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Album Details

• Artist: The Mountain Goats
• Album: We Shall Be Healed
• Label: 4AD
• Year of Release: 2004
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: dscanland on 2004-02-23

Tallahassee was my first introduction to John Darnielle's group known as The Mountain Goats. I was totally impressed and hailed it as a great triumph. Then I got We Shall All Be Healed. It's just as good an album but very similar. I'm not sure if he has been doing the same sort of folk/rock his entire career, but if that's the case then I have to give his fans credit for holding on to something that sounds the same. We Shall All Be Healed is a solid album, don't get me wrong. But there is an element of repetition going on here. Even throughout the 45 minute set you can sense similarities. Listen to "Palmcorder Yajna" next to "Against Pollution" and you might see what I mean. There aren't glaring similarities but the acoustic guitar and John's matter-of-fact vocals tend to sound monotonous after a while. I love the guitar line in "Mole", one of the highlights of the album. It's gentle and John's voice is a little different here. I really like the opening track, "Slow West Vultures" as well. John is a talented musician and I would love to see him in a live setting but I am going to say that you really only need one or two Mountain Goats albums in your collection. Any more would just be redundant. His two latest will suffice as they are both impressive.

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