[photo by @octagoneyes]
The Mountain Goats‘ current tour is called the “Brine Crypt Exodus” and it was inspired by a very special night last April when the band played a show at City Winery with a pared-down stage show. While not quite “unplugged”, the set stripped down the Mountain Goats to the basics and the result was an incredible inspired set that we were very fortunate to have captured.
The second night of the tour reached New Haven Connecticut on Saturday night in a fairly large theater in the center of town. The College Street Music Hall sits about a half block from the south border of the campus of Yale University and its in the “theater district” — indeed the location was not even a rock venue until May of 2015. The result of the recent upgrade of the facility is that the hall is outfitted with a customized state of the art sound system and prime seating configurations that compliment the acoustics and classic charm of the vintage theater. We agree with the person on our twitter feed that College Street is one of the best locations in the tri-state area to experience a concert.
With that backdrop and with the opening night of the tour (Woodstock) under their belts, the Mountain Goats began this show inspired and fully in sync with each other. The band is currently a quartet and each member shined throughout this night. The addition of multi-instrumentalist Matt Douglas permits the band to add keys, horns or an extra guitar to fortify the sound. Jon Wurster on drums and Peter Hughes on bass are simply one of the best rhythm sections around these days. Since this tour is technically not in support of any new release, the Mountain Goats also felt unfettered when it came to song selection. As a result, the setlist was culled from the deep recesses of the back catalog and we saw songs we’d never experienced before in our two dozen Mountain Goats shows.
The Mountain Goats will return to NYC later this month for three shows at the City Winery, where they played to great success last year. The shows are all sold-out but if by chance a ticket falls your way, don’t miss these nights.
I recorded this set with the Schoeps cards mounted inside of the soundboard area and blended that capture with a soundboard feed mixed expertly by long-time touring FOH Brandon Eggleston. The sound quality is superb. Enjoy!
Download the Complete Show in FLAC or MP3 at Archive.org [HERE]
Stream the Complete Show:
Mountain Goats
2016-04-02
College Street Music Hall
New Haven CT
Digital Master Recording
Soundboard + Audience Matrix
Soundboard [engineer Brandon Eggleston] + Schoeps CCM4u Cardioids > Sound Devices 744t > 2 x 24bit 48kHz wavs > Soundforge (post-production) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3/tagging via Foobar)
Recorded and Produced by nyctaper
Setlist:
[Total Time 1:31:32]
01 Woke Up New
02 Until I Am Whole
03 Maize Stalk Drinking Blood
04 Damn These Vampires
05 See America Right
06 Sometimes I Still Feel the Bruise [Trembling Blue Stars]
07 Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan
08 [banter – sketches]
09 You’re in Maya
10 [banter – whatever you want]
11 From TG and Y
12 [banter – TRAP laws]
13 Wizard Level
14 Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace
15 [banter – Holiday Inn Express]
16 Get Lonely
17 New Monster Avenue
18 [banter – wonder buddy]
19 First Few Desperate Hours
20 Oceanographer’s Choice
21 The Young Thousands
22 [encore break]
23 No Children
24 Up the Wolves
25 This Year
26 [second encore break]
27 Spent Gladiator 2
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God bless you.
This is the best Mountain Goats taping I’ve ever heard by a wide margin.
Great recording, great show. I would love to hear that banter!
All of the banter is included in the recording available for download in two different formats.
The banter is removed from the streaming version to allow for individual tracks to be highlighted, shared, reposted, etc. It would be weird to have individual tracks for banter on Soundcloud.