The Mountain Goats

Requiem for Red Southern Curl

It's weird. Some questions crop up routinely ("When are you going to tour Europe," "Why did Eddie Mansfield break kayfabe on national TV"), but over the past six months or so it feels like people have been asking me "When do we get an All Hail West Texas reissue?" and "Is All Hail West Texas ever coming out on vinyl?" a lot. I have been evasive when confronted with these questions, because the whole time I was getting these questions in my Twitter mentions and my Tumblr asks, there was a secret plot afoot to 1) reissue All Hail West Texas on Merge and 2) put it out on vinyl for the first time ever.

Getting the reissue together has been a really interesting project for me, because it involves going through old boxes of tapes, which necessarily means exhuming the corpses I became at several turns between then and now. All Hail was the last grinding burst of the machine on which I'd built whatever name I had at the time. It was recorded in the final frenzy of the boombox-era writing style (hit a stride, work absolutely every night until you write a song you don't like, sulk for a couple of days, start up again), though I'm hesitant to say final, because who knows, I still track demos on a couple of the working decks I still have and I have ~~~ideas~~~about restricting myself to demo'ing on tape for a season at some point, who knows, life's long, "seldom say never" remains my non-committal motto par excellence. It's the only album where one of the worktapes went missing not by accident (the fate of untold handfuls of worktapes) but because I made good on my generally-empty promise to myself to destroy stuff if I don't want to see it out in the wild at some point. In between the songs that made the album on the two surviving worktapes there's a lucky 7 that didn't make the cut, sometimes for technical reasons ("ran out of tape"), sometimes for artistic ones ("this chorus: what were you thinking?"). These songs have been transferred from the original cassettes and are now on the reissue as bonus tracks, mainly ones that fit into the former category. Several more I didn't transfer from the original cassettes at all, because after listening to them, it was learned that they kind of sucked. RIP, "Red Southern Curl," you are just plain not a good song.

There's more to tell, but most of it's in the new liner notes, and the rest of it's in this piece Matt Fraction wrote about it, which is legitimately all you really need to know. The vinyl's ~~220~~ 125grams, mea culpa on being wrong when I wrote this update , and who really knows what the CD weighs, because who weighs CDs. Preorder is up right over here; Merge picks up the shipping costs on US orders. Bonus! See you next month!

Triumphal Arch

OK so last year we get this offer to play a festival in Bialystok, Poland, and I get extremely amped for it because you know how when you're in high school you land on something to get into and it's your personal secret deal? One of mine was Polish poetry, especially Tadeusz Różewicz but also Alexsander Wat and Miron Białoszewski (who wrote one of my favorite poems of all time) and also Anna Swir. So I'm very excited about this offer to go Poland, but Wurster can't make it, either because he's touring with another band or because he refuses to perform in a country which has never won an Olympic gold medal in basketball, I forget which, and I don't want to go alone, because going to a new place is just more fun with your bandmates, bands are families, not the bad kind of family, really bands are the intersection of sitcoms and tableaux vivants, I will elaborate further on this theory at a future date. So we played a John-and-Peter duo set for the first time in a long time -- I think maybe since 2006, possibly 2007.

It was really cool: the duo set was how we lived from 2001-2007. On the Transcendental Youth tour last year we started structuring the set for a little duo space on either side of a solo section in the middle, playing "It Froze Me" and sometimes "Jenny" with just me and Peter on one side of the set-break and "Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace" with just me and Wurster on the other. Then, in January of this year, Wurster and I played a few songs in New York and again it was way cool, and I got all chin-strokey thinkin' about "oh yes, the dynamics of a duo vs. a trio vs. a quartet, the particular qualities inherent to various arrangements," etc., I like to think about stuff like that and in those sorts of terms, I am a record collector and music nerd, that is how we operate.

