D&D: The Mountain Goats Announce New D&D Noir Album
The Mountain Goats announced a new D&D album earlier today, accompanied by a live performance at Wizards of the Coast HQ for the entire world via livestream. Maybe we aren’t living in the darkest timeline after all.
Alright friends, let’s not bury the lede here: the Mountain Goats have announced a new album. And it’s a D&D-inspired album. And it’s what John Darnielle is calling “Dragon Noir.” And you can listen to one of the tracks, Younger, right here right now.
Alright now that that’s out of the way, let’s get right to it, courtesy of the Mountain Goats:
This album began life as a rock opera about a besieged seaside community called Riversend ruled by a benevolent wizard, for which some five to seven songs were written. When I’m focusing on a project, I always distract myself from the through-line with multiple byways, which are kind of like mini-games within the broader architecture of a long video game. As I worked on the Riversend stuff, weird noir visions started creeping in, probably under the influence of Leonardo Sciascia (a Sicilian author, he wrote mysteries) and Ross MacDonald’s The Zebra-Striped Hearse, which a friend from Port Washington gave me while I was in the thick of the writing. I thought these moods helped complicate the wizards and dragons a little, and, as I thought about my wizard, his health failing, the invasion by sea almost certain to wipe out half his people, I thought about what such a person might look like in the real world: watching a country show at a midwestern casino, or tryout pitching for an American League team years after having lit up the marquees. Finally, I wrote the title track, which felt like a drawing-together of the themes in play: rebellion against irresistible tides, the lush vistas of decay, necessary alliances. I am earnestly hoping that a new genre called “dragon noir” will spring from the forehead of nearly two years’ work on these songs, but, if not, I am content for this to be the sole example of the style.
Plus, take a look at the tracklist:
You can catch a rebroadcast of the concert right here.
The Album is slated to drop 4/26, so keep your eyes peeled. In the meantime folks, enjoy.
Fun fact: any of these song titles can also double as a Mountain Goats album title
