'Bleed Out' by the Mountain Goats
John Darnielle is not a macho vocal presence, even among fellow indie-style singer-songwriters; Ben Gibbard and Conor Oberst sound hairy-chested by comparison. But they, in Death Cab for Cutie and Bright Eyes respectively, haven’t taken on as many purportedly masculine, definitely nerdy topics as Darnielle has while fronting the Mountain Goats.
Bleed Out, the 21st Mountain Goats full-length, locks and loads action-movie tropes the way 2015’s Beat the Champ leaped into pro wrestling and 2019’s In League with Dragons pored over tabletop role-playing games: with a trainspotter’s passion and a secretive pop fan’s lust for melody.
Muscular melody, that is: “Training Montage” opens the album with acoustic guitar, but Darnielle, Matt Douglas, and Bully frontwoman Alicia Bognanno—no distressed damsel, she also produces Bleed Out—soon toss around electrified chords like they’re post-montage brewskis.
Bassist Peter Hughes and drummer Jon Wurster keep this A-Team in line, though, and a song like “Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome” runs on the testosterone-fueled punk rock that Wurster also buttresses when playing for burly brutes like Bob Mould and Superchunk.
Action movies sometimes pause for something approximating contemplation, and Bleed Out does the same, with the relatively funky “Bones Don’t Rust” and the Dire Straits hints of “Guys on Every Corner” letting adrenaline settle into the Miami Vice memories of Douglas’s saxophone in the latter track.
Darnielle’s characters show glimmers of understanding that they’re acting out roles, and Darnielle shows awareness that he’s more Redford than Eastwood, because every lovely note of “Make You Suffer” contradicts the song’s name, and the titular finale fades out with too much rough prettiness for Lee Marvin to countenance.
Bleed Out could be Darnielle’s response to bad action-movie music choices (cf. Thor: Love and Thunder’s riot of Guns N’ Roses songs); it definitely is a marvelous Mountain Goats theme album for those of us who aren’t afraid to cry—in the dark—when the protagonist dies.
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