GENRE; Rock
LABEL; Cadmean Dawn
REVIEWED; 19 November, 2025
RATING; 6.9
Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan is The Mountain Goats at their most theatrical and literate — a concept record that reads like a small-cast seaside musical. John Darnielle spins a bleak, obsessive tale of shipwrecked survivors that drifts between hallucination and hard reality, and the result is an album that feels both intimate and operatic. The arrangements are unusually lavish for the band: strings, woodwinds, pedal steel and harp swell behind Darnielle’s conversational singing, giving the songs a widescreen, cinematic heft.
The record’s narrative focus is its strength and occasional weakness. When it clicks — on the instrumental “Overture,” the urgent “Fishing Boat,” and the plaintive “Dawn of Revelation” — storytelling and music fuse into moments of genuine, aching beauty. But the linear plot and theatrical moves sometimes tighten the emotional range, making certain passages feel plotted rather than spontaneously wrenching; the album’s ambition occasionally comes at the cost of the ragged, immediate urgency that marked some earlier Mountain Goats records.
Guest turns and instrumental detail add color: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s backing vocals, contributions from Tommy Stinson, harpist Mikaela Davis, and Matt Douglas’s multi-instrumental textures broaden the palette and keep the arrangements lively. Production is clear and warm — small noises and minor-key flourishes sit in the mix like narrative footnotes, which deepens the sense that you’re listening to a staged fable rather than a loose collection of songs.
At its heart the album succeeds because Darnielle remains a devilishly attentive storyteller. Even when the concept’s architecture shows, his lines land with a specificity and human crackle that keep the listener invested. Through This Fire isn’t perfect, but it’s a daring, often beautiful addition to a catalog built on character, consolation and the small mercies of song. Highly recommended for listeners who savor narrative songwriting.
