The Mountain Goats - All Eternal Deck

If John Darnielle’s not going to make you dance, he’ll at least make you think.

His band the Mountain Goats have made a career of performing an indie-folk/rock hybrid that is light on production and heavy on lyricism. Their new release, All Eternals Deck, is largely consistent with this pattern: Each of its 13 songs lay dense, cryptic, poetic lyrics atop relatively straightforward arrangements­—acoustic guitar, piano and drums. Eschewing narrative, Darnielle crafts songs that are rich in metaphor and imagery: “The compasses I came into this world with never really worked so good/Gentle shadows spilling down the hills up on Mulholland at Ledgewood,” he sings in his nasal warble on “Liza Forever Minnelli,” the album’s closer.

The music, though, often suffers due to the supreme emphasis placed on the words. Darnielle rarely strays from the punchy folk formula that characterizes much of the Goats’ catalogue. There are some highlights—the gentle groove of “Beautiful Gas Mask,” the lovely, plaintive blues of “Sourdoire Valley Song”—but by and large the album is not consistently compelling. Allegedly recorded in multiple studios under numerous producers, Decks boasts little variation to show for it. With the exception of higher production values than his earlier lo-fi boombox recordings, this is in many ways the same material that Darnielle and co. have been putting out for two decades.

This distinctive blend of folk and poeticizing made 2002’s Tallahassee and 2005’s The Sunset Tree great albums, but the formula is tired at this point. And though longtime fans may appreciate its familiarity, All Eternals Deck is simply too much of the same.