NEW ALBUMS
THE MOUNTAIN GOATS
Dark In Here
Muscle Shoals-recorded 20th from John Darnielle’s men
MERGE
8/10
Made in FAME Studios as Covid turned the lights off in the US, this crepuscular companion to last year’s brighter, Memphis-made Getting Into Knives explores a country on the edge of cracking up. The title track is insinuating and implacable, snaking over a tough beat as John Darnielle recounts reckonings and oaths. Down in this song’s place of cool threat, it’s “dark as a coalmine/filling up with gas/I stand ready for the blast”. Spooner Oldham, meanwhile, drops limpid Hammond into the band’s sultry funk and jagged jazz. Whether observing modern Manson cults gathering “silent as a snowdrift” in the hills, or delivering a sunrise eulogy bearing David Berman away, Darnielle’s sympathy never fails.