When NOW featured Crystal Castles as their cover story two months ago, implicit in the whole article were three little words that get tossed around again and again when people talk about the band: next big thing. The details of the buzz band's rise are astonishing and fascinating—the mic check discovered by a label in 2005; the 7" records released in the following two years selling out fast; the insane live shows filling up......

No room can fit John Darnielle's voice. When it's quiet, it can suck any space empty, turning a mid-sized venue like Lee's Palace into a bedroom, complete with the friend awkardly singing his heart out. When it's loud, it seems as if no stadium could possibly hold his warbling shout. When Darnielle wanted to at Tuesday night's concert, he silenced the room, save for the clanking of a few empties at the back. Whispers......

It seems that any review of the latest Mountain Goats album, Get Lonely, requires at least one personal anecdote. Just look at Pitchfork. In a few sentences, we've already discovered the writer's marital status - engaged! How sweet. Or consider Toronto's Chromewaves, who proclaims that singer John Darnielle (at left) "is somehow plugged into the collective unconcious of humanity, or maybe just mine." Not that this personal response to Get Lonely is neccessarily a bad......

Tonight marks The Mountain Goats' debut performance in Toronto, and they're here to support their excellent new album The Sunset Tree. Critical praise has been effusive for the album, which steps away from the storytelling fictions of John Darnielle's earlier work for a more autobiographical account of an abusive childhood, though dressed up in amazing lyricism and musical arrangements. Tickets for the show at Lee's Palace are $11, which is a hell of a deal......

This past week, The Mountain Goats latest release The Sunset Tree has been running through our heads, both conceptually and sonically. This album, for those who haven't heard or heard about, is from principal songwriter John Darnielle. This is a man who's been recording for over a decade, and has released something like 400 songs to date (Torontoist admittedly has only heard a fraction of these). His modus operandi has been low fidelity, endlessly imaginative......