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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the best Mnt Goats record so far and that's saying something, February 5, 2004
John Darnielle has been quoted as saying that this record is by far his best work ever and I am inclined to agree. And that means something coming from a guy who owns every record this one-man virtuoso has put out. Like his last album Tallahassee, We Shall All Be Healed is a concept album. Each song is written for and about a group of tweakers from Claremont CA. As unromantic a subject as that is, John turns their plight into an epic. He turns their struggles into poetry. He gives words to desires that most people will (hopefully) never know. The first single, "Palmcorder Yajna" is an instant favorite. It is a straightforward Mnt. Goats song with everything you have come to love: Simple strumming, intense nasal singing and beautiful imagery of the profane. The thing that sets it apart is the amazing tone that Darnielle captures. I can only describe it as the hope of the hopeless. "Your Belgian things" is a slower and heartbreakingly beautiful lament while "Linda Blair Was Born Innocent" is a dark and powerful ode to the burning desire to get spun. John Darnielle teamed with other one-man wonder band John Vanderslice in the production of this album and it works. It maintains the connections to John's Low Fi beginnings while giving him an atmosphere in which he is able to make music that is not only lyrically charged but aesthetically beautiful as well. I can't recommend this album strongly enough.
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9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
best album of 2004, February 26, 2004
In addition to having the most idiosyncratic song titles ever to grace the back of a CD jacket, We Shall all be Healed is John Darnielle's best song writing yet. Look for 15-20 lines on this CD to kill you again and again. The music is a little less eclectic than on Tallahassee, their last studio album, but it's also more cohesive, sticking mostly with John's acoustic guitar, Peter Hughes on bass, and Franklin Bruno on piano. That is until Mole, a song so sparse it can't help breaking your heart. It opens with a few verses about the narrator visiting someone in the hospital (all the character's in these stories seem to be speed addicts with vague hopes and dreams that set them apart from each other while their situations bind them firmly together). The song then breaks into a piano and guitar bit that moves along slowly but surely, like clouds marching determined across the sky. I can only describe John's strumming here as fatalistic -- I can only assure you that this will make sense once you hear it.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Songwriter's Dream, August 16, 2005
The debate that I've heard often about this album is whether the slick production values take away from the Mountain Goats feel. If you're unfamiliar with John Darnielle's previous albums, one of the big draws was that he recorded directly to a boom box. I don't believe that this retro recording style was what really made his work great. The man is simply a great songwriter, in the vain of such great Americana-ists as Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. To that end, "We Shall All Be Healed" definitely stands tall and proud with his other works. A few legends surround the method by which Darnielle develops the stories for his albums. However he does it, the albums come together as cohesive observations of different walks of life across the country, and this album is no exception. The story here is occassionally unclear to me, as it sometimes seems to switch narrators, but the songs are beautiful and emotional. By the end of it, you'll care deeply for these charaters, thanks to both the lyrical precision and the haunting melodies.
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John Darnielle shares his favorite music with Amazon customers. See all artists' picks on our Music You Should Hear page.
~ Mountain Goats
~ Mountain Goats
~ Mountain Goats
~ Mountain Goats
~ The Mountain Goats
by The Mountain Goats 
