The Mountain Goats - Songs For Pierre Chuvin - VINYL LP

What an enormous room is not only the title of the album by Torres, it is an incantation, a phrase she has had in her head now for several years. In the video for What an enormous room's debut single InchCollect,Inch Scott finds herself alone in rooms that stretch beyond the frame of the camera. You can observe details of the rooms-the rubble and support beams in one, the lighting in the other-but they neither define their purpose nor explain her presence in them; these are large spaces whose lack of definition invites anxiety and even fear. What does Scott do when cast against that kind of uncertainty? She dances. She throws herself against it. When she sings Inchlook at all the dancing I can do,Inch it's an invitation to awe, and there is much here to be awed by. What an enormous room contains wry, Laurie Anderson-esque art rock, Nirvana's rage, and ABBA's strut. Rather than fear the unknown, Scott has chosen to fill it with as much of herself as possible, an artist unwilling to be stifled.

Jenny from Thebes began it's life as many albums by The Mountain Goats do, with John Darnielle playing the piano until a lyric emerged. That lyric, InchJenny was a warrior / Jenny was a thief / Jenny hit the corner clinic begging for relief,Inch became InchJenny III,Inch a song which laid down a challenge he'd never taken up before writing a sequel to one of his most beloved albums All Hail West Texas. Recorded at Tulsa, Oklahoma's legendary The Church Studio with Grammy-winning producer/engineer Trina Shoemaker, Jenny from Thebes is a rich collection of showtunes, pushing Darnielle as a vocalist and The Mountain Goats as a band, broadening their sonic palette once again by leaning into influences like Godspell, Jim Steinman, and The Cars.

Vinyl LP pressing incudes . From Peter Hughes of The Mountain Goats InchThe theme this time around is goth, a subject closer to my heart perhaps than that of any Mountain Goats album previous. And while John writes the songs, as he always has, it feels more than ever like he's speaking for all of us in the band, erstwhile goths (raises hand) or otherwise, for these are songs that approach an identity most often associated with youth from a perspective that is inescapably adult. InchAnyone old enough to have had the experience of finding oneself at sea in a cultural landscape that's suddenly indecipherable will empathize with Pat Travers showing up to a Bauhaus show looking to jam, for example. But underneath the outward humor, there is evident throughout a real tenderness toward, and solidarity with, our former fellow travelers - the friends whose bands never made it out of Fender's Ballroom, the Gene Loves Jezebels of the world - the ones whose gothic paths were overtaken by the realities of life, or of it's opposite. InchIt's something we talk about a lot, how fortunate and grateful we are to share this work, a career that's become something more rewarding and fulfilling than I think any of us could have imagined. We all know how easily it could've gone the other way, and indeed for a long time did.Inch