John Darnielle: meaning, musicals, and The Mountain Goats

The Mountain Goats started out as a solo project by then-psych nurse John Darnielle recording directly into a boombox in his room. Their latest album (Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan) is a "full-on musical", complete with french horn and a string section, recorded on what sound like very nice microphones. Darnielle's tastes and influences are esoteric and wide ranging, and so is this conversation with Ce Benedict, in which they discuss religious schisms, instrumental choices, and musical theatre. John Darnielle's new book, This Year: 365 Songs Annotated actually contains 366 songs and is published by Scribe.

You can listen to John Darnielle: meaning, musicals, and The Mountain Goats online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

John Darnielle: meaning, musicals, and The Mountain Goats is an episode from The Music Show.

This episode is 0:54:36 long.

This episode was published on Apr 19, 2026.

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