From the Atlantic:
The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle builds stories out of spare and forgotten parts. Characters and motivations emerge from sharp, tessellating imagery—small details that lock into haunting and coherent narrative. The new Mountain Goats album, Transcendental Youth, finds Darnielle tenderly observing a group of people in varying states of mental distress.And Pitchfork gives it a mixed review:
Song for song, Transcendental Youth doesn't have the consistency of the Mountain Goats' strongest records, and it lacks both variation and character motivation around the middle. "White Cedar", "Until I Am Whole", and "Night Light" are powerful but strike similar emotional chords and end up feeling like a mid-album lull. There's also a vividness of external detail that feels missing from some of these songs: The narrator of the stirring but vague "White Cedar" "woke up on lockdown," but in a classic Mountain Goats song we'd know exactly what he did to get there. Not every character on Transcendental Youth is as memorable as the stars-- the Alpha Couple, the fallen high school running back or the Denton Death Metal dudes-- of the band's sterling back catalog, not every line as immediate or cathartic to yell as fan favorite "No Children"'s "I hope you die! I hope we both die!" But in the moments when he articulates the trivialities and tragedies of his narrators most convincingly, Darnielle finds equal grains of humanity and empathy in people crouched in the darkest corners and blinded by the brightest spotlights. It's not spirituality, escapism, or even optimism, exactly, that he's espousing-- all you know is it's some kind of light.
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