Peter and I toured our asses off back in the pre-trio days, but that was before our ascent to the absolute upper echelon of global media saturation. We are pleased to report that a year-plus worth of talking about touring the Mountain Goats in alternate configurations to all-ages rooms is yielding its first fruits this June, in the form of the TUTTLINGEN WARRIORS TOUR 2013, whose name is an inside joke, I'll tell you about it between songs at some point during the tour, I have too much else still to cover here to get into it right now. We're bringing out the Baptist Generals, one of our favorite bands, who have a new album coming out -- their first in years -- and for Peter and I this is a huge event, like on an "unheard post-Marquee Moon pre-Adventure Television album discovered" level: some bands you know will someday get the acclaim that's due them and this is one of them. Their new album is so deeply moving I'm not even going to get into it right now, here, try this, see what I mean, are you enjoying the continuing effects of José Saramago on my use of the comma, I hope so because I can no longer help it.

We're hitting several places we haven't been before and some we haven't managed to get back to in years (what's up Hoboken), and yes, in case you missed it in the avalanche of dependent clauses above: all dates are all-ages. All of them. Hell yes, I say, it's about time, sorry it took so long. I have been squirreled away cobbling together a master setlist through the early months of this year (will we be attempting "Fall of the Star High School Running Back"? signs point to "yes") and Peter and I will be getting into rehearsal sometime this month, where I look forward to hearing "no, John, that's not how you played it on the tape" at least once and realistically more times than once.

I'll have more news on stuff soon but let's face facts, we're pushing up against a thousand words here, the trend of the times is toward brevity, don't tell JD that he'll cry. Peter and I will be rocking the cities you see in the yellow post-it to your right this June and we hope to see you there; if you follow a link and the tickets aren't on sale yet, don't panic, they should be up by later this week at the latest. Also don't panic under other circumstances if you can help it, panic is seldom a helpful or pleasant emotional state, unless you happen to be writing a piece called "What I Look Like When I Panic," then maybe OK. The Darnielle-and-Wurster duo tour is presently unscheduled, but will, when it arrives, include a Q & A about the lesser-known works of Bob Ezrin, so be sure to dust off your copies of Steve Hunter's Swept Away. Bonus points if you can hum the title track without looking it up. I don't know what, if anything, you can actually use the bonus points for, but this, too, will be addressed at a future date.

Close to the Edda

To-do list, Feb-May 2013

* get cinder blocks for desk/saw 2-3 inches off chair legs nb "new chair" is not an option, I love this chair
* clean office room
* at least 1-2 afternoons/wk in basement painting/collaging remaining Come, Come to the Sunset Tree LPs w/view toward actually finishing them in 2013
* book time @ The Kitchen for transferring materials from old 1/2 inch reels & Fuji Extraslim cassettes in shoebox
* hash out song list w/Peter of underplayed/unplayed/personal-favorite tunes for top secret tour plan
* contemplate regular exercise plan for 1000th time in life, put on v. serious face about it
* new songbooks for the baby
* stop calling son "the baby" when no longer baby
* WHAT DO YOU MEAN ONE DAY HE WON'T BE A BABY ANY MORE HOW CAN YOU EVEN SAY THAT
* reading plan now through June: finish Morte D'Artur, read Camellia Street or Time of the Doves, also new Blake Butler and maybe one Elsa Morante? be realistic you're never going to be a fast reader
* talk more w/friends nb email does not count as "talking w/friends"
* revise MS of novel w/any needed corrections, hand in to Farrar, Strauss & Giroux on schedule as per contract
* count blessings, check math, thank literally everyone

Cry for Judas

I was going to begin, "Dear world," but then I thought, that's really hopelessly arrogant, the whole world is not reading this, maybe get that ego in check a little there JD. "Dear Mountain Goats people?" Presumes on the goodwill of the reader. Makes all kind of presumptions really. Just no. Maybe "Dear world" is actually correct, theoretically that's who I'm addressing: anybody who cares to listen, no matter where they are? I don't know, though. I have political objections to "Dear world," there is no need to go into them here. "Dear You"? Permanent dibs to Jawbreaker. "Dear Mr. Jesus?" Grievous misread in tone, also maybe even more presumptuous. "Dear Mr. Morgan, my 8th grade math teacher"? A clear frontrunner, but unpopular in camp.

