The Mountain Goats - Dark In Here - Blue - VINYL LP

At last it can be told the story of how, when The Mountain Goats got together in early March, 2020, it was to make not one album, but two. The idea this time around was to work with Matt Ross-Spang, the dashing Memphis wunderkind who'd engineered that album and charmed us all with his gentle wit and old-school savoir-faire. The Memphis album-Getting Into Knives, which came out last October-would be brighter, bolder, marked by rich and vibrant hues; the Muscle Shoals one-Dark in Here, set for on June 25-quieter, smokier, but more deeply textured and intense. One of the words that John used when we were talking about the direction for Dark in Here was Inchwild,Inch which I liked a lot. Not wild in the sense of abandon-these aren't those kind of songs. But wild in the sense of something undomesticated, untamable. Wild like the immutability of nature, the way it will take back any piece of untended space as it's own, whether amidst the AutoZones and Chick-fil-A's of Muscle Shoals or among the ruins of a scientific outpost on the Kola Peninsula. Wild like the whale; like a powerful animal. Or a virus-the beast that awakes, emerges from a forest, and stops the world. You can fight the calamity all you want, but either way, it's going to demand your surrender.

Various Artists - French Orchl Selections [COMPACT DISCS] date 04/14/2010

Vinyl LP pressing incudes . From Peter Hughes of The Mountain Goats InchThe theme this time around is goth, a subject closer to my heart perhaps than that of any Mountain Goats album previous. And while John 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, for these are songs that approach an identity most often associated with youth from a perspective that is inescapably adult. InchAnyone old enough to have had the experience of finding oneself at sea in a cultural landscape that's suddenly indecipherable will empathize with Pat Travers showing up to a Bauhaus show looking to jam, for example. But underneath the outward humor, there is evident throughout a real tenderness toward, and solidarity with, our former fellow travelers - the friends whose bands never made it out of Fender's Ballroom, the Gene Loves Jezebels of the world - the ones whose gothic paths were overtaken by the realities of life, or of it's opposite. InchIt's something we talk about a lot, how fortunate and grateful we are to share this work, a career that's become something more rewarding and fulfilling than I think any of us could have imagined. We all know how easily it could've gone the other way, and indeed for a long time did.Inch