On April 3^rd, I had the pleasure of seeing the Mountain Goats in concert at the Columbus Theater in Providence, RI. I’m not usually a concert goer, and when I am I typically avoid Sunday nights (it’s the last day to get all weekend work finished, and I usually have to get up early on Monday mornings). That said, when offered to purchase tickets to the concert from the art advisor for my school’s fine arts journal, I really couldn’t say no.

The Mountain Goats have been a band longer than I’ve been alive, which means there are a lot of songs in their repertoire and that you can’t always count on hearing your favorite ones at concerts—there are too many to pick from, and you’ve only got about an hour and a half, two hours with the band, tops. That said, there are always two crowd favorites that you can count on hearing at a Mountain Goats concert: “Up the Wolves” and “This Year.” They came as encore songs this time around (as I think they did back a year ago, when I first saw the Mountain Goats in Boston), but that’s not to say that the rest of the show was lacking because of it.

I’m always in awe of the amount of energy it takes to perform on a stage, especially when you’re in a sold-out house. When a performer has energy, though, the audience feeds from it, and it becomes a circular feedback of enthusiasm and joy. Even when the songs themselves are about heart-wrenching things (as so many Mountain Goats songs are), you can’t help but smile and sing along. John Darnielle on stage is contagious. You want to be in the room with him, and you want to jump and sing (or scream) with him.

Prior to the concert, my friend and I stood waiting in line for about an hour and a half. If it were any other April, I think it might have been fine, but as it stood, yesterday was freezing and Providence is just as windy as any other city. The coffee from Seven Stars was bad, and the Earl Grey tea was even worse, but to be honest, I don’t want to focus on the negatives. I wasn’t there for coffee or tea or the weather, and I should have known better than to assume warmth. This is New England we’re talking about.

The Columbus Theater is gorgeous, though, built in the 1920’s and pretty with its gilded walls and painted ceiling. It’s one of the nicer venues I think I’ve been to (perfect and intimate and good), and the employees of the theater themselves are incredibly charming. I’m incredibly bummed that I waited this long to see a show there, especially since one of my buddies has also given it rave reviews as a venue, and he’s someone whose opinion on this sort of thing I trust. If you’re in the Boston/Providence area, go see a show there—it’s worth it, even just for the experience of being inside the building.

Opening act William Tyler was alright; I don’t usually go for music that’s solely instrumental, unless it’s like Holst or Grainger or jazz, but he was entertaining. I definitely preferred him to the last opening act I saw, even if it sometimes seemed like the air temperature was making his guitar lose its tuning.

When the Mountain Goats came on, I didn’t mind that I had waited in the cold for an hour, or that I would have to get up at 6 a.m. the next day—sometimes you catch the spirit of music, and it lives in you for the duration of a concert and even a little bit after.

Darnielle is always enjoyable to watch and listen to, because he’s funny and knows his audience. Some songs from the latest album, “Beat the Champ,” (which is entirely about wrestling) were played, much to the enjoyment of any wrestling fans who had skipped out on Wrestlemania to be there (there’s probably something ironic about me getting the tickets because the show was happening on the same day as Wrestlemania, only to listen to songs about wrestling, but I don’t want to bother working it out).

The show ended with Spent Gladiator 2, which is a very important song for me, personally. That’s not to say that songs are only good when I can relate to them, but we have to consider the main constituents of the Mountain Goats fanbase. We are all people who have felt an ache, and a lot of us have struggled with keeping ourselves going for another day. When someone who we admire, someone who resonates with us, tells us to “Just stay alive. Stay forever alive,” at the end of a show, it’s like being given a tight hug. We can’t all shake hands with the band members (there’s not enough time, and some of us have personal boundary issues), but we can leave on the note that we will continue to survive, which is one of the most important messages the Mountain Goats can give us.

We drive into the night, remembering that even though there are people who can hurt us (including ourselves) that there’s a group of guys who only wish us the best. Sometimes, in moments of vulnerability, that’s what we need.