We’ve Got A File On You: John Darnielle

Nobody, not one single person on this planet, has had a career quite like that of John Darnielle. In 1991, Darnielle, a college student and recovering addict, started recording the songs that he’d written, using a boom box to tape himself braying poetically over his own acoustic guitar. Darnielle called himself the Mountain Goats, and the tape hiss on his songs were nearly as aesthetically integral to those early records as the sound of Darnielle’s spirited holler. For many years, the Mountain Goats were an object of cult fascination that didn’t make enough money for Darnielle to quit his job as a psychiatric nurse. Decades later, Darnielle is a respected man of letters, and the Mountain Goats are an indie rock institution.