So hey umm it is with great pride that the Mountain Goats present to you one of the 12 songs from our new record, Transcendental Youth. (If you want to pre-order the album and get the bonus 7" that comes with the first thousand or so copies of it, you can do that here; the two songs on the 7" will eventually make their way to iTunes.) This here album track, anyway, is called "Cry for Judas," it is about survival but that's kind of an oversimplification, it's also about building a vehicle from the defeated pieces of the thing you survived and piloting that vehicle through the cosmos, it's kind of complicated but people who know what I'm talking about will kind of intuitively get the idea and the rest of you will I hope be able to get a sense of it through the song. You can grab it for free here, and if you dig its groove and wanna throw us a dollar about it, iTunes has it here & we thank you kindly. As I said yesterday, my portion of the proceeds will mainly be spent on candy, specifically Grape Vines. I don't know what Wurster and Hughes will do with theirs, it is not my business, but I know one of them is fond of cake.

Hope you enjoy the tune & see you soon!

Just Under 1,000 Words About Our New Album

So a simplified timeline of how it went down looks like this: All Eternals Deck came out in March of last year and we toured a whole lot, and midway through all that I came home to celebrate the results of the second ultrasound with Lalitree. June came around so we hied us to the west coast, but first we stopped in Minneapolis, because who doesn't love Minneapolis, and we played a show and Brandon and me shared a room like we always do, and at one point Brandon went out into the hall to talk on the phone to his family and I had an idea for a song so I started working on it, and the narrator turned out to be a person who felt lost and alone and only partially able to keep it together. He was living alone in the Pacific Northwest, and he was fighting the urge to just stop fighting at all, and I recognized his voice because, one, I used to work with a lot of people who spent long seasons in that guy's shoes, and two, I have also been that guy. Who hasn't, if not north of Portland during the rainy season then elsewhere, lost and desperate and trying to swim to the surface?

That song was called "Until I Am Whole," and I played it for Brandon and we both felt like it was touching on some themes I'd circled but never set my claws fully into. So I kept writing through the summer, and in August the baby was born and I'd cradle him in my left arm while writing melodies at the piano with my right, and I said, let Osiris the keeper of the gates be my witness, other songwriters may go soft when they get to be parents but I am going to keep going all the way down into the inner darkness, it will set a good example for the baby, and besides, what am I going to do, suddenly start writing songs about cute things instead of songs about how to wrest cries of triumph from the screaming places? Please. May the baby grow up to spit in my face if I should pose that hard.

Some of the songs I sent to Owen Pallett to arrange for the Transcendental Youth program I did with Anonymous 4 in the spring; meanwhile Peter & Jon & I worked some of the band arrangements out onstage through spring, which is something I'd stopped doing, playing new songs live before tracking them. Shouldn't have ever stopped doing that by the way. Playing new songs rules. These arrangements & performances opened up the songs for me and showed me things about them, and when we hit the studio, I had a plan that was broad enough to let everybody contribute his own voice (a big thing with me; I kind of don't believe in the One Dude Telling Everybody What To Do model of album-making) but focused enough to keep dragging the songs by their hair back to the central point of the record, which has to do with whether anybody has the right to tell people whether their visions are sick or not. Spoiler alert, absolutely nobody has that right, what makes me broken also makes me whole, that is how it works and it's like striking gold when you find that out so keep digging, don't even get me started.

We spent a week recording at Overdub Lane. Brandon Eggleston produced and Matthew E. White did horn arrangements, and afterwards Scott Solter mixed it at Baucom Road, and then I called up Aeron Alfrey from the Satanic Messiah sleeve and he did a new original painting that completely knocks me out and that brings us to the present. The album's called Transcendental Youth, and it's coming out October 2nd on Merge and right around the same time on Tomlab in the UK & Europe and on Moorworks in Japan and on Remote Control in Australia & New Zealand, and I've been getting letters from South America so I'm doing what I can to get it released there. On this last tour that I just got home from, I went into Cloud City with Brandon and recorded four more songs by myself directly to 1/2" tape without overdubs, and from those four, two will be cut directly from the tape to a 7". The first pre-orders of the album will come with a copy of this 7", whose songs will probably be available digitally before long; the actual vinyl single, though, will be the end-point of a truly live all-analog chain that was never converted at any point to ones and zeroes, which as one of Those Guys makes me ridiculously happy. I will tell you more about these two songs later on: one was written for the album but never tracked, the other's been around in half-finished form for a while and finally got the bridge & last verse it deserves.

