Mountain Goat gruff

Emoting on stage has always been risky business. Sad sacks with acoustic guitars have been strumming their misery for so long that watching a full-grown man who isn’t ashamed to cry doesn’t even cause us to bat an eye.

But no lonely-eyed troubadour could hold a candle to John Darnielle at Lee’s Palace Tuesday night. Frontman for low-fi indie-rock pioneers The Mountain Goats, Darnielle has always been prone to putting on an emotionally ravaged show. With only a guitar and bass to anchor his desperate voice, Darnielle eschews average sad-love-song material for tracks about meth addicts, Danish human fossils, and the multitude of reasons why game shows touch our lives.

The Mountain Goats walk the lines of classification; while their past two albums were generalized as a break up album and record on child abuse, the hidden depths of Darnielle’s characterization are far more complex. The set began with the manic strumming of a vengeful 15-year-old on “Up The Wolves,” soon transferred to a runaway anthem about a couple strung out on desire on a motorcycle headed west, and concluded with a song about a man who has, in Darnielle’s words, “fallen off the edge of the earth.”

As a performer, Darnielle uses every onstage moment as if testifying at his own judgment day. No current artist understands the power of the emotional meltdown quite like Darnielle, whose years as a psychiatric nurse gave him ample material. Eyes shut tight, he stuttered and jumped and yelped his way through the set, reinforcing the importance of the range of emotions one person can experience in a three-minute rock song. We also got a glimpse of Darnielle’s personal penchant for metal with some pretty rad solos (who says you can’t bring the heat on an acoustic?).

If Darnielle was the showstopper, bassist (and only other concrete member) Peter Hughes played the infallible straight man. The duo’s almost vaudevillian joint presence lightened up some of the weighty moments, refusing to hold back, even halting a song in the middle when Darnielle forgot the lyrics.

Perhaps that honesty is what makes The Mountain Goats such an irresistible live act. Unlike the majority of indie rock outfits, they wave no flag of superiority over their audiences. When requests were shouted out, Darnielle responded with reasons why he would or wouldn’t play each song, and he threw older fans a bone with several more rarities. For a band that defines their songs as so intense they could “split the atom if [their] power was harnessed,” the tension was palpable. Darnielle pulled no punches in his banter; when numerous requests for the infamous track “The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton” were denied, he courted the crowd in a discussion of why he preferred playing newer material. By including the audience in its struggle, the band made sure they didn’t go down alone.

After inviting everyone to sing along to “No Children,” an ode to a couple who have fallen so out of love that they are steeped in hate, Darnielle and Hughes walked off the stage sweaty and stumbling. Yet the demons had been sent back to hell, the air was clear, and the whole crowd tumbled onto Bloor St. bleary-eyed but victorious.