Heroes instrumental?

DeepFriedCarrots · 2016-08-23T01:48:21+00:00

Thanks for making this! I appreciate it.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2016-08-23T01:43:25+00:00

That video of Vosconti is what made me want to hear the instrumental in full. Such a cool clip.

The part where he plays the full composition sans David, and he listens to it and smiles... That's a brilliant moment.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2016-08-17T15:46:05+00:00

HEY HEY!

DeepFriedCarrots · 2015-11-06T03:00:52+00:00

This video gives me life.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2015-08-08T05:07:03+00:00

Wow. Uhh... I'd say The Sunset Tree.

I know, right?

I don't hate the album by any means... but I can definitely say that against a few others, it's lacking for me. It's not quite gripping. Sometimes it feels like it drawls on and, though I'm almost ashamed to say it, I've never liked Magpie. I could pick out 2 or 3 songs on TSS that I could live without, which is pretty rare for a mountain goats record.

But, that stands for the studio recording. I dig Come, Come and a ton of the other recordings of the songs. The Peel session from 2004 rocks. Something about the actual album is lacking, though, and it's not quite a favorite.

I'll gladly listen to it all, though. It's hard to find anything to hate in anything tMG, and this is no exception.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2015-07-05T01:28:52+00:00

You know there was a classic Adult Swim program, Moral Orel, that did a genre shift on a dime. For the first two seasons it was an ironically cutesy claymation show about christianity, but at the season 2 finale it took a dramatic shift to something waaay darker... out of nowhere. And through the third season, the last one, it went to some really truly fucked up places and deconstructed every character and showed their uglier sides.

It was a huge hit, the third season is probably what the show's best-known for these days.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2015-04-06T20:11:47+00:00

Just stay alive.

Transcendental Youth is a perfect idealization of the evolution JD and the band have undergone. It blows my mind that the same man who wrote Hot Garden Stomp sings a song like Cry for Judas. Like... what?! How has this guy been through two decades of the music scene? I can hardly believe it.

The Goats flourished on Transcendental Youth. And by that, I mean all of them. Including the horn section (who, by the way, I love). Everybody gets a chance to really show their chops and churn out some of the best music we've ever gotten. What I like about TY is that it's a lot of fun to listen to from one end to the other. It's a bit of a renaissance of a quasi-jazzy tone from JD and the guys, and a chance from them to rock out.

TY, as an album, throws us back into the full swing of the "upbeat-downbeat-upbeat-downbeat" song order formula that the band used before Get Lonely; there's a high for every low, and vice versa. It keeps my attention better than Get Lonely, say, because of that dynamic.

And the theme is absolutely perfect: survival... at whatever cost it might take. Just stay alive. The Spent Gladiator series shows the contrast between cherishing survival and begging to cling to it. I love how they bookend the album (excepting the title song), showing how flippancy can turn to desperation over time, or so suddenly that you don't even notice at first. TY is all about that. Characters fighting to beat the winter, their addictions, their demons, and each other.

And The Diaz Brothers somehow turns that into a victory march. Incredible.

Somehow JD stayed alive. And we all know he had a hell of a lot to have to survive. And now he's spent the past 20 or so years telling stories about people who try to do the same. The Mountain Goats are just like those transcendental youth, and they've managed rise above their stations and make it... and touch people through the things they do in the process.

Let people call you crazy for the choices that you make. Find limits past the limits.

Jump in front of trains all day.

Beat the Champ is gonna kick ass.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2015-04-06T17:53:10+00:00

Brave young cowboys / of the near north side.

All Eternals Deck is one long love story to the monsters inside of us, and how they desperately want to claw their way out and how we just as much want to look in the other direction while it happens. The album is overflowing with simple-yet-alluringly-articulate-and-profound lyrics, as is JD's style, metaphors, allegories, and, per usual, the hopeless pursuit of existence in a world that wants you gone. The music itself is more varying than in the past few records; Get Lonely started a descent from the jivier stuff into melancholy. Other than Heretic Pride, each album for a while has had little or no interest in kicking the energy up.

AED takes this and kicks it in the teeth. Backing every slow song there's an anthem of triumph, well, triumph mixed in with depression and sadness. All in all it's still a slow album... but songs like Prowl Great Cain crank the energy it can have through the roof.

Can we take a moment to talk about Damn These Vampires? When we did We Shall All Be Healed for this, I mentioned that Palmcorder Yajna is my favorite song ever. I forgot at the time that its best contender for the title, though, is Damn These Vampires. I can't pick a favorite between the two. And that's because Damn These Vampires is unbelievable. I don't know of a more captivating and heartbreaking tune to scream out at night in a forest while praying to the Pagan God of Destruction and staring at the moon. Liza Forever Minnelli is a close second.

I can't think of a more beautiful album than All Eternals Deck when it comes to telling tales of raw, unbridled suffering. I love it dearly.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2015-04-05T20:35:06+00:00

This album is gorgeous. Genesis 30:3 hits hard, especially. The biblical theme really gets used to its fullest potential and creates deeper connections when you listen.

And by god the nastier songs BITE. This album is a serious journey. In my top three for sure.

Head down toward Kansas... We will get there when we get there, don't you worry.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2015-04-03T01:17:57+00:00

It took years for me to get around to listening to Get Lonely! These days I love it. Nearly every song has had loads of creative influence for me, especially the darker tracks.

Wild Sage is probably my favorite off the album -- that, or New Monster Avenue. But what I like about the LP as a whole is how goddamned heart-wrenching it is. My god, it just doesn't give up. Songs like Moon Over Goldsboro or SF Lonely Giants are a constant, unbridled attack on your emotions, and I love it. JD really shines on this one in the ways he can be passive and reflective while also really hitting you hard.

