Waiting for the Mountain Goats show to start after unremarkable guitar-and-drums band the Moaners opened, I couldn’t avoid looking at two people in front of me. One looked like the photographer from Just Shoot Me, complete with stubble and creepy, David Spade-weary eyes. Another, marked as a high school student because of his shoulder-length blond hair, leather jacket, and passionate attempt to pass lead singer John Darnielle a letter, was blocking my line of sight to the stage because he and his friends had pushed their way to the front. While the former sitcom supporting actor disappeared when the Mountain Goats came on, the kid in the leather jacket only become more visible as the show wore on.

Seeing a band you like touring on an album you don’t like isn’t much fun, but that’s especially so with the Mountain Goats, who played only a handful of songs that weren’t on their latest album, Heretic Pride.

Halfway through the set, Darnielle acknowledged that he had to cancel his Australian tour because of an illness he didn’t name. He called bassist Peter Hughes and his mystery drummer to the stage, said they were a great band, and got on with the show. But the possibility that this might be Darnielle’s last show—reinforced by his talk about mortality-inspired attempts to find religion and ending with “This Year” (”I’m going to make it through this year if it kills me”) hung over our heads like smoke would have before January 2, 2007.

Even if most of the songs were mediocre, the kid in the leather jacket ate them up. He made a heart with his hands , and framed his o-shaped mouth with his hands in surprise during “Lovecraft in Brooklyn” (which the band performed energetically). For the joy Darnielle gives people like that, his career has been worth it, even if it ended that Saturday during Easter Break.

Photo by Sam Sweeney, Blog Editor