Wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to see the petite guitar goddess Kaki King perform in her hometown. She started off her set with impressive guitar tapping and picking skills and I was quite floored on how talented she was. Although some of her songs wound up being a bit too long and repetitive, her set contained a few live gems.
Finally hitting NY after their release of their latest album Heretic Pride, The Mountain Goats played in the larger NY venues for 2 shows. Despite the sold out audiences, John Darnielle is still able to quiet the audience to a whisper during his songs, and then make them scream out predictable song requests between songs. Although the show was musically entertaining I felt this one didn’t stand up to his recent performances. Performing songs off their Black Pear Tree EP with Kaki KIng, John pushed his songs to unique guitar-driven and jazzy melodies. His intro story to the beautifully bare song “Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is in Another Castle” was very entertaining. “The song is sung from the point of view of Toad. If you know who Toad is, that’s all I’ll need to tell you. If you don’t who Toad is, you better recognize.” However the fact that he didn’t play “Lovecraft in Brooklyn” at a venue IN Brooklyn was a huge disappointment.
Pictures from the show.