Last night, Melissa, Courtenay and myself went to see The Mountain Goats at the Rosemount Hotel in North Perth. We've seen John Darnielle live before, but not with his bass player, and not since he became quite popular.
Last time, John wasn't even the headline act, and as a result, there weren't as many fans there. It had a very intimate feel to it. He played material from most of his back catalog, including my favourite, "All Hail West Texas"
This time, the venue was much larger and there were a lot more people there. John got a lot more loving from the audience, and he reflected it with a high intensity, high energy (for John) performance. He mostly played songs from his latest album, The Sunset Tree, but still managed to finish off with "The best ever death metal band in denton" which was very good. John's bass player was very good too. His playing was very minimalistic, but placed just perfectly to fatten out the sound coming from this duo. In a departure from two piece convention, he didn't play purely rhythm either, quite often playing melody lines of his own. At one point, he launched into a brief bass solo, the only one I have ever heard that didn't come from the slap bass school of bass playing.
