The Mountain Goats are an American band formed in Claremont, California, by… Read Full Bio ↴The Mountain Goats are an American band formed in Claremont, California, by singer-songwriter John Darnielle. The band is currently based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. For many years, the sole member of the Mountain Goats was Darnielle, despite the plural moniker. The Mountain Goats are, for all practical purposes, the endlessly clever and prolific John Darnielle and whatever musicians he surrounds himself with, which means that while the soundscape may change from project to project, the overall tone and feel of Darnielle's work remains remarkably consistent. At his best, he writes finely observed, slightly surreal, impressionistic vignettes that manage to mix life as we live it with life as we wish we could live it, and as such he has more in common with a novelist than he does with the typical singer/songwriter, which is fitting, as he's also a published author. Darnielle's early Mountain Goats releases were lo-fi, cassette-recorded efforts cut with a rotating lineup of musicians, such as 1995's Nine Black Poppies and 2000's The Coroner's Gambit. By 2005's The Sunset Tree, his recordings had become cleaner and less cluttered, but his characters studies were just as vivid, and as the Mountain Goats finally cohered into a stable lineup (with Darnielle joined by Peter Hughes, Matt Douglas, and Jon Wurster), they recorded tuneful, thematically unified albums such as Beat the Champ (2015) and Goths (2017) that ranked with their finest work.
Darnielle began the new millennium with The Coroner's Gambit for Absolutely Kosher before signing to 4AD for the release of the surprisingly polished Tallahassee in 2002. We Shall All Be Healed followed in 2004, and one year later, Darnielle was back with The Sunset Tree. Remaining as prolific as ever, Darnielle turned away from the intensity of The Sunset Tree for a calmer, more reflective set of songs on 2006's Get Lonely. The accessible and assured Heretic Pride appeared in 2008. Next up was the Bible verse-inspired The Life of the World to Come, the group's sixth album for 4AD, in 2010. Switching to Merge Records in 2011, Darnielle released All Eternals Deck, which was recorded in four different studios in Brooklyn, Boston, North Carolina, and Florida with four different producers -- John Congleton, Scott Solter, Brandon Eggleston, and Morbid Angel guitarist and Hate Eternal frontman Erik Rutan -- helming various tracks. That year the band was also handpicked by Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel to perform at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival that he was curating in Minehead, England, but they were ultimately unable to appear due to scheduling issues.

Let Me Bathe In Demonic Light
The Mountain Goats Lyrics

Down at the end of a bombed-out street
The shell of a house where my friends and me used to meet
Someday the old flesh will give way to the new
Find a functioning mirror inside and slip right through

And there, there I will be
And who, who's coming with me?
To show me my one true face
When I arrive at my preordained place

Chain of command maybe ten years long
I emerge in Manhattan, still young and strong
Someday the hellhound will pick up the scent on the trail
Zero in on my penthouse and then pierce the veil

And there, there I will be
And who, who's coming with me?
To show me my one true face
When I arrive at my preordained place

Hopeless but free
Lit up like a marquee shining over the freeway
Where will my long trail end?
Here, here with my new friend

Fruits of the spirit heavy on the vine
Undying hunger deep in the bloodline
Dodge the hook like a steel head
Swim right through the night
Break the surface and rise like a geyser
When my time is right

There, there I'll be
And who, who among you, who's coming with me?
To show me my one true face
When I arrive at my preordained place

Lyrics © SCHUBERT MUSIC PUBLISHING INC.

Written by: John Darnielle

Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind

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