Last Wednesday, a near capacity crowd squeezed into the Wonder Ballroom to welcome back one-time Portland resident John Darnielle and his band, the Mountain Goats. It was a welcome homecoming for Darnielle. Seemingly every chord-change and crash called forth a gigantic smile, the likes of which is more often associated with the climax of a face-melting guitar solo or a triumphant burst of pyrotechnics.
Between songs, Darnielle chatted with the crowd like an old friend. During one mid-song yarn, he recounted a visit he made a few years ago to his old apartment building near Memorial Coliseum. After slipping inside behind a resident, he found a scuff mark he had left on a door some fifteen years prior. He mostly glossed over the darkness that caused him to make that mark, but it was there in the song he wrote about that time, and he played it with the same frenzied energy and irrepressible spirit he brought to the tales of wrath and damnation and unanswered prayers that populate the newest Mountain Goats offering, The Life of the World to Come.
In the middle of the set, the band went backstage and Darnielle welcomed Owen Pallett of opener Final Fantasy to the stage to accompany him on three songs. On “Hebrews 11:40,” Darnielle put down his guitar and corkscrewed and jumped about to the lone accompaniment of Pallett’s violin. Between verses, he shouted defiantly, “I’m not afraid to dance in this town!” With that, a few near the front took his cue and joined in the thrashing along to quiet violin.
By the end of the show, Darnielle’s suit jacket was in a far-flung corner of the stage, and he was wading into the front row, laying hands upon the believers during a fierce and confessional rendition of “Against Pollution.” The encore ended on a quieter note, and after the show ended, the evening’s final benediction, “Love Love Love,” still fluttered quietly under the crowd’s breath as they made their way down the stairs and out into the night.
