The Mountain Goats Announce New Album ‘Goths’
The Mountain Goats have announced their forthcoming album. The follow-up to 2015’s Beat the Champ, Goths will arrive this spring. The group also unveiled the LP’s first single, “Andrew Eldritch is Moving Back to Leeds.”
While their previous album was a concept LP on wrestling, Goths focuses on its namesake’s culture with the added perspective of time. “While [frontman] John [Darnielle] writes the songs, as he always has, it feels more than ever like he’s speaking for all of us in the band, erstwhile goths (raises hand) or otherwise,” bassist Peter Hughes said in a statement about the album’s theme. “For these are songs that approach an identity most often associated with youth from a perspective that is inescapably adult.”
On their reflective new song, “Andrew Eldritch is Moving Back to Leeds,” Darnielle tells the imagined story of the Sisters of Mercy frontman returning to the town of their youth where the band first formed. “Nobody ever gets away,” Darnielle sings. “Even the best of us come back someday/ to the unmarked rooms/ where the dry dust breeds.”
“His friends give him a hard time about ending up back where he started, but not because they’re mad; it’s good to see an old friend wearing the marks of time on his hands and face like well-loved tattoos,” Darnielle said in a statement about the lyrics that address one of his teenage heroes. “So shall it be in these times: your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions, and Andrew Eldritch, whose music has reached spirits in every corner of the globe, will move back to Leeds.”
Goths arrives on May 19th via Merge and is available for pre-order.
Goths Track List
1. “Rain in Soho”
2. “Andrew Eldritch is Moving Back to Leeds”
3. “The Grey King and the Silver Flame Attunement”
4. “We do it Different on the West Coast”
5. “Unicorn Tolerance”
6. “Stench of the Unburied”
7. “Wear Black”
8. “Paid in Cocaine”
9. “Rage of Travers”
10. “Shelved”
11. “For the Portuguese Goth Metal Bands”
12. “Abandoned Flesh”