The Mountain Goats make the world's most dysfunctional make-out music.

The group is the brainchild of lyricist extraordinaire John Darnielle, who has been its front man, songwriter and only constant member since 1991. He was listed at number 82 on Paste magazine's list of "100 Best Living Songwriters," right above Fleetwood Mac and below Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips. Over the years, the Mountain Goats have amassed a small but devoted following of listeners who love Darnielle's meticulously detailed lyrics and pitch-black wit.

After many years of passing Madison while touring, Darnielle and his band played to a sold-out crowd Friday night at the High Noon Saloon, giving many local fans their first-ever chance to hear songs like "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod" and "See America Right" performed live.

Opening act Final Fantasy is the more-or-less solo project of violinist Owen Pallett, who plays into a loop pedal in order to create a multi-layered sound. Accompanied by a single guitarist/drummer, Pallett won over the audience with his impressive musical multitasking. Comparisons to fellow indie rock violinist Andrew Bird were unavoidable; Pallett even removed his shoes to operate pedals in his stocking feet as Bird does in concert. However, the Final Fantasy songs were more impressionistic and less structured than Bird's music. The best passages showcased Pallett's supple bowing and showed flashes of classical and musical theater influences in his songwriting. I couldn't help but wonder if lean, technology-driven setups like his are the future of touring music.

The Mountain Goats took the stage by storm, beginning their set with a version of "Hand Ball" that put the audience on notice that the show was not going to be a sedate one, despite what the band's often low-fi recorded music might have led one to expect. The Mountain Goats are touring as a tight four-piece band sporting boxy sport coats and orthopedically correct shoes. Former Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster provided invaluable, muscular backup, and longtime bassist Peter Hughes (the lone sharp-dressed member of the band, dapper in a striped three-piece suit) filled out the propulsive rhythm section.

Darnielle himself alternated between guitar and keyboard, his stage presence unexpectedly goofy given the often-dark subject matter of his lyrics. In fact, I remarked afterward to my concert-going friends that I had never seen a happier group of musicians playing a sadder collection of songs. An uninformed observer watching a tape of the show with the sound turned off might think the Mountain Goats were playing covers of "La Bamba" and "Louie Louie" instead of songs with lyrics like "I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me."

The bulk of the set was comprised of songs from the band's latest album, "The Life of the World to Come," a concept record about, as he puts it, "hard lessons" learned from specific Bible verses. "This song," he said of one track off the new album, "is about the book of Enoch, and its chorus comes from a video game."

Early in the show, the band played "Genesis 3:23", as close to a radio-friendly unit-shifter as the Mountain Goats have ever recorded, with its wistful lyrics about a former home, and Darnielle kicked off his encore with a truly impassioned solo rendition of "Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace."

Darnielle's whip-smart lyrics are his great strength as a songwriter. His masterful specificity of description is less on display on "The Life of the World to Come," but the songs came off well in the context of Friday night's show; the newer album is less headphone music than the band's previous efforts, which are uniquely suited to being heard in the dark, on the floor of one's bedroom, preferably with a box of tissue close at hand and a therapist on speed-dial. At times, the band was sufficiently loud to make Darnielle's words nearly unintelligible, which did not hamper his coterie of fans from singing along with every word.

I've spent enough solitary headphone time with the Mountain Goats' folky earlier albums that it was a real surprise to see them put on such a straight-up rock show, complete with real old-school waving lighters and some entirely unexpected actual dancing.

The band finished off with a downright giddy performance of the group's most relentlessly bleak song, "No Children," a song Darnielle introduced as being "like an aspirin, but for the venom that has come to define the way you feel about the person you love." From this songwriter to this crowd, that constituted a laugh line, after which the band sent us all out with a joyous sing-along of the lines, "I am drowning/there is no sign of land/You are coming down with me,/ hand in unlovable hand." It was quite possibly the unlikeliest feel-good concert ever.

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