(Pre Order) The Mountain Goats – Bleed Out (CD) MRG799CD

Maybe you are just like John Darnielle: In the depths of the pandemic end of 2020, the Mountain Goats frontman passed the time trapped at home watching pulpy action movies, finding comfort in familiar tropes and sofabound escapism. But you are not really like John Darnielle, unless the action movies you found comfort in included French thrillers like 2008’s Mesrine, vintage Italian poliziotteschi, or the 1974 Donald Pleasence madscientist vehicle The Freakmaker. Or unless watching them brought you back to your formative days as an artist, when watching films fueled and soundtracked your songwriting jags and bare-bones home recordings and in turn inspired your 20th album to be a song cycle about the allure and futility of vengeance. But there’s no shame in not being like John Darnielle; few people are. “On earlier tapes you’ll find these sound samples,” Darnielle says. “‘Oh, where’s this sample from?’ It’s from whatever movie I was watching while I was sitting around on the couch with a guitar. I watch a movie, somebody’d say something that I like the sound of and I’ll write that phrase down. And then I would pause the VHS, write the song, record the song on a boombox, and go back to watching my movie. I got into doing that again; I just kept watching action movies and taking notes on what they’re about and on what the governing plots and tropes and styles are. It was very much like an immersion method acting technique.” The resulting performance is Bleed Out, a cinematic experience unto itself.

• 1 Training Montage
• 2 Mark on You
• 3 Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome
• 4 Extraction Point
• 5 Bones Don’t Rust
• 6 First Blood
• 7 Make You Suffer
• 8 Guys on Every Corner
• 9. Hostages
• 10. Need More Bandages
• 11. Incandescent Ruins
• 12. Bleed Out