The long-running 33 1/3 series works on the simple premise of getting contributors to pen a few words on a classic album of their choosing. Happily these essays often stray from the standard “making-of” template and into more adventurous territory. For Master of Reality, Mountain Goats frontman - John Darnielle turns to fiction – specifically the musings of 16 year old Roger Painter who finds himself incarcerated in a Californian psychiatric institute in 1985. The journal which he is required to keep and submit for daily scrutiny begins as a one-sided negotiation with “Gary” for the return of his Walkman and tapes which are kept locked-up in the nurse’s station, before morphing into an in-depth deconstruction of the Black Sabbath LP. The book's second half picks-up ten years later with Painter employed as a restaurant manager, unhappily feeding ground meat into a machine called the Beefinator, while composing a letter to Gary that begins where his diary left off.