All Hail West Texas [Reissued]

The gems on All Hail West Texas capture the pain and beauty of humans’ entanglements with each other.... These days it’s the loneliness of the album, and just the idea of the space that is West Texas, a vast and largely unpopulated sprawl, that hits home.

Revisiting All Hail West Texas over two decades into the Mountain Goats’ existence makes a central irony in their story all too clear: it’s not a lonely record anymore. A handful of these songs remain the most iconic in the Mountain Goats catalog.

This remastered version includes seven bonus tracks. One is an alternate version of “Jenny”; the other six are additional songs recorded for this album and unreleased until now. Thematically and musically they fit in well.

This reissue’s seven bonus tracks will excite completists and include Waco, initially slated for inclusion on the album’s 2002 release before being given away online. But, in truth, the original album’s heartfelt, immediate and tape-hissing guitars and cutely executed melodies excite the most.

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”.

There’s simply not a wasted second on the record; all fourteen songs are simple and direct, immediately recorded in inglorious mono with nothing--save the cheap Casio autochord presets on ‘Blues in Dallas’--but voice, guitar and the album’s secret third instrument--the insistent hum of an increasingly-broken boombox.... The main draw of this reissue for hardened Mountain Goats fans, an obsessive breed at the best of times, are Darnielle’s new liner notes and a selection of seven bonus tracks from the same era.

The reissue's bonus material, culled from the original cassettes Darnielle recorded to, fails to outshine the album's original tracks, but does offer a few highlights.