#Matt Douglas

[goingtothebes]

pictures from various goats shows last week!! i don't recall which ones!!!

[men-who-meow]

there are a thousand songs about love and heartbreak but only one about the best ever death metal band in denton

[yourfavealbumisgender]

Beat The Champ by The Mountain Goats is Butch!

requested by anon

[unloneliest]

i feel like mountain goats tumblr is connected enough and niche enough a community we could make a decision en masse about a back-up place to have community—i'm not jumping ship, i'll be on tumblr until it's fully deleted, but i'd like to have a failsafe for when it does eventually die.

what options are there out there? is anyone else interested? are there older, inactive blogs on here people would want to archive somehow before this website goes under? is there a way of doing so in an organized fashion?

what do you all see as the central pieces of tmg posting? what format of posts or types of sharing and discussion and joking and sillyness and creation of art are priorities when u think about making community with other fans?

please, please treat this post as a discussion even if we don't know each other. tmg tumblr is very dear to my heart. let's stick together.

[karmicbias]

Another fucking amazing Mountain Goats show on the books!

I made and traded pins, sang and screamed and danced and cried.

I met and fist bumped John!

Everything feels right in the energy of that room.

We got a set that feels nearly impossible.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Hurray For The Riff Raff Album Review: The Past is Still Alive

(Nonesuch)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

On The Past is Still Alive, the latest and best studio album from Hurray For The Riff Raff, Alynda Segarra looks back at a specific era of their life to pay tribute to chaos and imagine what could come from it. Their seemingly legendary but very real past is well-known by now: At age 17, Segarra left their home in the Bronx and hopped freight trains, played in a hobo band, and settled in New Orleans, a formative period of simultaneous struggle and freedom. That combined ethos has pervaded all Hurray For The Riff Raff records, but on The Past is Still Alive, Segarra's finally telling the tale, applying what they learned to the present day.

Notably, Segarra started recording The Past is Still Alive a month after their father died; while his voice appears literally on the album's final track "Kiko Forever", his musical uplift acts as a buoy for Segarra throughout the whole thing. Though they had worked with producer Brad Cook and drummer Yan Westerlund prior, Segarra had never recorded with the rest of the album's laundry list of stellar contributors, from Meg Duffy of Hand Habits, and Mike Mogis to guest vocalists Anjimile, Conor Oberst, and S.G. Goodman. That Segarra conquered a period of vulnerability to record the album with bonafide strangers is a terrific feat, but not necessarily surprising: This is a person who has the ability to treat even their fellow band members like the audience, recipients of some remarkable stories full of biography and symbolism alike.

Throughout The Past is Still Alive, Segarra alternates between timeless metaphor and hyper-specific details. On "Buffalo", they remark, simply, that "Some things take time," whether presently forming love or society's death-by-1000-cuts treatment of the oppressed. Segarra sings over strummed acoustic guitar and Mogis' pedal steel, the perfect accompaniment to earned wisdom. "Hawkmoon", on the other hand, is more electric, full of Duffy's bluesy riffing, akin to the epic sound of The Navigator, fitting for a song inspired by a lasting figure: the first trans woman Segarra ever met. As if to project to a stadium full of folks looking to honor Ms. Jonathan, Segarra sings a heartland rock-style salute: "She opened up my mind in the holes of her fishnet tights / Dildo waving on her car antenna and / I could've ridden shotgun forever." Pseudo title track "Snakeplant (The Past Is Still Alive)" juxtaposes both memories of chaos and lessons learned. As Segarra recounts shoplifting and having sex on top of an island of trash, they make sure to tell you what they took from a life among "the barrel of freaks": "Test your drugs / Remember Narcan / There's a war on people, don't you understand?" Duffy's distorted guitar and Matt Douglas's skronking saxophone create beauty from Segarra's warnings of disorder.

