#365songs (68 / 365)

In League with Dragons was apparently going to be a rock opera, but that idea got scrapped, with only a handful of dragon- or wizard-related songs surviving to appear on it. "An Antidote for Strychnine" is probably not one of them. It's third in a sequence of four shockingly successful genre experiments at the end of the album: "Waylon Jennings Live!" is a straight-up country song, "Cadaver Sniffing Dog" is a Krautrock kinda thing, "Sicilian Crest" is borderline prog, and "An Antidote for Strychnine" is this tense, sparse noir thing.

I had never really been too into the Mountain Goats' slow, sparse songs before, but this one benefits a lot from the full band treatment compared to earlier efforts like "Mole". It grooves in a way not a lot of Mountain Goats songs do, thanks to Peter Hughes's bassline, and the other instrumental touches that come in — a bit of piano here, an intermittent shaker, some organ for atmosphere — are so nice. It's anxious, but very pretty, and its build is great without ever becoming too cluttered. I've liked some of their later albums plenty, but "An Antidote for Strychnine" might have been the last time the Mountain Goats really surprised and delighted me.