“Paid in Cocaine” may not be the kind of song you’d expect, but it’s a perfect fit for the characters on Goths.

Track: “Paid in Cocaine”
Album: Goths (2017)

It’s impossible to overstate what Matt Douglas has brought to the Mountain Goats. You hear it on the album cuts, obviously, but you feel it in the live shows. I’ve heard of some fans who don’t dig the “full band” sound with drums and horns, but I think those people are clinging to something that isn’t going away. If you need to hear the John Darnielle and limited friends version of the band, there are literally hundreds of songs you can go back to, forever. I understand the urge to resist change, but a song like “Paid in Cocaine” isn’t going to work without horns.

I’ve gone back to Goths a few times recently and “Paid in Cocaine” is one of the few that never catches me. Some of it is the chorus, the repetition of “Long Beach, can you hear me?” is well performed, but not all that memorable. The verses, though, tell a story that you don’t need me to elaborate on, but you can really see. The title tells you what’s happening, but lines like “as happy as I’m ever gonna be,” said about times that might not seem all that happy through a certain lens, really fill out the vibe. It’s the horns that bring it together. This is miles away from the first few albums, but you have to view this as a different story. It’s still so specific and still so clear that it’s unmistakably Mountain Goats, even if it’s all keyboards and saxophone.