The Sunset Tree

I was reminded today of one of my favourite albums of all time - The Sunset Tree by The Mountain Goats.


I'm pretty sure everybody has that one album, or if you don't like to narrow it down, that one band that got them through a hard time. I have a lot of music that's attached to different memories, and while The Smiths, Jeff Buckley and The Cure each got me through various hard times, and during the most recent Hard Time, this one album pulled me through. I appreciate every single lyric, the way the album flows, every song is perfect in its place.

I'm quite sure everybody knows The Mountain Goats from the time that Triple J relentlessly played one single - This Year - which is certainly a bit of an anthem for the down-and-out.
"I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me".
I lived by that chorus for a long time. I'm going to sound cliche now and say that the album is really best listened to complete and in place and bla bla bla it's a journey, wank over.

Here's one of my favourite songs on the album although it's insanely hard to choose just one, this one is called Dilaudid.



Late last year I had the immense pleasure of seeing The Mountain Goats play at the Zoo and it was pretty moving. The lead singer John Darnielle played the first half of the set acoustic on his own, and unfortunately in the second half told us he had the flu and stepped down to let the bassist sing. But that didn't matter because the second half was rockin and the crowd was singing along loud enough that it eclipsed his voice - you could really tell from the very last song they played - No Children - that this band means a lot to a lot of people.


Check out this photoset I took from the night, and lastly I hope you get a little bit of joy from No Children too. Get rowdy!