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10 of 13 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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5 of 6 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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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The smoothness doesn't make it less edgy, July 25, 2004
I've loved the Mountain Goats ever since Atom and His Package covered three songs. The songs were so honest and funny I had to seek out their source. The first Mountain Goats album I laid hands on was Full Force Galesburg, and it was a shock. Atom and His Package was electronic and frantic. The Mountain Goats was almost exclusively one man with an accoustic guitar performing songs that were still honest and funny, but also haunting and raw. His songs were recorded on poor equipment--you could actually hear the drone of the tape recorder's motor in the quieter moments of the album. The lack of polish and pretention gave the songs greater emotional impact for me, and I became an instant fan, buying up every MG recording I could find.
My first reaction to "We Shall All Be Healed" was mostly negative. The songs are professionally produced and expertly engineered. The guitar is accompanied by organs and piano and synth effects like glass breaking and insects chirping. It almost sounded like a different band.
Fortunately, I stuck with it and now I'm hooked. The cleaner, more professional sound actually makes for a terrific backdrop for the lyrics, which are still as powerful as ever. The ugliness of addiction, death, and betrayal found in the lyrics float on the beautiful music that makes the truths in the words harsher and starker. It took a little while to grow on me, but I now think this is the best MG album yet. I'm using songs from this album to spread the Mountain Goats gospel. Check it out.
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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
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~ Mountain Goats
by The Mountain Goats 
