Just this week on Pitchfork TV, director Rian Johnson’s (Brick, Brothers Bloom) documentary about The Mountain Goats, The Life Of The World To Come, is streaming. We highly recommend checking it out – it’s not available anywhere else. The doc features a performance of every song from their recent record (of the same name), every song of which was based on a different Bible verse. Here’s the clip of John Darnielle playing the one for Romans 10:9. You can read the lyrics here. They’re great.
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4 responses to “The Mountain Goats sing Romans 10:9”
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Just read this fascinating interview with Darnielle, who talked with The A.V. Club "about loving the Bible while not believing a single word of it."
http://www.avclub.com/denver/articles/the-mountain-goats-john-darnielle-is-a-bornagain-h,41709/
That's the A/V Club's line, not Darnielle's. Not that I would claim he's a believer – in the sense that we use that word – but i think his relationship with the material is more complicated than that. As he says at the end of the interview:
"I was actually more concerned that Christian listeners would hear it and take it the wrong way, not take it as a Christian record. It’s neither nor. It’s not an explicitly Christian record. It’s not an anti-Christian record. It is engaged with Christianity."
I've also read other interviews with him where he says he goes to church regularly, calling himself, a "church-going atheist" – whatever that means. So i think our beloved A/V Club is taking some license.
The only truly off-base thing he says in the interview is about the Reformation taking all the humor out of religion. Either Darnielle has never read Luther, or, as MC would tell you – he was only referring to Calvin. Zing!
Yeah, Dave, that comment about the Reformation threw me, too! And as you know, I'm an Accidental Presbyterian, so go easy on Calvin 🙂
A good friend of mine here in Beaufort is good friends with Darnielle – they went to Pomona together. She's an atheist (albeit troubled and longing to believe) and when this CD first came out, she immediately pointed me to it, knowing I'd love it. Her exact words, I believe, were "John is still an atheist, but he told me that recording this album has really changed him. He thinks the Bible is really beautiful." So, yeah… he's thinking hard and maybe even reconsidering. Incidentally, so is my friend. So it's all good.
This is definitely one of my favorites off the album, and can't wait for the documentary. Thanks for posting!