Albums of the week: Mountain Goats invent a dizzy world in Texan rock opera, and DJ Shadow’s nostalgic return

Mountain Goats, with John Darnielle, second left

John Meagher

Music history is littered with artists who released just one album, or only a handful of them, over the course of a career. Jeff Buckley, the La’s, post-Fugees Lauryn Hill to name a few. Then, at the other end of the spectrum, there are people like ‘cosmic’ experimentalist Sun Ra, who brought out over 100 albums, or US indie survivors Guided by Voices, who have released in the region of 1,000 songs.

Another American outfit, the Mountain Goats, can also be categorised as insanely prolific. It’s been hard to keep up with John Darnielle’s output, but the sprightly group’s latest album, Jenny from Thebes, is their 22nd in 30-odd years. It’s something of a rock opera and it’s a cracker. Ostensibly a sequel to the Mountain Goats’ 2002 album, All Hail West Texas, it features many of the characters who appeared on that album and on other Mountain Goats songs.

Darnielle sees songwriting as an opportunity to invent new worlds, people and scenarios, much like a novelist would. The Jenny of the title is a recovering addict who runs a safe house in the Lone Star State. The songs capture her troubled, fraught existence as well as her dreams and aspirations.

The arresting Murder at the 18th Street Garage — in which Jenny kills her deadbeat husband — is jittery and frantic, Darnielle spitting out the words over a pulse-quickening rush of drums and guitars. The gentle, largely acoustic Water Tower is both a wonderfully evocative portrait of blue-collar America and a description of the disposal of a body — the person, obviously, whom Jenny has just knocked off. It’s a song so pretty and sung so sweetly, that you almost forget how grizzly and brutal the lyrics are.

Strings and horns and texture to several songs and Trina Shoemaker’s production introduces baroque elements while ensuring Darnielle’s songs retain a homespun feel.

DJ Shadow’s debut album, Entroducing — released in 1996 — may not have been a big seller, but it’s had a huge impact on music with many producers, hip-hop artists and sonic experimentalists regarding it as a seminal work.

His new seventh album, Action Adventure, is imbued by a sense of nostalgia. If it sounds as though it is heavily inspired by the 1980s, that’s because it is. Shadow — aka Josh Davis — bought a collection of tapes online that featured snippets from Baltimore radio stations from the 1980s, and that’s a starting point for collage-style music that offers a heightened version of that decade. It’s hugely eclectic too and several tracks, including the discordant, anxiety ridden Witches Vs Warlocks, are wildly imaginative.

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