What is the best Mountain Goats album on the 4AD record label?

I have only heard Get Lonely & Heretic Pride. Of the two I prefer Get Lonely, but everyone I know that digs em insists I gotta hear Sunset Tree.

Thus I abstain til I can hear that one. Will have to buy it this week.

we shall all be healed

The first I heard was We Shall Be Healed, and it's still the weirdest one of the bunch.

At the moment The Sunset Tree still takes it for me. That said, I only grabbed We Shall Be Healed and Heretic Pride in the past two weeks, and the latter is really growing on me. Get Lonely is an incredible piece of work, but it's not something that I can consistently RETURN to, if that makes any sense.

I feel like this may be a fairly common opinion, but who knows. This poll could prove me wrong.

tallahassee

Tallahassee over WSABH on account of "no children".

we shall all be healed by a hair over tallahassee

the others are all good too though

actually i just looked at the tracklists again and now i want to change my vote to tallahassee already :/

WSABH or Heretic Pride. I am utterly encapsulated by Autoclave from the new one but WSABH was my first love. So it's gotta be.

i love tallahassee, but was so disappointed by the first single from the followup that i got off the bus immediately. perhaps i was hasty.

Hasty, indeed.

Typo in the original post: I think all five albums fall someplace between...

from fucking incredible>>>>>very good:

tallahassee>we shall all be healed>heretic pride>sunset tree>get lonely

honestly those first 2 pairs are more or less toss-ups for me, get lonely loses out because it was the most limited of the 5 in scope.

I voted for Sunset Tree. I love Tallahassee too though.

OK obviously I must hear them all before I vote.

Tallahassee has the most of my fav songs. They're all kinda great in their own way though.

Will be kinda surprised if Sunset Tree doesn't come out on top (maybe my fave MG album ever, definitely my fave 4AD, although far too early to say with HP).

All amazing. Tallahassee is the best though, IMO.

The Sunset Tree is the first MG I ever heard and, after a little while warming to its charms, it affected me pretty deeply - so much so that I had to virtually stop listening to it. In the wake of that, Get Lonely was too much of a downer to spend any time with, so I'm pretty delighted with the more upbeat nature of Heretic Pride. I haven't listened to We Shall All Be Healed yet; I gave Tallahassee a fair old work-out but it never grabbed me.

I haven't listened to We Shall All Be Healed enough yet

They're all great. The Sunset Tree has a few songs that are up with my favorite Mountain Goats songs ever: "Song for Dennis Brown", "Love Love Love". Get Lonely is my favorite as an album -- I love the sound and feeling of it and his style of singing on it. I haven't listened to the first two in a while but remember loving them, I imagine I'd have more glowing things to say about them if they were fresher in my memory.

Only one I haven't heard is Tallahassee, though I've heard "No Children" and that's easily in my Mountain Goats top5. Voted for Sunset Tree, it's one of those albums where at first there's just a song or two that stand out but once you've played those out others start to show their charms and it just goes on like that until you know the whole album by heart. Heretic Pride might be one of those, too, haven't spent enough time with it yet, but I love all the Lovecraft and monster movie stuff in the lyrics. We Shall All Be Healed is great, a bit oblique maybe. Get Lost is the only one I really didn't get - disliked the production, and was sorta saddened by the lack of obvious "story songs".

gave a vote to 'the sunset tree', though in fairness i haven't heard the first two. that'll change shortly though

Get Lonely is my favorite as an album -- I love the sound and feeling of it and his style of singing on it.

OTM; my favorite album, of these.

get lonely loses wins out because it was the most limited cohesive of the 5 in scope.

-- deeznuts, Monday, March 24, 2008 8:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

"Against Pollution" puts We Shall All Be Healed over the top. "Your Belgian Things" keeps it there.

I wonder if J0hn secretly votes on things like these :-)

I love all of these with the exception of Get Lonely, which I've never gotten into. But We Shall All Be Healed is one of my favorite albums ever.

I wonder if J0hn secretly votes on things like these :-)

I dunno, but I'd love to know his take on this question...

J0hn: vote for Heretic Pride! I came close, and would not be surprised if it's my #1 in six months time, but it needs more love on this thread.

Heretic Pride is excellent!, whatchu talkin bout, thread?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I try to avoid talking about my own stuff too much, I think it's kind of gauche for authors/musicians/whatever to be all "oh yes well as far as my work is concerned" in public forums - over on the Mountain Goats forums I talk about my stuff some, 'cause that seems different, here I try to just be a participant in ILX so I take a sort a judicial recusal if the subject comes up here

just for the curious: I always like the new one best, that's always true, but I think Get Lonely was sui generis - never really done anything like it, don't expect to again, so it's kind of special to me.

stfu

i always thought Get Lonely was unique, in the sense that it's basically a "breakup" album written by a (presumably) happily married man. it's just a perspective thing: seems like a lot of singer/songwriters have trouble writing "breakup songs" when ***actually going through a breakup***, whereas i think J.D. pulled it off beautifully on Get Lonely, and dude's married! wtf/awesome.

J0hn - did you vote?

can a dude live

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

poor Heretic Pride :(

Good lookin' there, Tallahhassee! Didn't think there were that many votes for it. I'll have to pick up Heretic Pride soon.

ok well i got get lonely off emusic and altho i don't prefer it to tallahassee it's pretty good nonetheless. i'll work my way through the rest of them as download allocations permit

Twin high-maintenance machines!

I think Heretic Pride is suffering from a lack of familiarity more than anything else. John's albums are things that I kind of live in for a while, and while I can certainly see it becoming my favourite in a few months, it's still really fresh.

It's not you, Heretic Pride. It's me. And bad timing.

I couldn't agree more, Alex. I think thats why Get Lonely didn't get as many votes either. Its a very uncomfortable place to live in for more than a little bit at a time, however amazing it is.

Heretic Pride is rapidly moving up this list for me. And I don't have anything before All Hail West Texas. What should I get?

i agree that HP is up there for sure but im not too surprised w/ the vote for the reason you mention alex.

poll-voting guy - full force galesburg is probably the standout of his pre-studio stuff for me, but all the albums are gonna have some real gems at the very least.

heretic pride is growing on me.

wurster is such a monster on drums.

The guy who just votes in polls, you can never, ever go wrong with Zopilote Machine.

Thanks, I'll get those two next.

<i>Nothing For Juice</i> is real good too.

aghadagahblalh

And I don't have anything before All Hail West Texas. What should I get?

my vote goes to The Coroner's Gambit

we shall all be healed

Sunset Tree is a monster but i probably don't need to hear it very many more times in my life :/

I will always have be down to Get Lonely though; that album was my soundtrack for going to college, living away from home for the first time, taking long sad stoned walks around the woods in the winter at night

xp:

I haven't busted it out in a while, but it always gets in my head when this thread is revived:

Is SPIN really circling the drain?