The constantly entertaining and informative blog Last Plane To Jakarta is the place to go for an introduction to the diverse world of John Darnielle and his band The Mountain Goats.

Darnielle’s blog not only covers his life as the songwriter and frontman of The Mountain Goats but also encompasses everything from Norwegian black metal to his passion for bands such as The Donkeys and Bowerbirds.

The songwriter’s wide-reaching tastes are also evident from the subject matter on the band’s latest album Heretic Pride. The track names place novelists H.P Lovecraft and Sax Rohmer alongside metal band Marduk and fictional serial killer Michael Myers. The obvious link between Lovecraft and Rohmer is their inherent racism… but that was not what drew Darnielle to them.

“I was kind of hesitant to let both titles stand when I realised that myself,” he says, “not that it’s a hard thing to grasp, especially with Rohmer. But for me, it was the lurid pulp imagery, that evil speed-metal vibe in the shadows linking the two. I mean, obviously they’re kind of deplorable dudes, but their names are more shorthand for a class of imagery than a school of philosophy, I’d hope. If you can even call ‘super-batty xenophobia’ a school of philosophy, that is.”

The date of ‘Sept. 15, 1983’ will mean little to most.

Reggae enthusiasts might recognise it as the day upon which Prince Far I was murdered. The song, fittingly, has a mellow reggae feel to it, another stylistic offshoot for Darnielle that works astoundingly well with his own unique sound.

“I’m kind of unprogrammatic about what I listen to,” says Darnielle, “I’m more kid-in-candy-shop about things. If something looks good to me, I grab it, you know? I guess if I stop to think about it, I do think there’s something good in keeping my antennae up for stuff in far-afield genres, yeah. Certainly ‘Sept. 15, 1983’, which is pretty much my favorite song on Heretic Pride, wouldn’t be there if I hadn’t spent much of 2007 listening to old Prince Far I records.”

With Darnielle’s love of metal, newcomers to The Mountain Goats might be surprised that the band’s albums consist of literate, indie folk, powered by Darnielle’s distinctive voice and driving acoustic guitar. It might also be expected that Darnielle would venture further into other fields. “I actually wrote a metal song for a recording session but I think we’re chickening out on it,” he says, “I mean, the problem would be in the getting there. One’s first efforts in a given genre are seldom much good, and neither are one’s second, third or fourth efforts. It takes some work to get good! But having established some small name for myself, I wouldn’t really have the luxury of being able to learn in public, which is the best way to learn to play music. Still, yes, there’s that fantasy of making a record that sounds like the early King Diamond solo records or some Les Legions Noire metal or something. And I have to say, once we hit our quasi-reggae feel on ‘Sept 15 1983’, all of us sort of thought: ‘Why don’t we just play this kind of music all the time?’”

In the early 90s, The Mountain Goats was a name that continually cropped up on small label sampler tapes and obscure EPs. Their full-length boombox-recorded debut Zopilote Machine was called “the best album you didn’t hear in 1996” by Spin magazine and is incredibly brilliant. The boombox became a staple in The Mountain Goats’ process.

There were even complaints from some fans when the band began to move towards conventional recording techniques but albums such as Tallahassee and The Sunset Tree proved that the band’s songs were truly special, regardless of how they were recorded. Now that they have progressed beyond the box, there isn’t really any going back.

“Not back to the box, no,” says Darnielle, “although the notorious box in question is in view here in my living room right now. But I really did all I was ever interested in doing in that voice. You never want to say ‘I’m going to go back and do things exactly as I used to!’ That’s a recipe for failure and reeks of nostalgia. I’m super-allergic to any kind of nostalgia.”

Up until 2004, Darnielle was known for constantly looking outwards with his subject matter and avoiding the personal.

However, We Shall All Be Healed and The Sunset Tree changed that, Darnielle writing from personal experiences of dealing with drug-addicted friends and an abusive step-father. 2006’s Get Lonely, a painful chronicle of a break-up, appeared to continue the trend but appearances can be deceiving.

“Get Lonely was actually not personal” he says. “It was just pretty successful in making it look that way. That was my first step away from the personal two we did. I think what happened was I learned some new moves, like a dancer or a fighter, from WSABH - I pronounce it ‘wasabi’ - and The Sunset Tree - how to get my writing voice down into a more personal place.”

Darnielle has been described as prolific. But he disputes the definition of prolific when applied to songwriters, himself in particular.

“I’m always saying this, but if a songwriter manages to write only one song a month, doesn’t he kind of suck at songwriting? It shouldn’t take thirty days to write two verses, a bridge, and a chorus. It’s not a symphony. So, yeah, I edit hard, and I enjoy the editing process, but I don’t think of myself as terribly prolific. I just don’t subscribe to any romantic-poet ideas about how a songwriter ought to sit around and wait for the song to drop fully formed from a nearby tree or something. You sit down in the morning, you work, and by day’s end you should have something resembling a song. Polish it and work hard on it for a week, do that three weeks out of five, you should find yourself with 36 songs by the end of the year. Not prolific except by lazy standards!”

When I spoke to John Vanderslice recently, he referred to Darnielle as his “first love”. The two have made vague comments about a collaboration called The Comedians and a demo appeared online called ‘Surrounded’ which only upped anticipation for an album. When I bring the subject up with Darnielle, he laughs: “This idea has been on the back burner for many years. 2009, maybe? 2010? You can tell JV I’m ready to go whenever, though, I’m in a collaborative mood lately!”
The Mountain Goats are now more of a band than ever.

Darnielle is joined, as ever, by bassist Peter Hughes and new recruit, drummer Jon Wurster of Superchunk. “I asked Jon to play drums with me at a Christmas show and it went really well. And then Superchunk was on a bill with us, and we played the end of the set together and just loved it. So we toured together in early ‘07 and just loved playing together - such a great feeling, really revitalized the band for Peter and I.”

As for the future, Darnielle wasn’t kidding when he said he’s in a collaborative mood. “I am collaborating but it’s a secret!!” he says, “as to who else I’d like to work with, well, Hank Shermann, the guitarist from Mercyful Fate, though I don’t think that’s likely to ever happen. A choral group called Anonymous 4, I’d do pretty much anything to figure out a way to arrange some stuff with them. Wouldn’t mind touring with The Donkeys, either - they’re great.”

The Mountain Goats play ULU on 15 September 2008.