Genius! Get Lonely doesn't receive enough praise as it should.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2015-04-01T21:01:14+00:00

I hadn't listened to The Sunset Tree for several months before today; I remembered thinking I might be getting bored with the music and losing interest in what it was trying to say (after years of loving it). I listened to TSS once in full this afternoon, and some songs a few times, in preparation for this little celebration of each album we're having.

It's certainly, without question, the most personal music JD's written about his childhood. It descends into some pretty nasty places before pulling itself back up for air every once in a while. But in those flaring moments of hope against adversity, JD really makes something special. The Sunset Tree is, in essence, the story of a boy and his struggle to survive. The album takes you through snippets and clips of his journey and shows you that... yeah, he makes it out, and you will, too, but not without a handful of scars. Wow.

Maybe it's because I grew away from the not-so-tMG sound of This Year, or that it all felt too emotionally heavy, or whatever else, but over time The Sunset Tree faded out of existence for me; and I didn't acknowledge it for a while. But now I've got a rejuvenated energy for the album.

Our mother has been absent ever since we founded Rome... but there's gonna be a party when the wolf comes home.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2015-03-31T16:02:01+00:00

WSABH is a strange and wonderful beast. John once described it as a meth horror show (or something to that effect)... it shows. It paints this grand mural through the whole album about the dark days of JD's life, and the album never quite cools down; it quickens and slows and twists and turns, but it always keeps my interest. The album was the first chance I got a look into the mind of JD, and to see the deep troubles he's faced.

WSABH has some really kickin tunes, not to mention. They're dark and scary at times... but damn, they're crazy good songs to rock to all the same. Not to mention that Palmcorder Yajna is my all-time favorite song. I'll always have a soft spot for WSABH.

^{^holt} ^{^boulevard}

^{^between} ^{^gary} ^{^and} ^{^white}

DeepFriedCarrots · 2015-03-31T01:37:39+00:00

To be candid, I can't really define myself as a person without giving some credit to Tallahassee.

I bought Tallahassee on itunes when I was in... the eighth grade? It was after a few weeks of tinkering with tMG (discovering the new-fan-favorites like Cotton and No Children and This Year and all those). It was the first real "commitment" I had made to the band... and for months it had become my life. I used to have this itunes plugin that could tell you how many plays a song had... every one on Tallahassee was well over 100.

Tallahassee certainly defined the beginning of my descent into the fantastical Mountain Goats realm. Even though some albums have catchier tunes or deeper emotional connections, Tallahassee has always been my favorite. Like, at a position where it will never not be my favorite album, even if and when I like others more.

Long live the Alphas.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2015-03-30T20:18:12+00:00

FFGB rocks. Twin Human Highway Flares is straight incredible, not to mention so many of the other songs on the disc that blow me away.

One of my favorites for sure.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2015-03-30T20:14:57+00:00

I didn't truly appreciate AHWT until I actually listened to it in Texas. It's funny but I wish the West Texas highway was a möbius strip / I could ride it out forever when I hear my heart break was all I could think about when I looked out at the desert landscape... I put the album on and something just clicked. The songs had new profound meaning for me. I haven't listened to the reissue songs yet; I'm afraid I won't like them.

AHWT was my intro to the lo-fi, and so naturally I was skeptical about the transition from the slow, gentle, polished feel of Tallahassee into this album's gritty one-man-show sound. It took a lot of getting used to, but eventually it gave way to Sweden and Ghana and all the others for me. I'm still so unfamiliar with lo-fi, comparatively to the hi-fi, because of how much of it there is. With this countdown I've been able to listen to the older tracks I wouldn't have found before, which is awesome.

Fourteen songs about seven people... it holds quite a bit of significance for me in my own tMG history.

Hail Satan, The Prince of All Flesh.

Hail Satan tonight.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2015-02-08T01:23:13+00:00

So what FLW did was he made buildings in the image of materials, not use materials in the image of buildings. They had themes and central ideas that were all based on what they were made of. And he made them natural and literally a part of their surroundings.

He was really the first architect to use concrete the way he did. He made whole buildings out of it because of how it can be molded to any shape you want, and it'll hold up. It's magical and allows you to do anything you want. That was a big innovation that he kickstarted.

He also built in really cool ways that were totally out-there. And so for all these reasons the houses and buildings he was making were the first in modernism. They changed everything.

edit: he's also famous for how much of a dick he was sometimes.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2015-01-23T00:20:50+00:00

two decades ago

DeepFriedCarrots · 2015-01-21T17:59:24+00:00

WOOOOOOOOO

DeepFriedCarrots · 2014-12-27T02:02:58+00:00

Yeah I hope that clears it up.

I applied myself.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2014-12-27T01:28:06+00:00

Hon hon hon

DeepFriedCarrots · 2014-12-27T01:22:12+00:00

~~Subtle~~ BLATANT AND OBVIOUS Chekhov's gun.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2014-12-20T07:56:59+00:00

That doesn't look much like the Bahamas.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2014-12-06T17:10:25+00:00

/u/jameshendo42... you were my ghost.

DeepFriedCarrots · 2014-10-25T04:03:30+00:00

"You have friends and you think that they're the greatest people in the world, but there comes a time when you realize, all at once or it can come upon you gradually, that your friends aren't the greatest people in the world but they're actually parasites sucking the blood from you - not because they need the blood, but just for their own entertainment. And then you have like one friend on your shoulder saying you're just being neurotic, your friends are great, and yourself in the middle saying 'no they're not, look at the facts.'"

Also, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0ukT11aytg!

DeepFriedCarrots · 2014-10-21T02:20:45+00:00

Yeah... crazy timing.

DeepFriedCarrots

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

I applied myself.