The Mountain Goats’ In League With Dragons on April 26th via Merge Records. John Darnielle will unveil more about the album via a Facebook Live from Wizards of the Coast (makers of D&D and Magic: The Gathering) at 4PM Eastern / 1PM Pacific: https://www.facebook.com/mountaingoatsmusic/

In League With Dragons was engineered by Matt Ross-Spang (Margo Price, Jason Isbell, John Prine) and recorded by The Mountain Goats – songwriter and guitarist Darnielle, drummer Jon Wurster, bassist Peter Hughes, and multi-instrumentalist Matt Douglas – at Blackbird Studios in Nashville, TN. Robert Bailey contributed additional vocal arrangements and strings performed by the Macedonian Radio Symphonic Orchestra.

John Darnielle on In League With Dragons”

“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.”

The Mountain Goats
In League With Dragons
Merge

1. Done Bleeding
2. Younger
3. Passaic 1975
4. Clemency for the Wizard King
5. Possum by Night
6. In League with Dragons
7. Doc Gooden
8. Going Invisible 2
9. Waylon Jennings Live!
10. Cadaver Sniffing Dog
11. An Antidote for Strychnine
12. Sicilian Crest