The Mountain Goats: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert From The Archives

We’ve been filming Tiny Desk concerts for more than 10 years. While revisiting our archives, we discovered that some of our earliest concerts never made it to YouTube! Watch The Mountain Goat’s Tiny Desk concert from 2010: Stephen Thompson | January 3, 2010 The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle keeps getting quieter, as his raw early bedroom recordings and bare-knuckle anthems continue to make way for polished ballads that whisper, seethe and mourn. The recent The Life of the World to Come at first feels strangely timid, but as its crushingly sad words sink in (“I am a flightless bird / There’ll be no more after me,“ and so on), it hits slowly but deeply — less a punch than a gnawing ache. In person, Darnielle’s twitchy, nervous energy serves his fearless songwriting well: He exudes gentility and good humor in conversation, but his performances are utterly committed, with intensity