The Life of the World to Come (Bonus Track Version)

some of the songs might come off as boring. you have to be in the right mood when listening to it. i love this album

SUCH good songs all around

An old piece of folk wisdom says that if you don’t want to offend, there are two topics you never mention in polite company: politics and religion. Rock music has never much worried about polite company, and giving offense is often its raison d’etre. However, historically rock has far more often tread on the toes of politics than religion. The Mountain Goats’ The Life of the World to Come steps boldly over the religion line, but to engage rather than offend. Goats founder, leader, and sometimes only member John Darnielle–wild-eyed, metaphorically-gifted, demonically frenetic onstage–chose for this album to write a cycle of songs, every one of which has as its title a passage from the Bible. Darnielle has had a lifetime love affair with the Bible, even though he doesn’t believe it to be of divine origin. As a fifth-year seminarian I had a couple of opportunities to sit down with John and talk faith and religion. Actually, a talk with John Darnielle can never be confined to one topic. His fertile and far-reaching mind quickly links together Christianity to sociology to poetry to neuroscience to boxing. (Yes, boxing. Darnielle is as passionate about pugilistic sports like boxing and hockey as he is about music.) One of the lasting impressions I retain from those chats was his almost encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible. I shouldn’t have been surprised; many times listening to his older recordings I was delighted and surprised by sometimes very obscure allusions to biblical stories and themes. They can crop up in the most unexpected places. For example, in his song “This Year” he uses the line “there will be feasting and dancing in Jerusalem next year” to evoke the wild hope of a 17 year old dreaming of escape from his dysfunctional home.Though The Life of the World to Come‘s songs all have Bible passage titles, this is not an album about the Bible, nor is it particularly religious–but in my view it is very much about faith. There is a meta-narrative that runs through Darnielle’s mega-prolific songwriting over the years. His songs are often about people at the end of their ropes–scratch that, people who have set fire to the very rope they dangle from over the precipice. And yet, it is at that bottoming out that his characters find a strange, inexplicable hope. In his interview on Stephen Colbert’s Colbert Report, Colbert read back to Darnielle some of his bleaker lyrics. Darnielle responded, “To me any scene that is tending toward that moment of absolute desolation, and it sounds like something you would say when you’re lying to somebody–but it can’t go anywhere but up from there…take it all the way down to the bottom so you can go, ‘Hey, what can you do to me now?’” The new album uses the titular Bible passages as the merest inspiration, a canvas upon which Darnielle paints very contemporary–yet timeless–portraits of grief, despair, resignation…and inexplicable faith, hope, and love. An example of this is the bouncy “Genesis 3:23″ in which the original verse (“therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken”) provides a proper motif for a more contemporary exile story of a man who breaks into the house where he grew up to confront the ghosts he has carried with him since he left. Break the lock on my own garden gate When I get home after dark Sit looking up at the stars outside Like teeth in the mouth of a shark In The Life of the World to Come John Darnielle is at the peak of both his songwriting and performing powers. From the frantic 40-miles-per-hour-over-the-limit thrash of “Psalm 40:2″ to the fragile-as-a-new-spider-web intimacy of “Ezekiel 7 (and the permanent efficacy of grace),” these songs reflect the full range of Mountain Goat music–and that is a wide range to cover. Yet the production here is minimal–just enough and not an ounce more. A few songs are just John and guitar or piano. The album’s opening song (“1 Samuel 15:23″) pays tribute in its opening seconds to Darnielle’s fabled lo-fi origins (for years his albums were recorded on a cheap boom box and released on cassette tape). Listening with earphones the first thing you hear is John settling on his seat and his fingers dragging up the guitar strings into position for the first chord. Longtime Mountain Goat listeners will smile for a moment, remembering the grind of the Panasonic boombox motor that used to begin nearly every recorded song. The Bible is a treasure house (sometimes a horror house) of the seeds of every imaginable human plot. Over the course of this album, Darnielle and fellow Goats Peter Hughes (bass) and Jon Wurster (percussion) take us on a journey through a good number of those. We encounter untimely death, exile, alienation, sickness, misunderstanding. But Darnielle’s warbly-nasal voice, the intense intimacy of his inflections, the way he brings each word from his mouth as if it were from a scroll sweet as honey (Ezekiel 3:3) calls us to resurrection. to rise phoenix-like from the ashes of our own lives. To come fully under John Darnielle’s prophetic spell, you must see and hear him perform his songs live. He embodies his songs, and sometimes it is the body language and facial expressions that tell you what the real message is beneath the words of hurt and despair. Search online for a video of The Mountain Goats performing “Psalm 40:2.” The music and the words scream desperation: a frantic flight from who-knows-what to who-knows-where. But watch Darnielle’s face, his body. There is joy inexpressible when we learn to sing and dance right on top of our own graves. There will be feasting and dancing in Jerusalem next year.

I'm 100% pro-science, anti-creationism, but I love this album. What can I say? These guys make good music. Though I was thrown through a loop when I saw this album considering I discovered these guys through "Moral Orel". Buy it, pirate it, whatever, it's great and you should listen to it.

In my humble opinion, this is the most inaccessible of any Mountain Goat cd. Lyrically inaccessible. This cd is a great puzzle. To get a grasp of the lyrics you will most likely have to read the bible chapter to go with it and mull over the lyrics. Which is cool. For example, I hated 1 Samuel 15:23 because the lyrics seemed ridiculous, but then, when it finally all comes together you're sure to be quite satisfied. As far as standout tracks, I would suggest looking to the brilliant and upbeat Psalms 40:2, the beautiful 1 John 4:16 and the calming Ezekiel 7 & the Permanent Efficacy of Grace

You win some you lose some. I'm not a fan of the album but I loved heretic pride. The stuff I hate about this album: it flows poorly. The songs themselves are fairly boring in regards to instrumentation. And really I feel like the albums sound quality is very noisy while the tone of the instruments is just off. I wish he would spend more time writing songs and working on them then putting out so many albums.

Loved Heretic Pride, and I'm kind of disappionted with the lack of variety on this album. The whole album is a lot slower and to me, has a similar type of mood. It lacks the variety of sound and emotion that comes from juxtaposing San Berndino and Autoclave. For those complaining about the religous message, I don't really see it. The songs titles might be biblical, but they're no more than a jumping off point. The titling the songs was actually pretty creative. Probably better than two stars, but I'm so depressed after how much I enjoyed his other albums, I just can't give it more.

I love this freaking band! Heart felt, poetic lyrics time and time again. John Darnielle is my God.

I made my prediction only half way through the first listen of this album that if fans of most Mountain Goats material didn't care for or simply hated Heretic Pride or Get Lonely, they wouldn't like this album at all. There is this certain group of fans that kind of just want All Hail West Texas over and over again. I however am once again amazed at the way John Darnielle has once again challanged and championed his own ability to write in whatever theme or thought process he decides to.

Thanks colbert for giving me a new band to listen to-love the style and can't wait to hear more