Bob Dylan recorded Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde during an 18-month hot streak in 1965 and 1966, which is widely (and justly) regarded as one of the most impressive fusions of quantity and quality in the history of rock music. John Darnielle doesn't appear to be gunning for Dylan's status as rock's most venerable man of letters (even though he can honestly say he's a better novelist), but it's worth noting Darnielle managed to crank out three excellent albums between April 2020 and June 2021 with his group the Mountain Goats, a hat trick he should point to with pride. Adding to the pleasant surprise, the third Mountain Goats in this run, 2021's Dark in Here, is the best of the three, the work of a man with stories to tell and the skills to make something special from them. Darnielle is a songwriter with a taste for concept albums, and while these 12 tunes don't have a clear thematic connection, they share a common mood: paranoia. Practically everyone in Dark in Here has some sort of secret, a fundamental truth they cannot or will not share, and they're guarded in the extreme as they try to suss out this conspiracy theory or that action from some shadowy other goings on. It's hard to tell if these folks are engaged in espionage or just think people are out to get them for no good reason, and that's part of what makes these stories so fascinating -- Darnielle allows each protagonist to show us what's going on in their mind, and then gives us the choice of deciding just how divorced from reality they may be. Darnielle's bone fides as a songwriter are a given at this point, but his talent for record making has begun matching his skill as a tunesmith and vocalist, and his regular collaborators -- multi-instrumentalist Matt Douglas, bassist Peter Hughes, and drummer Jon Wurster -- are remarkably sure hands with nuance, and as capable of exploring the space and making their way back as any first-class jazz ensemble. And whoever got the idea of bringing in Muscle Shoals legend Spooner Oldham to contribute additional keyboards deserves a raise. Without drawing undo attention to himself, Darnielle has been moving from strength to strength as one of indie rock's most vital and original talents, and Dark in Here demonstrates he's working at the top of his game and it's a joy to hear. Let's just hope there's no motorcycle accident in his future.
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