The Coroner's Gambit

Rate It! Avg: 4.5 (166 ratings)
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Total Tracks: 16   Total Length: 43:00

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Excellent

emrf

This is the Mountain Goats album I come back to the most. It dates from before John Darnielle switched to studio recording (before he went electric!), but he already takes some steps towards accessibility here. And lyrically he's in top form. One standout is 'Family Hapiness' - Darnielle is known for bitter songs about failed relationships, and this one is the bitterest of them all. It almost rivals 'No Children.' But there's plenty more to dig into here, too, like an actual love song (although it's cheekily titled 'There Will Be No Divorce'), some top-class abstraction on 'Jaipur' (delivered with such force it's almost frightening), and a few gentler songs like 'Onions' to boot. I could go on. But you know what to do.

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get this now!

littlejeans

this is a beautiful album. i was impressed and in love on the very first listen. i would encourage you to get this before you get any other album of his. this is john at his best. it is lo-fi (recorded in a bathroom?) and gorgeous.

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GutShotRecord

ShakyToo

My first taste of TMG, I loaded this a week ago and can't stop listening to it. If Sinatra had put this much anger, love, longing and living into his performances he would have made it big. As my friend above says, there are moments here that are absolutely transcendant, a few times when John's voice breaks I'm sure that he is weeping. Songs that are explosive, songs that are bitterly tender. Great song-writing and gutshot execution, this is the sound of art.

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Wow

ArmondoMfume

Amazing, unimpeachable, incredible songs...

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Prepare to be destroyed

Antagonist

I can still remember the first time the 1940's Jazz that begins this album quickly broke into the somewhat frantic beginning of Jaipur, the actual first song on this album. What followed was a series of moments I wish I could relive for the first time ad infinitum. Even though I've heard this album literally hundreds of times since then, it never ceases to amaze me how brilliant one man can be, in so many ways, at one time. The songs on the Coroner's gambit are true masterpieces, whether you like the Darnielle sound or not. You will not find lines as intense as "and I'm grateful our children aren't here to see this / if you'd ever seen fit to give me children" anywhere else. While TMG have written a huge number of brilliant songs, this album uniquely stands out as being one of the most intense and brilliant albums ever conceived. And I really do mean that. Download this album now!

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one of John's best

BarmyFotheringayPhipps

It's not quite true that one Mountain Goats record is pretty much like another, although it's true that John Darnielle is a wildly consistent singer/songwriter. This is one of his strongest albums because there's a sense of passion here that's missing from some of his earlier records, an urgency that adds an uncharacteristic sense of anger to songs like "Jaipur" and "Trick Mirror."

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They Say All Media Guide

After a three-year gap between proper albums (thought three singles collections were released during the interregnum), The Mountain Goats returned in classic form with The Coroner’s Gambit. It’s all here for both the devoted disciple and the new convert: low-fi production and highly literate lyrics, songs performed with simultaneous intensity and subtlety. Populating the album with images of cooking, gardening, relationships, and death (four common motifs in the Mountain Goats’ body of work), and name dropping the likes of Tolstoy and LeAnn Rimes along the way, songwriter and principle Mountain Goat John Darnielle’s lyrics are as deceptively simple and idiosyncratic as ever. Much like D.C. Berman of the Silver Jews, Darnielle’s lyrics could easily stand alone without musical accompaniment, which maybe explains why he’s usually satisfied recording on a boom box: slick production would just be distracting. And while much of the material on The Coroner’s Gambit is captured in this modest way, five songs were recorded with Simon Joyner and members of Lullaby for the Working Class and Bright Eyes. But the resulting songs — though symphonic compared to most of the output of the Mountain Goats, adding additional guitar and minimal string accompaniment — are still well within the friendly confines of lo-fi. – Jason Nickey

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