#292 (of 365) "Commandante" The Mountain Goats

The Mountain Goats are one of my favorite bands of all time. I've seen them maybe 20 times in concert. I met and conversed with John Darnielle before he performed at Maxwell's in Hoboken back in 2013 (shortly before the famous venue closed for good because we can't have nice things). And my second novel was very loosely based on the Mountain Goats song "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton". Devil in the Shortwave is an EP released in 2001, between full-length albums The Coroner's Gambit and the classic, almost perfect Tallahassee and right before All Hail West Texas and The Sunset Tree, the two greatest Mountain Goats albums (according to me). So while the EP was still Darnielle solo, you can see the seeds of the expansion of his sound from the basement cassette recordings of the 90s to fuller recordings that I fell in love with as the 2000s emerged. This is one of five tracks from the band to make the countdown and probably the most stripped-down single on this entire list.

"Commandante" - The Mountain Goats // Devil in the Shortwave (2001)