Album review: The Mountain Goats, All Hail West Texas (Merge)

All Hail West Texas may be the quintessential Mountain Goats album. An expanded reissue of a 2002 release, it was the last in their classic lo-fi style, featuring just head Goat John Darnielle making one-take recordings onto a broken boombox. The chief virtue is the immediacy that courses through tracks like “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” and “Fall of the Star High School Running Back”. Darnielle's tableaux of Texas characters like the piratical “Jenny” and the drifter of “Distant Stations” are sketched with skill.

Download: The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton; Source Decay; Jenny; Fall of the Star High School Running Back