The Life of the World to Come (directed by Rian Johnson of Brick and The Brothers Bloom) is a rough, rough document: it's a performance film of the simplest kind: Darnielle plays piano to an empty auditorium at Pomona College for 54 minutes. He's accompanied by a vocalist at times. The camera probes Darnielle's face across the piano. It gives him distance as he plays guitar. And all throughout, you can see rows and rows of empty seats behind him. It doesn't get any more personal than this more ›

Looking like the everyman John Cusack would play in the movie, John Darnielle still has a teenager's reedy tenor, in contrast to his grown-man's, slow-footed cadence when apologizing for having a lyric cheat sheet for a new song. more ›

The show itself was actually something of a let-down; people fall in love with The Mountain Goats (which is 90% Darnielle, plus collaborators) for their ability to capture smallness on their albums: small stories, small feelings, small sounds. Darnielle manages to create an intimacy on records like Tallahassee that didn't transfer well at the show Friday night. more ›