So that's what I've got. I cannot wait for everybody to hear what we've done this time. It is kind of a family effort for us: the four of us who spend half the year in a tour van together are the four who went into the studio to play & record songs whose choruses grew from things scrawled in notebooks in the back of the van and occasional demos recorded in hotel rooms between tour stops. We will be touring this fall until we run out of places to go or the winged serpent returns, whichever comes first. Here is the tracklisting for the album. I will see you in October!

1. Amy aka Spent Gladiator 1
2. Lakeside View Apartments Suite
3. Cry for Judas
4. Harlem Roulette
5. White Cedar
6. Until I Am Whole
7. Night Light
8. The Diaz Brothers
9. Counterfeit Florida Plates
10. In Memory of Satan
11. Spent Gladiator 2
12. Transcendental Youth

Run Away, Teach Self Chords, Tour Years Later

So, I'm going to tell you a sad little story about me as a kid. Don't get too sad, though, it has a happy ending, I love literally everything about my life and I have this probably-dumb-but-what-the-hell mystical sense that if even one small detail of my life had been changed, then everything would be different now, and who's to say that the things most dear to me wouldn't have to be traded away in the bargain? I call this conviction "The JD Doesn't Really 'Get' Physics Effect," though if I were in an instrumental prog-metal band, I might instead call it the Phalse Phenomenology Ephect. Then everybody would cry, except for me, because I would be too busy in the Locrian mode laying down the sickest two-part solos you're ever gonna hear in this town, bud.

Anyway. Kids in junior high used to wait until after school to fuck with me, but I guess they didn't mind waiting, because I walked home by myself, and some of the kids most eager to fuck with me lived on the same block as me, which, I probably don't have to point this out, really sucked. It got worse every day; I was a scrawny dude with no illusions of toughness or any desire to sharpen my combat skills. I liked to hang out with girls and read science fiction books. Eventually it became clear to me that even if I ratted these dudes out to the school, any relief was going to be temporary; it was fight them or avoid them, and they moved in packs of three. So one day instead of walking home (south, down Mountain Avenue, past the little league diamonds and through a vacant lot, which was usually where the beatdown occurred), I cut left at Harrison Avenue and hoofed it all the way downtown; my tormentors followed me most of the way there, but I was bold enough to look behind me and see that the further out of the neighborhood they got, the less comfortable they looked. It was cool to feel a sort of power in flight: they weren't sure where I was going; that made them uneasy.

A few things happened as a result of me being too terrified of my bullies to face them. One, I ended up volunteering for work at the library. I filed books and microfiche, and cleaned vinyl LPs with water and a cloth. It felt weird not telling my supervisor "I'm here because the people who want to kick my ass won't follow me in," but that passed. Two, I ended up spending more time downtown, because that's where the library is. Downtown in Claremont there's a place called the Folk Music Center, it's been there forever; they have a lot of guitars. I only knew piano, but I used to go in and look at the chord charts and teach myself one chord at a time. D. D. D. D. Half an hour of what was probably the worst-sounding D ever. G. G. G. G. Really had to stretch that little left hand to make the G. I pity the people who worked the counter at the Folk Music Center when I'd come in.

If there's any point to this story, and I'm not sure there is but, it's that the songs I sing, which are often about finding ways to call a dark dungeon a glittering castle & really mean it, have some of their genesis in me being a fearful young kid with just enough presence of mind to turn to music as an escape. The fact that I'm able to play them on guitar certainly owes much to my finding a path home that other kids on the block didn't want to take. All this stuff occurs to me because I'm finally getting around to doing a West coast solo tour, whose dates are off to the right on the yellow post-it note, and which dates conclude with me playing a show at, where else, the Folk Music Center. Most dates (not that last one, though) I have the pleasure of Dustin Wong as my opening act. Dustin's music is so awesome, you guys. I am really excited to hear him every night, and to finally, after years of wondering when I was going to get around to it, be embarking on a solo West Coast run.

Please note, in case you hadn't, that these rooms are a good deal smaller than the ones we usually play out west, so, you know, not to be blunt and presumptuous or whatever but in towns where we sometimes sell out a room, these rooms may sell out faster, so act accordingly and don't say I didn't warn you. Because I did warn you! Just now! OK this update has gotta be like 3,000 words nobody asked you to write the whole history of the world JD c'mon. See you soon!

