpus as rich as Darnielle’s, wrapping up the encore by 9:45 seems
miserly. Still, with heart and soul bared on peaks like You Were Cool and No
Children it’s easy to look past the frustrations, ensuring we leave with a lump
in the throat rather than a bad taste in the mouth.
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