The Mountain Goats have announced their forthcoming record, Bleed Out, which is due Aug. 19. The band just released the gleeful “Training Montage” video, where we see a funny montage that starts with the band throwing axes and skateboarding backstage.
Before performing onstage, they took comical clips of themselves running around venues and arenas and doing push-ups on benches, literally “training” for a big show, singing: “Everybody ready for justice / Just another mile to go / But the strings will keen and the horns will cry / When it’s just me against the sky.”
Bleed Out will arrive via Merge Records, and is available for pre-order. Produced by Bully’s Alicia Bognanno, according to a release, the record is “a cinematic experience inspired by action movies from the 60s, 70s, 80s.”
The band laid down the album’s roots in Jan. 2021 when John Darnielle, Peter Hughes, Matt Douglas, and Jon Wurster huddled into Sylvan Esso’s Betty’s Studios with Darnielle’s initial lyrics. The entirety of Bleed Out was recorded and finished in a week.
“I got this idea to write a bunch of songs where they were all uptempo mini-action movies,” Darnielle said in a statement. “Plots, characters, heists, hostages, questionable capers, getaway cars, all that stuff. Gas pedal glued to the floor. Eventually as you might guess I wanted at least one song where the tempo relaxed a little and that’s the title track but otherwise buckle up.
“We hid out in the woods in Chapel Hill and made this album with nobody knowing about it. Proper secret-soldier style. It has been pretty hard keeping this under our hats, we are really proud of what we got here.”
The Mountain Goats will hit the road this fall for their U.S. tour, which kicks off in August and closes in September. Later in November, they’ll embark to Europe and the UK to further support Bleed Out.
Bleed Out Track List
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
The Mountain Goats 2022 Tour Dates
6/25 – Durham, NC @ Durham Bulls Athletic Park (That Music Fest)
7/9 – Charleston, SC @ Music Farm *
7/10 – Jacksonville, FL @ Intuition Ale Works *
7/11 – St. Petersburg, FL @ Palladium Theater *
7/12 – Tallahassee, FL @ The Moon *
7/14 – Memphis, TN @ Minglewood Hall ^
7/15 – St. Louis, MO @ Off Broadway ^
7/16 – Des Moines, IA @ Wooly’s ^
7/17 – Wichita, KS @ Wave ^
8/28 – Richmond, VA @ The Broadberry
8/29 – Atlantic City, NJ @ Anchor Rock Club
8/31 – New York, NY @ Webster Hall
9/2 – Boston, MA @ Wilbur Theatre
9/3 – Pawtucket, RI @ The Met
9/4 – Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Soundstage
9/7 – Kalamazoo, MI @ Bell’s Beer Garden
9/8 – McKees Rocks, PA @ Roxian Theatre
9/9 – Cincinnati, OH @ Bogart’s
9/10 – Bloomington, IN @ Bluebird Nightclub
9/11 – Little Rock, AR @ Little Rock Hall
9/13 – Fayetteville, AR @ JJ’s Live
9/15 – San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger
9/16 – Austin, TX @ Paramount Theatre
9/17 – Fort Worth, TX @ Tulips
9/18 – New Orleans, LA @ Tipitina’s
9/20 – Birmingham, AL @ Saturn
9/21 – Knoxville, TN @ Bijou Theatre
9/22 – Asheville, NC @ The Orange Peel
9/23 – Wilmington, NC @ Greenfield Lake Amphitheater
11/10 – Vienna, Austria @ WUK Foyer ~
11/11 – Berlin, Germany @ Columbia Theater ~
11/12 – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso ~
11/14 – Antwerp, Belgium @ De Roma ~
11/16 – London, UK @ Roundhouse ~
11/17 – Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall ~
11/18 – Dublin, Ireland @ Vicar Street ~
* duo performance with Izzy Heltai
^ duo performance with Abby Hamilton
~ with Carson McHone
