Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan

John Darnielle, the key creative mind behind the Mountain Goats, is one of the finest storytellers in indie rock, a tunesmith who can draw characters and give them compelling lives with his lyrics. (As a successful novelist, his literate style ought to be a given, but hes also better at this than most of his peers.) He also has a talent for melodies and has mastered the art of giving an album a narrative through-line. All of this makes one wonder -- why hasnt this man written a musical for the stage? He certainly has the skill set for it, and as it happens, the notion has occurred to Darnielle. In the publicity handout for 2025s Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan, he said, "We did (2023s) Jenny from Thebes, which I called a fake musical a lot, but this one is actually going for it." Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan certainly has a story that could hold an audience -- a fishing boat is caught in a storm and the surviving crew members end up on an uncharted island, where they struggle to survive and maintain their sanity amidst their desperate privation. And like a good musical, the songs on Through This Fire dont always reflect every bit of the story at hand, but they certainly reinforce major moments and give the protagonists a chance to speak their minds as they fight against fate. (The LP even has a grand overture to set up what follows.) For a man who used to record albums on a boom box with just his guitar for backing, Darnielle has certainly learned the value of a good, full-bodied arrangement, and his bandmate Matt Douglas has given these tracks expressive string and woodwind charts that add depth and color to the melodies, and theres a Technicolor vibrancy and dynamics in this recording that certainly go beyond what the average indie rock band is aiming for. To give the set even more theatrical credibility, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the man who brought you Hamilton, contributes backing vocals on four numbers. (On the other end of the scale, Tommy Stinson of the Replacements plays bass on two songs.) Darnielle has also grown as a vocalist in recent years, and if his instrument has not much more range than before, his phrasing and sense of where to place the notes and how hard to hit them is superb here. Ultimately, Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan plays more like a concept album than the Original Cast album from some unproduced musical waiting for its moment on Broadway, but this music confirms the Mountain Goats have talent thats on par with their ambitions, and this album is a thoughtful, dramatically satisfying experience. ~ Mark Deming