What is it that fascinates MOUNTAIN GOATS' leader John Darnielle about Belgium so? OK, so maybe it's an under-rated country (though barring An Pierle and, er, Plastic Bertrand there's not been any great musical explosions from there), but does it really merit major references to two songs on one album?
Apparently so, as "Letter From Belgium" and "Your Belgian Things" are two of the best songs on "We Shall All Be Healed", the second album from Darnielle's off-kilter pop/folk collective; a record that implausibly concerns only true stories, unlike his previous effort "Tallahassee," which was allegedly entirely fictional.
I use the term 'implausibly' because, even after numerous listens, it's hard to imagine some of these tales actually happening. But there again, often the best true stories are apparently stranger than fiction, so working on that assumption, let's cut Darnielle and his band some slack and let them work their bizarre, but memorable magic.
Recorded very live in the studio and usually with a semi-acoustic feel, virtually all the 13 songs here are at very least entirely fascinating. Darnielle's not averse to the odd (very odd) pop nugget as "Letter From Belgium", the closing "Pigs That Ran Straightaway Into The Water, Triumph Of" (yes, really) and the recent single "Palmcorder Yajna" prove. The fact that these songs have the ability to get you singing along to a chorus that goes: "And the headstones climbed up the hills" ("Palmcorder Yajna") while sounding like the Pernice Brothers' cousins is definitely a good thing too.
Elsewhere, while most of Darnielle's songs offer more questions than answers, he's got a way of presenting humour and fatalism hand in hand that's hugely endearing. Opening track "Slow West Vultures", for instance, is downhome in execution, but fleshed out with occasional samples and weird noises off, while Darnielle shrugs out his raison d'etre with: "Drinking the dregs, eating the utterly inedible, we do what we do all for you." Aw! And it sounds every bit as funny and affecting as you'd imagine.
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Indeed, Darnielle pulls off a similar trick on several other occasions, notably with "Mole" and the excellent "Against Pollution." The former is deceptively quiet and concerns both mental illness and our hero likening himself to a common garden pest, before briefly freewheeling into a piano waltz midway through, while "Against Pollution" is slow, wistful and wise, with a storyboard involving a hold-up at a liquor store and religion. And it's got a damn good twist at the end. Best song here, no question.
OK, there's the odd slight moment like "The Young Thousands" and "Home Again Garden Grove," (which sounds uncomfortably close to early Guided By Voices in execution) and occasionally the dottiness can remind you unfavourably of They Might Be Giants, but on the whole "We Shall All Be Healed" is a truly fulfilling experience. Long may John Darnielle's muse graze in the fertile uplands of his soul.
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