We Shall All be Healed, Mountain Goats, 2004, :44
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
I knew almost nothing about the Mountain Goats when I started this one up; I'd heard a couple of songs and enjoyed them. Judging from this album, they're pretty clearly a one-man operation. This is a song cycle loosely based around some friends of the singer who got strung out on heroin. It's an enthralling, literate, unflinching, and dazzling set of songs. Singer and mastermind John Darnielle sounds like Phil Ochs leading the Decembrists, Collin Meloy if he were writing true life stories rather than fantasies. It's sad and sharp and uncompromising. Favorite tracks: "Letter From Belgium," "The Young Thousands," "Against Pollution."
