Tallahassee

Since 1995, the general rule has been for Mountain Goats albums to feature a mixture of home-recorded and studio songs. November of 2002 finds Darnielle and Hughes locked in Tarbox Road Studios in upstate New York with producer Tony Doogan (Mogwai, Belle and Sebastian, Mojave 3, The Delgados) using great big pieces of equipment to conjure paranoid visions of a couple permanently on the cusp of divorce. The characters that populate Tallahassee (referred to by fans as "the Alpha couple," owing to the word "Alpha" in the titles of previous songs about these two) are two people who are fairly well convinced that they were once in love, but who have now stayed drunk so long that they're not sure of much else beyond the mutually destructive urge that continues to hold their house together. The songs are dark; some of them are funny (in a guilt-soaked sort of way); most of them feature either radios, outdated modes of transportation, or howls of anguish disguised as requests for spare change. Tallahassee finds the Alpha couple at their angriest and most grimly comic.