“I don’t think I would know anything about good music if KSPC had not been here when I was a kid,” says John Darnielle, frontman and long-time sole member of inimitable indie-folk act the Mountain Goats, the man New Yorker critic Sasha Frere-Jones calls “America’s best non-hip-hop lyricist.”
You can find John’s ringing endorsement of our station in the first 60 seconds or so of the new Mountain Goats concert film The Life of the World to Come. Shot by Rian Johnson (director of the award-winning 2005 neo-noir Brick) in Lyman Hall at Pomona College, just above our basement studio in Thatcher Music Building, the film version of The Life of the World to Come features a single take of John performing the latest Mountain Goats album in its entirety. Beautiful stuff!
This week only, The Life of the World to Come is available to stream in its entirety from Pitchfork.TV. (It was also released as a limited-edition Record Store Day DVD in April.)
The Mountain Goats have deep roots in the Inland Empire music scene: John spent some of his childhood here in Claremont, graduated from Pitzer College in 1995, and released early Mountain Goats recordings on beloved local indie label Shrimper Records. We’re proud to count him as a long-time friend and supporter of KSPC.
- Watch The Life of the World to Come on Pitchfork.TV
- …and check out John’s blog, Last Plane to Jakarta