A varied, literate talent

John Darnielle has been recording prolifically since the early '90s under the moniker the Mountain Goats. He's evolved from ranting, hard-strummed songs to murmuring, tender-but-unflinching ballads arranged as sophisticated, cello-laced chamber pop.

He favors song cycles - travelogues, character studies of couples struggling with relationships, memoirs of childhood traumas - and his songs inevitably get pegged as "literate," which means, in short, that the lyrics take primacy of place, that they are concrete and detailed, and that they have psychological depth.

On Thursday night, the sold-out crowd at the First Unitarian Church in Center City stood silently, very silently, through a solo set that ranged from early obscurities (the tightly coiled "Duke Ellington," from a '94 compilation) to fan favorites like the wistful "Song for Dennis Brown" from '05's superb

The Sunset Tree

. (Darnielle also loves allusions: Other songs referenced H.P. Lovecraft, Dostoyevsky's

Crime and Punishment

, and biblical passages).

For the second half of the hour-plus set, Darnielle switched from acoustic to electric guitar and brought out his longtime bass player, Peter Hughes, and new drummer, Jon Wurster, for songs mainly from the recent album

Heretic Pride

. With a combination of maracas, tom drums, and judiciously timed cymbals, Wurster, who has played with Superchunk and Marah, managed to make up for the missing cello in the arrangements, especially when guiding the crescendoing "In the Craters on the Moon."

Darnielle likes to engage the audience, and he went off on funny riffs on the distractions of camera phones, on the annoyance of shouted song requests, and on the possibility of a Darnielle presidency ("First, I'd consolidate all the power for myself; second, I'd make everyone listen to old Thin Lizzy records - that's as far as I've gotten").

Darnielle mentioned feeling unwell - it was the penultimate night of his U.S. tour, and he had to cancel a coming Australian tour - but even the relatively brief set showcased his multifaceted, literate talent and his wide-ranging interests (he sang several songs alluding to reggae singers and covered the Upsetters' "Babylon Burning"; he's also a heavy metal aficionado, hinted at in the loud, distorted "Lovecraft in Brooklyn").