THE MOUNTAIN GOATS
The Mountain Goats, Ardmore Music Hall, Ardmore, PA 10/3/2025
It was here at the Ardmore music hall that I first saw the Mountain Goats live. Having been a fan of theirs since high school, it had taken me until April 22nd 2018 to finally allow myself to be dragged out of the house to a live show by my even more diehard fan of a friend, Colin. The band was touring in support of their new album, “Goths”: a concept album about the Goth music scene which unceremoniously throws John’s beloved acoustic guitar out of the studio window in favor of a fender Rhodes. This experiment divided the fanbase, but seeing Matt and John’s duo performance of “Wear Black” had me transfixed. In that moment (and the other moment of Matt’s incredible saxophone solo on “Oceanographer’s Choice”) I understood what I was missing: you simply needed to see this band live.
The Mountain Goats, "Wear Black" - Ardmore Music Hall, April 22nd 2018
Nearly two shows a year since that first time in Ardmore, Pennsylvania and I’m standing near the front of the line outside the same venue, excitedly chatting with the few other die-hards like me, swapping stories about past shows, arguing which live tapes on the Internet Archive are best and what we all think about the upcoming album: “Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan”. The first single, “Armies of the Lord”, was dripping with synthesizers and luscious harp texture, but the first new song we heard that night was “Broken to Begin With.” I’m sure when the album releases proper, there will be reviewers with many hot-takes about the production, the instrumentation or even Lin-Manuel Miranda’s backing vocals, but in the front of the crowd with my press badge, I was once again utterly transfixed: this new song felt like uncovering a bootleg recording of some ancient basement show where an unreleased track from “All Hail West Texas” was dragged into the light for a stunning full-band treatment. I couldn’t help but smile behind my lens: same as with the then-new album “Goths” before it, this new album was absolutely going to grow on me.
Shot and Written by Andrew Hoffman