Stephen Would Answer If He Only Knew How

Yes I'm playing two solo sets at Hopscotch, why wouldn't I? The first will be the thing where I stand there and try to force blood to shoot from my eyes while singing about people who used to love each other but who now tread the earth under the heavy curse of Cain. The other one, the "metal covers" set, 1) probably won't ever happen again, and 2) will probably be the only "metal covers" set that also includes songs by Rich Mullins & maybe one from Aoxomoxoa, if recent trends around here continue. I want to say how proud of am of the internet for not asking, during the ten minutes since the program was announced, whether I will be wearing corpsepaint. The answer is probably "no," but at the same time, it's one of my better-kept secrets that I look awesome in makeup. I also used to look awesome in taffeta, but I think it's safe to say that those days are behind us, much like the days of the vikings, whose ghosts I bet I end up invoking from behind the piano at least once that night.

The other thing I'm doing, much sooner, is playing a benefit to defeat the latest "deny people who love each other the right to marry" bill. We can actually beat this bill, and in the wake of Citizens United, the way that happens is if we raise enough money to do it. Dollars buy requests at this show, anything in my catalog is game. If I don't know it I'll improvise something. Mac McCaughan'll be there, Greg Cartwright, the amazing Tara DeFrancisco emceeing and moderating, it's going to be a proper Durham party so dress how you please and prepare to holler some. It would mean more to me than I can say if my adopted home of North Carolina could say to the world "you love who you want here, all are welcome." There is nothing I won't do to try to help this happen.

See you at the shows!

2012: Putting the Cyborgs On Notice

I want to explain something to you. On the day when the last of the undead cyborgs lies in the wet red clay of the camouflaged pit that trapped him, and the smoke rising from his circuits indicates in vanishing Morse code that he truly was the last hominid to walk the surface of this late planet, that will technically be a lie, because there will still be three hominids left, and they'll be called the Mountain Goats, and they will still be touring. On that day, may the fates delay its coming, we will announce a tour of the network of bio-pods underneath the ruins of the former cities, and it will cost you a quart of whole blood to get in. In the present day, let's enjoy it while it lasts, what we're going to do is tour down south, because the American South in January is evidence that the universe loves us deeply and holds an abiding concern for our pleasure and well-being.

January
19 - Antone's, Austin, TX
20 - Fitzgerald's, Houston, TX
21 - Tipitina's, New Orleans, LA
23 - Club Downunder, Tallahassee, FL
24 - The Social, Orlando, FL
25 - Crowbar, Tampa, FL
27 - The Original Cafe Eleven, St. Augustine, FL
28 - The Earl, Atlanta, GA
30 - 40 Watt Club, Athens, GA
31 - Visulite Theatre, Charlotte, NC

February

2 - the Grey Eagle, Asheville, NC
4 - the Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw, NC

One small word about these shows. For years bands have been pretty judicious about playing unreleased new material, because much of it becomes available online immediately, even when the new songs are still in fairly raw form. We, too, have gotten into the bad habit of holding new stuff back. We are done with that whole philosophy, though. I miss playing stuff that's unreleased & unrecorded, stuff that still stings fresh. So we got together and decided to tour the new songs before we even record them. I don't guess that we'll be touring all ten of the new songs I've written for the next album (eleven if you count one that's presently being herded back and forth between its cell & the chopping block), but be advised that if you're the sort of person who wants as many surprises as possible when you hear a new album, you should tread lightly around recordings of these shows, because we're not going to be holding the best ones back for the album release like people tend to do now.

We will be supported on all dates by Nurses, who have forever endeared themselves to me by calling their album Dracula! Links to the venues all on the post-it to the right! See you all soon!

Affairs in order? House tidy? OK, then. Let's wrap up the last year before the winged serpent comes and consumes us all in his radiant fire! Tomorrow night, I'm in St. Paul for the Johnslaught at Wits at the Fitzgerald, where John Hodgman, John Moe, John Munson, myself, and Neil "John" Gaiman will, together, in story and song, spearhead the drive toward the end of this last year before the Quetzalcoatl Configuration becomes visible to those whose rods & cones bear the attunement. (NB: none of those other guys have signed off on this description, so for all I know, we'll actually just be arguing about whether the state of New York ought to grant Antonio Margarito a license to box.)

