So yeah. The Mountain Goats kicked utter arse.
We arrived a little late so we missed about half of the first supporting act, Mike Noga. He seemed like a pretty good but typical folk-rock pub act, singing about how all his friends were alcoholics and stuff like that. I enjoyed it. But it was hard to get into when it was obvious no one was there to hear him, chatting and such.
Speaking of which, goddamn was the crowd cute. So many cute girls turned up to hear Mr Darnielle sing about abuse.
The second support act was completely fucking baffling. They started out coming onto stage all wearing similar white linen dresses and playing what sounded like a pretty cool tribute to Mogwai when they have the guitars out. But after that it sorta got lost with one dude seeming like he was just there to scream in every song. He was the shouty guy.
But man, then the Mountain Goats came on and they fucking rocked. It was just John on acoustic guitar and doing the vocals with his bassist Peter Hughes and backing. They started out following the set list, John giving us anecdotes relating to each song or engaging in banter with the crowd.
There was no artificial showmanship at all, just John being himself: witty, articulate, charismatic and obviously passionate about his work. His voice is powerful as hell when he pushes it and he played his guitar so hard he broke one of the strings during Dilaudid. At which point he abandoned the song and the guitar and started again just with the bass playing. Sounded pretty fucken cool. Wouldn't be suprised if in the future that's how the song's done in the set.
While Pete was fixing the guitar up with a new string John performed a purely vocal number, a Billie Holiday song. At first a was on the microphone but halfway through declared 'Fuck it', tossed the thing aside, held his hands out to quieten the audience then finished the number unassisted. And we all stood there silent until he finished, then applauded like crazy.
At some stage in the evening they abandoned the playlist and took requests, although saying 'There's no way we're doing that song' more often than not. One guy was noisy about wanting 'Up The Wolves' and a lotta people joined in. John said they hadn't practiced it, but if we could wait a little they'd play it for us.
So John and Peter had a brief practice session on the stage, John breaking off every now and then to tell us to shut up and they didn't have it yet, or to ask us if we were bored yet. Then they broke off from jamming and everyone cheered as they launched into the song, John telling us to sing along in the breaks. It was absolutely fucking fantastic live and I'm so totally looking for a bootleg of it.
When they finished the song John told us he thought no one would wanna hear it, but Peter was shaking his head saying John's always forgetting things like that. Hell, for me that was worth the price of admission alone.
Then they played a few more songs, ending with 'Lion's Teeth'. Fucking fantastic set, mainly coming from The Sunset Tree and the new EP. He said he's coming back in January and you bet I'll be there.