The Mountain Goats have announced new album Dark in Here which will be out June 25 via Merge (pre-order). John Darnielle and the rest of the band recorded the album the week between Getting Into Knives and Songs for Pierre Chuvin at the famed FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, AL. Like Knives (which was recorded at Sam Phillips Studio), they made it with producer Matt Ross-Spang and it's a companion piece to that album. Where Knives' songs were bright, Dark in Here's songs are "quieter, smokier, but more deeply textured and intense."
The album, which was recorded mostly live, features appearances by Muscle Shoals players Spooner Oldham (Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt) on electric piano and Will McFarlane (Bonnie Raitt, Tammy Wynette) on lead guitar. "The Mountain Goats have been playing together as a band long enough to have developed a degree of musical telepathy, but listening to these two guys responding in real time to us and each other revealed another level of connectedness altogether, one bordering on the supernatural," says Mountain Goats bassist Peter Hughes.
The first single from the album is "Mobile," which Hughes says was the second of three takes. "One of my quarantine projects after getting home was going back to Moby Dick and actually finishing it for once, and I was amused to encounter early on the retelling of the story of Jonah," says Hughes. "If Melville gives it to us as a fiery 19th century New Bedford sermon, what 'Mobile' offers might be understood as Father Mapple’s modern-day Gulf Coast flip side, the breeziness of McFarlane’s electric guitar and Matt Douglas’ accordion belying its protagonist’s guilty conscience."
You can listen to "Mobile" and check out Dark in Here's album art and tracklist, below.
The Mountain Goats play their second of two Jordan Lake Sessions shows tonight at 8 PM Eastern. Tickets are on sale.
TRACKLIST
PARISIAN ENCLAVE
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE KOLA SUPER DEEP BOREHOLE TOWER
MOBILE
DARK IN HERE
LIZARD SUIT
WHEN A POWERFUL ANIMAL COMES TO THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN
THE NEW HYDRA COLLECTION
THE SLOW PARTS ON DEATH METAL ALBUMS
BEFORE I GOT THERE
ARGUING WITH THE GHOST OF PETER LAUGHNER
ABOUT HIS CONEY ISLAND BABY REVIEW
LET ME BATHE IN DEMONIC LIGHT