Then! As the time draws near! I will do like I do in December and play a couple of special shows! First, I'm returning to Second City's Letters to Santa. Last time I was there it was one of the most inspirational things I've ever been part of. Second City's incredible regulars do improv for 24 hours, and all proceeds go toward bringing holiday cheer to people who're short on funds. It is an awesome thing, the whole deal: Last time I ended up trading in on a sketch & improvising a verse and chorus for song before a live audience. Seat of the pants stuff. So cool. C'mon out!

Then! Toward the end of the year, and of this age! I will head out to my old home turf to play a benefit for Invisible Children at the Troubadour. I hardly ever get to play solo shows in southern California; to finish out 2011 doing one at the Troubadour for a great cause is about the best wrap-up to Known Reality that I can think of. As at Letters to Santa, I'm doing a full solo set. Because I grew up in California I think I'll premiere a couple of new songs there just for the hell of it.

I'll have one other piece of news soon - maybe next week - and hopefully most of the stuff it covers will actually come to pass before we're all compelled to kneel, singing, in the intolerable infinite glare of the New Pyramids, whose crystalline angles rise forever.

See you there!

Behold Our Transcendental Youth

I'm on the porch listening to Hatchback and the weather simply couldn't be more soothingly tropical, so you'll excuse me if I come off a little blissed here, but dig the news, everybody: I'm playing at the Ecstatic Music Festival in March in a program with Anonymous 4, and "stoked" won't take an intensifier deep enough to explain how I feel about this show, so gimme an extra paragraph to elaborate.

Anonymous 4 are among my favorite musicians anywhere, ever. I've been listening to them with wonder and gratitude ever since I was given this amazing album as a college graduation gift. Every A4 album is a journey into geographies of mood and tone that you simply can't find elsewhere; whether they're singing a 14th-century mass or John Tavener, their artistry is peerless. For me tell you that they're going to be singing the newest as-yet-only-heard-by-people-mentioned-in-this-paragraph Mountain Goats songs, the secluded trapped wet desperate yearning ones I've been working on since late spring, heard here in special arrangements for guitar, piano and voice by Owen Pallett in a gorgeous 400-seat hall is...well, it beggars description. So instead let me tell you this about myself. I am person who likes to eat candy. Every time somebody says "kid in a candy shop," I think to myself: "I wanna be that kid in the candy shop, after hours, with the go-ahead to have all the candy I like." Anonymous 4 singing my new songs in arrangements by Owen: this is all candy ever all at once for me. I simply cannot wait for this show.

More news about more stuff soon, quite soon really! See you here!

Insert Mandatory Banana Joke Here

OK, who here wants me to come play in their living room? Because that is what's up for auction, courtesy of Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. The animals at CSNW survived medical studies, animal acts, and life in a windowless basement to finally find the light of the sun in the Pacific Northwest. I don't guess I need to tell people who know me how moved I am by this kind of story.

Wherefore it seems right and good that we have an auction about it. Once we've got a winner & a date hammered out, I'll hop on a plane and grind out a blistering (or tranquil, if that's your thing, I can probably do tranquil) invite-who-you-like show for you in your home. It'll be a solo set, to be played sometime next year as our schedule allows but I figure sometime between January and June will work. Perhaps the stars will line up and I'll be able to cross "play a set in a stranger's living room for the express purpose of helping chimpanzees" off my lifetime to-do list at the same time as somebody else is striking "have some stranger play songs in your living room in order to help some chimps" from theirs. It could happen! Bid early and bid often right here! I'll see you at your house!

