ARE ALL THOSE YOUR GUITARS? Mountain Goats epic posting, part three in a series of I do what I want! (No, seriously, I’ll try to finish up tonight.)

The Sunset Tree: I am so easy for those songs where some indie-rock guitar singer-songwriter dresses up his voice like he’s some kind of sexy gumshoe. (“Dilaudid,” “The Lion’s Teeth.”) Also, “Up the Wolves” made me choke up this time. This is a really heartfelt album, trying hard to forgive a lot of things. I also really like how place-oriented all of these albums are; this one is Southern California, insistently, some sunny noir place behind the Orange Curtain. …I also liked “Love Love Love” better this time around. Already liked the opening verse a lot–this guy is notably good at openings.

Get Lonely: Ehhh, this is the first one so far I haven’t really loved. It’s very breathy and just… there.

Heretic Pride: It took all the way to track four (“Autoclave”) before I liked something, and there it was mostly because I am impressed by John Darnielle’s commitment to this house-as-home metaphor across many albums.

“In the Craters of the Moon” and “Lovecraft in Brooklyn” are more tough-guy-bleeding songs, though, so I liked them. “Woke up afraid of my own shadow–like, genuinely afraid!” That’s actually a pretty great updating, the Valley Girl slang combined with “Rats in the Walls”-level urgency. I’m trying to think of ways Lovecraft could actually illuminate this guy’s lyrics and obsessions, and all I can come up with is the belief that (or struggle against the belief that) origins define outcomes, the past controls the future, the Old Ones will always come back to destroy us even when we think they’ve been sated and killed and forgiven. I don’t actually think that’s what this song is going for, though, so I’d welcome other interpretations.

Is a “dragon spruce” a real kind of tree? If so, I continue to love this insistence on naming the exact plants of each song’s setting, e.g. “Louisiana live oak.” So far we’re five albums in and home is the unstoppable cry of each one: the contrast between Eden, our model, the memory which makes all insight a form of recognition, and the temporal places where we all lived out our unskilled childhoods. …OK, so I guess it’s obvious that I would really like this guy.

And just in time to ratify my belief that unsettled and painful metaphors of home are one of the defining characteristics of this guy’s lyrics, here’s the line, “If I forget you, Israel, let me forget my right hand”–and cf. “This Year” with “There will be feasting in Jerusalem this year,” too. Also, with the Israel line, it’s basically the chorus, which is always pop music’s way of signaling what it considers its home: You return there after each verse, and see the chorus in a new way.

OK, two albums left here.