The Hard Work Doesn’t Pay, Go Ahead and Touch the Cornballer Award for the Death of the American Dream

The Mountain Goats
All Eternals Deck
(Merge; 2011)

Your parents might as well have been feeding you actual bullshit by the spoonful at all those character building family dinners during your formative years. Because what has become clear—what’s been rubbed clean and revealed as immutably true through years of corrosive experience—is that hard work, clean living, and a dedication to your craft will get you nowhere.

Consider John Darnielle, one of American folk’s best beloved songwriters, and rightfully so. Darnielle’s ability to imbue pop, folk, and soul frameworks with characters and themes that seem somehow revealed rather than created has been a constant source of veneration and critical acclaim for the better part of two decades. The man has a Cormac McCarthy-esque talent for crafting narratives that feel ancient, full of Old World tropes and truths, without feeling tired or trite.

And one thing we know about Darnielle—one thing that just cannot be gainsaid—is that this motherfucker is prolific. Fifteen albums and innumerable tapes, leaks, compilations, and singles released in a creative spray. Some have argued that this tirelessness, coupled with the double-edged sword of rising production values have caused a corresponding dropoff in song quality. That’s an argument for another time. The argument at hand is, on the strength of “Damn These Vampires” alone, All Eternals Deck deserves a place somewhere on Cokemachineglow’s—and other’s—Top 50 lists.

But you won’t see it there, and why? Because “Estate Sale Sign” is less caustic and immediate than “Southwood Plantation Road”? No. It’s because Darnielle is prolific; because he’s a known commodity; because he’s put out so much exquisite material over the last decade that we expect it from him, like we expect some well-meaning uncle to get us an iPod shuffle for Christmas and want it to blow our minds. Well, it should blow our minds. That little hunk of metal is a goddamn marvel of modern engineering. But, like Darnielle, it’s been too good and too consistent for too long, and now no one gives a shit.

Pack it in, protesters. The American Dream is dead.