Some of the best songs on The Past is Still Alive are incredibly life-affirming. Opener "Alibi" is a plea to drug-addicted childhood friends, a promise that, "Maybe we'll start a band," on a song that introduces the swath of instrumentation present throughout the record, like gentle piano, steady drums, echoing guitar, and pedal steel. "Ogallala" and "Colossus of Roads" prioritize survival in a harsh world--Segarra compares themselves to the musicians still playing on the deck of a sinking Titanic--but not without a wish that the world itself would burn. Westerlund's crashing drums take the former to its logical conclusion, while the latter, inspired by the 2022 Club Q shooting in Colorado springs, makes the case for empathy along the way to the apocalypse. "Wrap you up in the bomb shelter of my feather bed," Segarra sings, fighting cruelty with compassion atop Phil Cook's mournful dobro and organ and Westerlund's funereal drum rolls.

It's a line in "Hourglass" that sticks with me the most among the lyrical and instrumental brilliance of The Past is Still Alive. Recounting feeling out-of-place among the status-obsessed, Segarra shifts their perspective. "Suddenly, a boulder's just sand in an hourglass," they sing. Though they spend much of the album concentrating on time and place, they recognize that our mark on earth is statistically insignificant, something we can use to our advantage rather than something that makes us feel small. What many in society consider important--celebrity, power, money--is volatile compared to the power of your own agency, of giving life to the past.

[tmgimageaday]

Matt Douglas, John Darnielle, Peter Hughes, and Jon Wurster, The Sylvee, 2022

[lennengrad]

had this great pic of john so i decided to fuck around w thé instagram ai backdrop feature 🫡

[thejaymo]

The Dread | Weeknotes

On Thursday I got 'The Dread'.

I’ve spent all weekend at a friends wedding. Ceremony and reception yesterday, and then brunch etc today. It was so nice to see everyone; old friends etc. Everyone was all dressed up and looking glamorous. The bride and groom sang some songs together, and their old band got back together and played some tunes at the reception too – which was ace. The roof of the venue was decorated in 100’s of…

[goingtothebes]

"what's in that for you? really funny posts"

Transcript:

"Hi I'm John Darnielle and this is Matt Douglas. The keyboard- the keyboard wing of the Mountain Goats. And uh, I just wanted to remind you uh. This is my personal Instagram but tomorrow the album comes out and if you buy a physical copy then-- if everybody who follows me alone buys a physical copy we will have the number one album in the country. What's in that for you? Really funny posts *laughs*. Just saying. Okay, bye."

[men-who-meow]

sometimes i still feel the bruise by the mountain goats is just margaritaville for mentally ill queer people

[astralbondpro]

The IT Crowd // S02E03: Moss and the German

[elijahwoodnot]

saw the Mountain Goats in concert semi recently and stood maybe ten feet from the stage and during Heretic Pride tumblr’s beloved Mr Mountain Goat himself John Darnielle and i met eyes and absolutely belted the chorus together and tbh i don’t think i’ll be getting over that anytime soon

[karmicbias]

Just in case the handful of y'all out there were wondering, I'm also Extremely Normal about bands other than Ghost.

Went to the Mountain Goats last night at Wolf Trap and I don't think I've ever seen John Darnielle so absolutely ecstatic to perform. What joy. What energy. I came to the show with my best friends, who also happen to be my ex (who got me into the band in the first place) and his partner (who was attending her first tmg show).

He and I sang the entire last quarter of the set together. Hugged during No Children because we survived our breakup and still love each other. Held his partner's hand during Up the Wolves because she was transfixed and sobbing. Put my arm around his shoulders during Heel Turn 2 because he was getting emotional, too.

It's a good weird life sometimes, if you are lucky enough to find your people.

[zanephillips]

MATT SMITH and DOUGLAS BOOTH Christopher and His Kind (2011) dir. Geoffrey Sax

[tmgimageaday]

Matt Douglas and John Darnielle, Webster Hall, 2022