“Rain in Soho” introduces Goths with a bang, but also an insistence that it will not explain itself.

Track: “Rain in Soho”
Album: Goths (2017)

The idea of “eras” of Mountain Goats music is a simplistic one that I’ve talked about before here, but it’s one I find hard to resist. Beat the Champ leans somewhat into bigger, grander musicality, but not in the way Goths does. That suggests to me a shift that maybe the band doesn’t feel. Kyle Barbour, the legendary archivist who ran The Annotated Mountain Goats, said that the band “moved on stylistically and thematically” in 2017. I have to agree.

When I first heard Goths I had no idea what to do with it. I liked it, especially “Shelved,” but I found most of the subject matter so alien that I couldn’t even tell that some of the references were references. It’s been almost five years now and I find it only marginally more approachable. The first song, “Rain in Soho,” is a great example of why.

The chorus references “the Batcave,” which is a club from Soho that was the origin point for the subculture that runs through the album. A young John Darnielle was fascinated by it, but most people who hear this song will have never heard of it. That never mattered before and certainly does not on Goths, but on this song it feels like almost the point. This is a place for the lonely who have no other place. If you’re not in the know, that feels like a you problem.