Jubilee Offer: Patriotic Classics for £2.50 |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Listen to Samples and Buy MP3s
Songs from this album are available to purchase as MP3s. Click on "Buy MP3" or
view the MP3 Album.
|
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
The Mountain Goats are not really a band, more an idea that first occurred to prolific American singer-songwriter John Darnielle in the early 1990s. We Shall All Be Healed is the Mountain Goats' second album for 4AD, following 2002's excellent Tallahassee, and Darnielle has largely maintained the course he set with the earlier record. The songs are as lyrically intricate as they are musically simplistic, Darnielle's voice delivering his odd, evocative words over a clattering backdrop of mostly acoustic instruments. It is occasionally quite an abrasive listen, but on the more tuneful tracks, such as "Quito" and the splendidly titled "Linda Blair Was Born Innocent", it's not hard to imagine that Darnielle's brusque, fundamentalist approach to recording might, if the planets align in an especially weird way, work for him the way it did for the White Stripes. --Andrew Mueller
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
These are my impressions of the album: refreshing, relaxing, well produced. The album is a lot more finely produced than anything before Tallashasse but though this sound is different, it's a very nice album. I wasn't sure what to make of it first but this is certainly not a regression, the lyrics are catchy and memorable, the acoustic is as nice as ever and John's voice is piercing in a very pleaseant way. I wouldn't call it amazing though, and some of the songs are slighty more generic imo, not in a glaring way but perhaps slighly more mainstream. This isnt negative, I like the way their sound is progressing. It's an album you could put on repeat for hours and still be captivated.
Keep up the good work!
Keep up the good work!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
It probably goes without saying that I am a huge fan!
The Mountain Goats are a popular and hard working live band. But their recordings can vary dramatically in style and quality. Musically it does not get much simpler, a guitar and nasal singing voice, for the most part.
But this is a cracking selection of songs. Imagine coming home slightly drunk and hearing the best busker you ever heard in your life.
My favourite song here is Palmcorder Yajna, but there are a lot of songs on the album that I cannot imagine being without. Overall the album feels energetic and optimistic, even with its dark themes. If you like this, then I would particularly recommend All Hail West Texas, though the Mountain Goats music offers an array of riches.
The Mountain Goats are a popular and hard working live band. But their recordings can vary dramatically in style and quality. Musically it does not get much simpler, a guitar and nasal singing voice, for the most part.
But this is a cracking selection of songs. Imagine coming home slightly drunk and hearing the best busker you ever heard in your life.
My favourite song here is Palmcorder Yajna, but there are a lot of songs on the album that I cannot imagine being without. Overall the album feels energetic and optimistic, even with its dark themes. If you like this, then I would particularly recommend All Hail West Texas, though the Mountain Goats music offers an array of riches.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
14 reviews
12 of 15 people found the following review helpful
best album of 2004
26 Feb 2004
Format:Audio CD
In addition to having the most idiosyncratic song titles ever to grace the back of a CD jacket, We Shall all be Healed is John Darnielle's best song writing yet. Look for 15-20 lines on this CD to kill you again and again. The music is a little less eclectic than on Tallahassee, their last studio album, but it's also more cohesive, sticking mostly with John's acoustic guitar, Peter Hughes on bass, and Franklin Bruno on piano. That is until Mole, a song so sparse it can't help breaking your heart. It opens with a few verses about the narrator visiting someone in the hospital (all the character's in these stories seem to be speed addicts with vague hopes and dreams that set them apart from each other while their situations bind them firmly together). The song then breaks into a piano and guitar bit that moves along slowly but surely, like clouds marching determined across the sky. I can only describe John's strumming here as fatalistic -- I can only assure you that this will make sense once you hear it.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
A Songwriter's Dream
16 Aug 2005
Format:Audio CD
The debate that I've heard often about this album is whether the slick production values take away from the Mountain Goats feel. If you're unfamiliar with John Darnielle's previous albums, one of the big draws was that he recorded directly to a boom box. I don't believe that this retro recording style was what really made his work great. The man is simply a great songwriter, in the vain of such great Americana-ists as Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. To that end, "We Shall All Be Healed" definitely stands tall and proud with his other works. A few legends surround the method by which Darnielle develops the stories for his albums. However he does it, the albums come together as cohesive observations of different walks of life across the country, and this album is no exception. The story here is occassionally unclear to me, as it sometimes seems to switch narrators, but the songs are beautiful and emotional. By the end of it, you'll care deeply for these charaters, thanks to both the lyrical precision and the haunting melodies.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
the best Mnt Goats record so far and that's saying something
6 Feb 2004
Format:Audio CD
John Darnielle has been quoted as saying that this record is by far his best work ever and I am inclined to agree. And that means something coming from a guy who owns every record this one-man virtuoso has put out. Like his last album Tallahassee, We Shall All Be Healed is a concept album. Each song is written for and about a group of tweakers from Claremont CA. As unromantic a subject as that is, John turns their plight into an epic. He turns their struggles into poetry. He gives words to desires that most people will (hopefully) never know. The first single, "Palmcorder Yajna" is an instant favorite. It is a straightforward Mnt. Goats song with everything you have come to love: Simple strumming, intense nasal singing and beautiful imagery of the profane. The thing that sets it apart is the amazing tone that Darnielle captures. I can only describe it as the hope of the hopeless. "Your Belgian things" is a slower and heartbreakingly beautiful lament while "Linda Blair Was Born Innocent" is a dark and powerful ode to the burning desire to get spun. John Darnielle teamed with other one-man wonder band John Vanderslice in the production of this album and it works. It maintains the connections to John's Low Fi beginnings while giving him an atmosphere in which he is able to make music that is not only lyrically charged but aesthetically beautiful as well. I can't recommend this album strongly enough.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
