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 Photo: Aaron Sammut
John Vanderslice is dedicated to analogue recording and plays guitar and sings in a crisp cool casual style that makes his geeky They Might Be Giants-worthy lyrics about his first four-track and David Lynch so odd and funny. The sometimes Mountains Goats producer reflects on September 11 through Tarot cards, and has Alana from The Grates amongst his back-up clappers. With The Mountain Goats onstage The Zoo downshifts into a broody New Orleans club back room. The dim red lighting, the sauna like heat of the January sardine squish and the pointedly nasal accent in John Darnielle’s voice are so intoxicating. It is their last show in Australia and he is out to pin something down, introducing his songs with hilarious insight, using clever emotional allegories.
Rather than flogging their new album they dip back into the past juggling an alternating celebration and mourning for the mistakes and pains of relationships with people and substances and time. Dance Music is delivered with venom, No Children from 2002’s Tallahassee is razor sharp with John going off mic and getting us to sing a chorus of “I hope you die, I hope WE ALL die.” When old favourite Jenny strikes up two excitable sing-a-longers start head banging in uncommon rapture for folk-rock. John Vanderslice joins them onstage for Half Dead and some Beatles style mic sharing and back to back guitar playing before winding up/down with Darnielle leading a choir of dysfunction in a rousing and appropriate rendition of sing-along single, This Year. The encore consists of covers including a Beck song (off of his first tape we are told) and sees two men who, after chatting casually with their audience and sharing bottles of Jamieson’s with the front row, leave in unparalleled respect, having purged us of our anxiety and doubt for at least a few hours. THE SOCKMONKEY
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