Video: John Darnielle, The Sign

This is John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats doing an acoustic cover of the Ace of Base song The Sign. It is absolutely glorious and having watched this I now love him three times as much as I did before, for both his ongoing personal awesomeness and for his abiding love for Ace of Base.

I also learned that the lyric is “love is demanding / without understanding” and not “love is demanding / rhythm to understanding” which means I have been singing the wrong thing all of these years. Whoops!
 

(21/22) the Mountain Goats - The Sign (Live at Bottom of the Hill 3/2/2008)

Band I Really Like: The Mountain Goats

The Mountain Goats started making music in 1991. I learned about them considerably later, and they quickly became one of my favorite sources of what I can only call “dark dry bitter hilarious self-laceration you can sing along to.”

Today I bring you four videos – an introduction, of you haven’t met them before, a celebration if you have.

Woke Up New from Get Lonely, directed by Rian Johnson, who also directed the truly excellent Brick:

The Mountain Goats - Woke Up New

 

No Children, from Tallahassee; please note how the audience here is, in fact, singing along with great verve. Also, I really, really love this song, because it is kind of mean and awful and yet so perfectly describes a particular post-break-up feeling that there have been times I wanted to call someone and just play it down the phone at them at top volume. (I didn’t.)

http://youtu.be/JPy_fiv3sAw

 

Autoclave, from Heretic Pride; if I was going to make myself a warning label, it would include, among other things, the lyrics to this song:
http://youtu.be/RZ-2kbculaI

 

Sax Rohmer #1, also from Heretic Pride, because “I am coming home/to you/with my own blood in my mouth” gets me every time:

"Sax Rohmer #1" by The Mountain Goats