Sitting in a Rosemont Hotel Listening to the Holy Sons

I'm right up the street from O'Hare and we're going to get a van and some backline and drive to Buffalo en route to the first show of our tour with Bright Eyes as we both loops back toward Lollapalooza. I'm listening to these guys, whose records seriously punch every last one of my buttons and are, bar none, the best late-night listening proposition going right now. (It's morning here. You always have to test the great late-night records against the halogen glow of the morning to see if they hold up. This one does.) I'm doing vocal warmups so that while we're rolling through Buffalo I'll be able to continuously yell from the van window, "Ani, I will forever defend you against all enemies foreign and domestic, because your song 'Hypnotized' has saved me from the fire more than once and seen me through hard times," even though I think if you're going to yell things from windows concision is probably a virtue. I'm working on two things for next year that are starting to take shape like the monster in the Edison Frankenstein when the reverse-flames really get going & give him form, and this, I don't need to tell you, is way exciting. And I'm stopping by here to point out that Pitchfork has the video for "Estate Sale Sign", by the people over at Awesome and Modest. The video features animals, monsters falling into biomorphic pits, Viking ships, wormy dudes in the desert, and people trying to kill each other until they discover they have a greater need for intimacy than they usually care to admit, i.e., it visits several themes dear to my heart. Imaginary bonus points &/or sympathy if you spot yourself in it - meanwhile & otherwise, see you on the road!

Rolling Rolling Rolling Though the Streams Are Swollen

Thanks to Dublin, Glasgow, Newcastle, London, Manchester, Leeds & Brighton for showing us such a good time last month! Having been home for nine whole days, we note that it time to ply our fortune-telling trade out on the west coast. The west! The eternal dazzling lure of the bottlebrush! That coast whose final northern terminus is located in the netherworld! Whose final southern stop lies in the far-beyond, the endless void! The west! People get totally carried away talking about it and say crazy stuff! We are bringing some friends, is what I stopped by to tell you. I would have mentioned it earlier but we spent the spring not sleeping much. And now it's summer. West coast, meet our neighbors, Midtown Dickens, whose last album was recorded at Baucom Road with prophet of the dub caverns Scott Solter and who will show you a stomping good time! They'll be with us from Seattle on down through Santa Barbara. See you all there!

Tour Is A Feeling

We would like, to the point of feeling almost all-caps about it, to thank everybody for making our first tour of the year an incredibly fun time night after night after night. Just a nightly source of creative and emotional renewal for us. You guys! It was so much fun!

So, like, what the hell, is our opinion: why not go to go over to Ireland & Scotland & England and do the touring we already talked about & then come home, have a couple peanut butter sandwiches, break skin on a project that won't poke its head above ground 'til next year, and then high-tail it to the west coast?

June
14 - Varsity Theater, Minneapolis, MN
16 - The Showbox, Seattle, WA
17 - The Biltmore Cabaret, Vancouver, BC
18 - Aladdin Theater, Portland, OR
20 - The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA
23 - the El Rey, Los Angeles, CA

And then, who's it gonna hurt, why not play Lollapalooza?

August
5-7- Lollapalooza, Chicago, IL

Did I mention we're playing some dates with Bright Eyes, too, who I last crossed paths with in Grinnell an age ago? Those dates are clearly visible on the yellow post-it to the right. I'll know who's keeping us company on the west coast before long, too, so keep your eyes peeled. Meanwhile, hope to see everybody out there! Not "everybody" literally, though. If absolutely everybody shows up at every show there will be all kinds of logistics problems.

Bid Hard: With A Vengeance

Help Doctors Without Borders, who assist in crises around the globe and are universally acclaimed as your on-the-spot people when disaster strikes. Win yourself a Mountain Goats item that even JD doesn't have in the process, because he's giving the only copy he has to the auction: a cassette with a song on it, technically a "demo" since that's how I marked the spine of the tape. I am not archiving a copy in any way. Only one exists. If the buyer wants digitize the song and share it free of cost with the world I have no objections, and if the buyer doesn't want to do so I also think that is cool, since I believe in legends and think that things you never hear are sometimes even cooler than the things you do. But none of this is of any consequence. The main point is: an edition of 1 is up for auction.

The song, which if I do say so myself has a catchy little chorus, is about doom & disaster, about which I feel a little weird given the circumstances, but what can I tell you: doom, disaster and a sunny disposition is what I do. The song features a spoken intro giving play-by-play information about the muted Cubs vs. Reds game I was watching when I got the idea for the song.

Keep your head up & your spirits high Japan! Your country has given so much to the world and we're all pulling for you in this crisis! Much love from your friend in North Carolina & New York, the Mountain Goats