Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Mountain Goats ready for action with LR concert
There are all sorts of slick, cinematic violence and vengeance on “Bleed Out,” the new Mountain Goats album, which makes sense because it was inspired by action movies.
The record, the 20th in the Mountain Goats catalog, was released Aug. 18 on venerable indie label Merge Records. It was conceived during the pandemic when frontman John Darnielle, unable to tour or go out much, found himself watching action movies in the evening before going to bed.
“I was mainly watching new stuff, but I did go back to the [Jean-Claude] van Damme movies,” he says last month from his home in Durham, N.C., where he lives with his wife, Lalitree, and their two sons. “When I was a teenager I loved all of those. But I also got familiar with Indonesian action movies, French action movies. The director of a film called “Mesrine” [JeanFrançois Richet] did a Mel Gibson movie called ‘Blood Father.’ I really got into that for like a month and wrote pretty much all of the songs over the span of that month.”
Darnielle and his bandmates — bassist Peter Hughes, drummer Jon Wurster and multi-instrumentalist Matt Douglas — are on tour in support of “Bleed Out,” and will play The Hall in Little Rock on Sunday. Lilly Hiatt will open. (See Page 6E for more on Hiatt.)
“Bleed Out,” which was produced by Alicia Bognanno of Bully, is more uptempo than recent efforts like “Getting Into Knives” and “Dark in Here” (both from 2020), with bouncy arrangements and the occasional horns. There are well-observed references to the themes of action films in driving, singalong songs like “Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome,” “Training Montage,” “Extraction Point,” “Make You Suffer” and “Hostages,” all punctuated by Darnielle’s reedy, unmistakable voice and finely honed lyrics.
Returning to the studio with the band after being apart during the pandemic was a blessing, he says, and the band’s enthusiasm is evident.
“It was amazing, and the songs were so fresh,” he says. “Peter was really vibing on these songs. He connected to them in some real way. It’s easily the most fun record we have made in a very long time.”
Darnielle, who worked for years as a psychiatric nurse, started recording as Mountain Goats more than three decades ago and developed a devoted following. The writing of the new album is reminiscent of those early days, when he would make cassettes of his songs on a Panasonic RX-FT500 boombox.
“There would often be a [movie on] VHS in and I’d be doing homework with one hand and sketching out lyric ideas that came to me off the screen with my other hand, so I just did that again,” he says.
“Bleed Out” is another example of Darnielle’s skill at working with a narrative theme. He has written albums about a toxic couple trapped in a brutal marriage (“Tallahassee”), his own troubled youth growing up in California (“The Sunset Tree”), professional wrestling (“Beat the Champ”), the self-explanatory “Goths” and role-playing tabletop games (“In League with Dragons”). In 2020 he got the old boombox out and recorded “Songs for Pierre Chuvin,” inspired by the French historian’s “A Chronicle of the Last Pagan” (the proceeds from that album went to his bandmates and crew while touring was on hold).
“There’s never a concept at first, there’s just a couple of songs,” Darnielle says. “Once I have two or three related to each other, I have a choice. I can pick one for the next album, or you can figure out the theme and stick with that. I do that one about two-thirds of the time.”
He also traces this tendency back to when his side hustle was writing record reviews for alternative weeklies and ’zines (self-published periodicals).
“When you have a strong concept going, it’s easier for people to interview you when the album comes out,” he says. “It’s like, good, your record is about something. That helps.” Bless you, sir.
Along with being one of the most creative and gifted lyricists in indie rock, Darnielle has written three acclaimed novels. His first, 2014’s “Wolfe in White Van,” was nominated for a National Book Award. That was followed by “Universal Harvester” in 2017 and “Devil House” from this year.
OK. We’ve got a beloved songwriter and celebrated novelist. After making an excellent film-inspired record, is there any interest in writing screenplays?
“That is not on my radar,” Darnielle quickly replies. “I think if I had an idea for a movie, I’d find someone who is good at screenwriting and talk to them.”