Between 1991 and 1998, The Mountain Goats didn’t let a year pass without a release, whether it was a collection of demos, an EP, a proper album or several of the above. The barrier to entry was low, after all, since the group mostly consisted of John Darnielle singing sharp songs of betrayal and doubt into his Panasonic boombox, then releasing them on any number of tiny indie imprints. But after 1997’s Full Force Galesburg, Darnielle noticed that the threads in his songs no longer connected—that the initial spark had faded into a series of comparatively dim songs. “There was about a year there where I didn’t have any good ideas,” he told Salon more than a decade later. “But there was some big concept I was chasing that I can barely remember now.” Newly married and living in a tiny Iowa town, Darnielle began to ponder couples in extreme circumstances—their plight so desperate, and their feelings so bitter, they were hurtling toward absolute oblivion. The bitter “Family Happiness” soon emerged, its central duo crossing the Canadian border and driving themselves straight to hell. “I hope the stars don’t even come out tonight,” Darnielle seethes, tape hiss suggesting a choir of demons. “I hope we both freeze to death.” Other such tirades followed, like the cruel “Baboon” and the caustic “Scotch Grove”, in which Darnielle’s menacing character dares the other half of the relationship to save themselves. These exacting portraits—each rendered from the very knife’s edge that will soon cleave these people into catastrophe—wound up on 2000’s The Coroner’s Gambit, The Mountain Goats’ fifth studio album. But there is more to The Coroner’s Gambit than disastrous relationships. There are real love songs for Darnielle’s dead childhood friend, Christian Death’s Rozz Wlliams: “Shadow Song” is a sad but hopeful ode to an afterlife that reunites two outcasts, while the title track hums with longing and regret. Elsewhere on the album, “Island Garden Song” is the sort of statement of self-liberation at which Darnielle would soon become expert, while “Onions” is one of longing so bittersweet it stings. And on nearly a third of these 16 tracks, a loose coterie of musicians led by Omaha’s Simon Joyner aid Darnielle, adding keyboards, harmonicas, mandolin, second guitar and even drums. The Coroner’s Gambit offers a glimpse of how The Mountain Goats would soon evolve, and of the new threads Darnielle had finally found.