About 61 results
https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-14-new-britain-qzr69a9 · 14 Mar 2026
Mountain Goats do folk horror. The discordant guitars are a particular delight here with the imaginative language of a strange inhabitant of a strange albion. This is a beautiful and strange land of odd landscapes and odd feelings, and at their heart the h...
https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-13-an-inscription-at-salonae-yatwe17 · 13 Mar 2026
The rhythm of this reminded me of Santa Monica by Everclear, although that's where the similarity ended. It's a wonderfully calm and matter of fact delivery for lyrical material that starts in the mythological and goes upwards from there. Often John sits a...
https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-12-raid-on-entebbe-s2r9z85 · 12 Mar 2026
There's a strange moment at this start of this song where for just a moment I hear a very familiar guitar part, only... it's not familiar yet. It's inevitable for a songwriter who has written (as can be seen in this project) 366 songs, but for just a few b...
https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-11-ghosts-9dk5s7z · 11 Mar 2026
The bouncing roll of the guitar in this is an early example of one of my favourite John tropes: the jolly, catchy song about how depressed the singer is and how much everything is terrible. Well, that's dismissive. It's not just about that, although the "i...
https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-10-four-new-trees-fq8zhyp · 10 Mar 2026
A delightful little folky number, four verses about four trees with different personalities and characteristics, with a delightful sting in the tail about the last one. This song is insubstantial, but delightful in its insubstantiality. It's a small growth...
https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-9-red-choral-diamond-spray-wraj64p · 9 Mar 2026
It's the quiet ones that get me. I love a bit of big jangly guitar, and as we get onto full band numbers there are going to be some amazing things going on, but something about soft picking and near whispered vocals captures something pure in this music. T...
https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-8-stars-fell-on-alabama-h98dt4e · 8 Mar 2026
With this title it won't come as much surprise that this is a very country-inflected song in a good way. it's warm and dark with points of light and convivial voices singing about dark things. The major detail that strikes me lyrically about this song is "...
https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-7-cheshire-county-gy7r55y · 7 Mar 2026
So we're very much into the era of Mountain Goats songs being delightful little bops. This is a magical pastoral number, with spells under the surface and a strong fundamental presence of nature. Actually, that's wrong. What's present here isn't nature. it...
https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-6-black-molly-v408y0t · 6 Mar 2026
It might be the very "live at a dive bar" recording, but there is something delightfully and atmospherically nineties about this song. It might also be that half of the chord sequence is Stars by Hum which is one of my favourite songs from the nineties. Bu...
https://miscellany.pckt.blog/march-5-going-to-georgia-ts1gqge · 5 Mar 2026
The first thing that strikes me about this mix of spoken word and soaring vocals is that this might be the strongest that John's voice has sounded so far. In this song of love and isolation and the continual background fear of potential violence we hear a ...