Mountain Goats: The Coroner's Gambit (Peak Vinyl/colour & special packaging) LP

Originally released in October 2000, "The Coroner's Gambit" finds John Darnielle between physical and sonic spaces, five of its sixteen songs recorded in Simon Joyner's Nebraska studio, five more at home in Colo, Iowa, and the rest in Ames. "The Coroner's Gambit" was a breakthrough for Darnielle as a songwriter and practitioner of the full-length album. His characters are sharply drawn, the immaculately appointed lore of the worlds they occupy providing them some shelter from the storm. He has grown as a guitarist and in voice, wringing moments of sweetness and humour from songs of fury and lament, nimbly modulating from mourning to longing, passing air through the lungs of the dead and survivors alike. The mix of home and studio recordings grants "The Coroner's Gambit" a thrilling sense of immediacy while pointing towards a future that was soon to break open with "All Hail West Texas" and "Tallahassee". "The Coroner's Gambit" is a masterpiece in its own right, an introspective epic that further burnishes Darnielle's reputation as one of our greatest songwriters, one whose gift for confessional fabulism knows few rivals.