Ithaca College’s Emerson Suites overflowed with flannel shirts, tight-fitting jeans and a healthy helping of enthusiasm on Friday night, as students from across the city converged to see John Darnielle take the stage.

As lead singer of the Mountain Goats, Darnielle has developed a cult-like following since the band formed in 1991. No doubt his Ithaca fans were out in full force to support him during his solo performance.

After taking the stage, Darnielle seemed nervous and shaky as all of the attention focused in on him. Hoots and hollers from the crowd were quieted as he began his performance.

Playing without his fellow “rock warriors,” Darnielle approached the show with a clear desire to please his fans. To this end, he rolled out a wide variety of his most beloved songs. Darnielle played several tracks off of his most successful album, The Sunset Tree, including “Dance Music,” “Dilaudid” and the hit single “This Year.” The singer explained to the audience that he has not gotten sick of playing his most famous song, but instead enjoys reveling in the response that it garners from his fans. The audience sang along with enthusiasm, raising their voices together in approval as they chanted, “There will be feasting and dancing in Jerusalem next year!”

Many of Darnielle’s songs sounded wonderfully new again, as they were stripped of their usual instrumentation. While The Mountain Goats are usually perceived as a lo-fi band, Darnielle’s solo performance further highlighted the beautiful music that can be created with a raw sound.Laying it all out: Darnielle serenades the IC crowd.

As this show came right before the Oct. 6 release date of The Mountain Goat’s newest album, The Life of the World to Come, Darnielle played two of his most recent tracks for the first time in front of a live audience. Equating his excitement upon debuting his new songs to that of a prepubescent boy hoping to loose his virginity in his parents’ car, Darnielle sang “Deuteronomy 2:10” and “Genesis 3:23” with a mix of fear and elation. These new tracks are still written as an account of Darnielle’s life, but focus specifically on the lessons he has learned through his faith. Moving from guitar to piano for these songs, they were softer and slower than his other tracks, providing a nice change of pace in the set.

While some the band’s songs are autobiographical, others contain a cast of recurring fictional characters. Darnielle featured songs with a wide variety of content during his performance, but all of his songs showcased his wonderful writing abilities.

With content ranging from divorce to drug use, death to love songs, Darnielle brings a passion for his music into his performance. Throughout the show, both Darnielle’s vocals and guitar playing reached a peak during each song in which his emotions were at their highest pitch. Screaming into the microphone, he played his guitar with such intensity that he eventually popped a guitar string, recalling for him the “spontaneity of his solo days.”

The intensity of the lyrical content and musical composition was only amplified by the red stage lights that shone down upon the singer for several of his songs. During “Up The Wolves,” Darnielle’s face contorted under the red lights as he yelled into the microphone, “I’m gonna bribe the officials, I’m gonna kill all the judges, it’s gonna take you people years to recover from all of the damage.” In that moment, the passion and emotion of his music was instantly made real for the audience.

Other choice songs in the set included “Palmcorder Yajna” and “International Small Arms Traffic Blues.”

As Darnielle wound up his set, fans shouted a slew of songs they still wanted him to play. It was clear that the singer’s nervous anticipation of the show had faded and been replaced with a love for the Ithaca crowd. In-between songs, the singer spoke about the common talk that artists usually dish out to their audiences, and then proclaimed that, “my love is between me and the 512 people in this room,” genuine and real in this moment.

Of course, all 512 of us felt that love too. It was clear to everyone in the audience that John Darnielle brought the house down on Friday night as the best one-man show to come through Ithaca in recent memory.