John Darnielle has made too many albums for me to keep track of. I started listening to him with "The Coroner's Gambit", and I loved that record. After that, I couldn't keep up with his releases. It wasn't until "The Sunset Tree" came out that I found another Mountain Goats album I wanted to listen to over and over, the whole thing. This album has a unified sound, tied together with the pain of abuse and the ecstasy of being done with the abuse. I think it's incredibly rare for an album to have a great unified sound in addition to having a whole bunch of amazing songs that sound great on their own. It has 13 tracks, and 5 or 6 of them could just about carry a Mountain Goats album on their own. These songs represent a mixture, too, of classic Mountain Goats anti-folk, like "You or Your Memory" or "Song For Dennis Brown", and a newer, more polished and steady pop songs like "This Year" and "Dance Music". This doesn't feel like a transitional album for Darnielle, though - this feels like he's found the mixture he wants and executed it perfectly. I think "Love Love Love" straddles that line just right, too, so I'll include that one here (also because it's my current favorite track from the album):
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