Petty vandal as wandering monk.

I'm blogging on The Mountain Goats' new album All Eternals Deck until I feel like stopping.

I love the arrangement on "High Hawk Season."

The Mountain Goats have large bagful of songs about kids who are coming to feel fully alive through misdemeanors and, sometimes, felonies. This appears to be one such song: the kid in question appears to be a graffiti artist in the Bronx. But I hear -- and this may not be accurate -- an almost medieval intonation in the three-part vocal accompaniment, and I really like the idea of petty-vandal-as-wandering-monk. It's a man, a guitar, and his small trio of singers. I like it, especially when the trio emphasizes the words of the refrain, by repetition, by singing along, or by falling silent.

Which brings me to a point I want to make about the arrangements in general.

The first time I saw the Mountain Goats -- it was not long enough ago for me to be snobbish about anything -- the band was just guitar and bass; the second time was a solo show. A week and a half ago, I saw the full band for the first time: guitar, bass, keys, and drums. Some people seem to hate the full band, but my position's not so extreme. I would punch a dog* for the chance to play with the guys in that band, so I can't fault the band for expanding. And the lineup works really well in the studio, when the vocals can be placed at the right level in the mix. But at the live show, both the keys and the drums competed with the vocals, and made it that much harder to appreciate unfamiliar song. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the full-band versions of songs I knew by heart, like "Jeff Davis County Blues. Oh, and they did a great job on "Broom People," too.

As much as I love Jon Wurster's drumming, I've got a mild preference for the old guitar-and-bass shows. Peter Hughes's bass lines add a lot from a musical perspective, but without ever fighting the vocals. They're like great counterpoints that just happen to hit the root note on the important beats.

*Not really.