Mountain Goats To Release LP On 4AD

The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle releases his third LP for 2002, titled Tallahassee, in October; it's his first for England's respected 4AD label. Tony Doogan (Belle and Sebastian, Mogwai) recorded the album at Tarbox studios in upstate New York (where the Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev record). Doogan also mixed the album, "adding surprises" at Cava Studios in Glasgow, Scotland, according to Darnielle.

Darnielle is known for writing songs that loosely fit into various ongoing series (for example, his "Geographic Series"). All of the songs on the new album are from what he calls the "Alpha Cycle."

"The album is a series of songs involving a couple of characters I've been writing about/through for a long time — any song with the word 'Alpha' in the title, that's these two," explained Darnielle in an email sent from his home in Ames, Iowa. "They're a married couple permanently on the cusp of divorce, and they move to various remote areas of the country to try and flee from themselves."

The songs are "about people who saw which way the wind was blowing in their lives and opted to go down with the ship rather than save themselves," he continued. "This gets complicated, but what could deepen a love more than the shared knowledge that all is lost?"

Jazzed about joining 4AD's roster of artists, Darnielle commented, "I remember when the Cocteau Twins were this brand new thing, not to mention the Pixies — this is just a good label, with a history of releasing good, interesting records and some of the best album design ever."

And how did Darnielle get a deal with 4AD? "They'd mentioned to a friend of mine in London that they liked my stuff, and he [the friend] called to tell me I should talk to them sometime," he said. "So we talked, and I had this idea to do an album of all Alpha songs that I'd want to flesh out so as to sort of bring up the depth of the nastiness of the situation these people are in. So we talked, and agreed to make some records."

Things apparently get quite bad for Darnielle's fictitious couple during the course of Tallahassee. "They spend a year in a motel in Vegas at one point," recounted the Southern California native. "Where it all comes to a boil is in Tallahassee, in a crumbling house they occupy together while drinking themselves into the ground, and that's what the songs on the album are about. Tallahassee is 14 songs about the bad things that go on in the house they buy on Southwood Plantation Road. Which road may or may not actually exist, but was on an antiquated map of the region I had."

Darnielle is keeping mum about song titles. "I like to keep the titles secret 'til the album comes out," he said. "Makes it more fun for me." Guest players include Peter Hughes (Diskothi-Q) on bass, drums and guitar. His longtime friend, Nothing Painted Blue's Franklin Bruno, added piano and guitar. The Delgados added "a whole bunch of stuff" to a song called "Oceanographer's Choice."

Darnielle has already seen two of his albums released this year. In January, using the name the Extra Glenns, the punk-folk cult favorite released Marshall Arts Weekend (Absolutely Kosher) in collaboration with Bruno, who helped add a more lush sound to Darnielle's stripped-down bluesman's poetics. The Mountain Goats' All Hail West Texas (Emperor Jones) was released in February. Both albums were welcomed by critics and roundly applauded. (See previous story, "Mountain Goat Darnielle Births Triplets in 2002.")

Word is Tallahassee is more "produced" than Darnielle's previous work, which tends to consist of his intense vocals accompanied by furiously strummed acoustic guitar. "I usually say 'big,' though that's compared to my own [mostly acoustic] stuff," Darnielle said of the new album's sound. "There's more instrumentation than usual, and there're two songs with drums." The Mountain Goats have rarely, if ever, integrated drums into their sound.

Darnielle admitted his fingers are indeed callused and that he breaks many steel strings. "I play the way I do because I'm untaught, and I ended up finding sounds I liked by doing that," he wrote. "I think what I play is essentially punk rock, and I think physical exertion in the creative process is at least part of the point of punk rock."

Describing the new album's sound, he said, "Some of Tallahassee's songs are more spacious; it feels like there are pockets in 'em, if that makes sense. I don't know about 'more lush' — the B-side to the single that's coming out before the album is a home recording, live, one track. Maybe, though. Who knows?"

Darnielle tours Europe in October and the U.S.'s East Coast in November, sharing some dates with San Francisco art-rocker John Vanderslice (see "John Vanderslice: Obsessed With Making Music"). He penned two songs for Vanderslice's latest album, Life and Death of an American Fourtracker (Barsuk), released May 2002.

Darnielle loves to tour. "I'm aching to play in Asia, especially Southeast Asia — Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia," he said. "I've played in Sweden, Holland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, and blessed mother Ireland. My favorite shows to date have been the Swedish ones, the Irish one, and some of the English ones — playing in-store in Rough Trade is a lot of fun. In the U.S. I like to play Tallahassee a lot, and San Francisco, N.Y. and Chicago are all great. Can't forget North Carolina, either. It's kind of impossible to say 'this is my favorite place' when it's just so nice to be able to go somewhere and spazz out for people who enjoy hearing the music and watching me spazz out, you know? I'd feel like an ingrate saying 'this city ruled over all the others.'"

For all things Mountain Goats-related, visit the Mountain Goats' Web site. — Jillian Steinberger [Tuesday, July 23, 2002]