New Song Of The Day: The Mountain Goats – Mobile

0

Today we bring you new music from The Mountain Goats. The song is Mobile and that’s where it was recorded.

That’s Mobile, Alabama. With a mess of new music on the way from The Mountain Goats, here’s the always informative Record Company Blurb:

“Mobile” features Muscle Shoals players Spooner Oldham (Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt) on electric piano and Will McFarlane (Bonnie Raitt, Tammy Wynette) on lead guitar. Here’s Mountain Goats bassist Peter Hughes on that experience and his interpretation of Darnielle’s lyrics:

The Mountain Goats have been playing together as a band long enough to have developed a degree of musical telepathy, but listening to these two guys responding in real time to us and each other revealed another level of connectedness altogether, one bordering on the supernatural. We ran through most of these songs three times; I’m pretty sure the performance of “Mobile” you’re hearing is a second take.

One of my quarantine projects after getting home was going back to Moby Dick and actually finishing it for once, and I was amused to encounter early on the retelling of the story of Jonah. If Melville gives it to us as a fiery 19th century New Bedford sermon, what “Mobile” offers might be understood as Father Mapple’s modern-day Gulf Coast flip side, the breeziness of McFarlane’s electric guitar and Matt Douglas’ accordion belying its protagonist’s guilty conscience.

Twelve months ago, when John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats spoke with NPR about the breakneck ten days spent writing and recording Songs for Pierre Chuvin on his infamous boombox, it was revealed the full Mountain Goats band had been recording new material at “two famed studios in the Deep South.” We soon learned October’s Getting Into Knives was put to tape at Sam Phillips Recording in Memphis, a magical room that’s hosted everyone from Elvis Presley to The Cramps, so…what was recorded at the other studio?

Answer: a new Mountain Goats album! Dark in Here (out June 25) was recorded the week between Getting Into Knives and Songs for Pierre Chuvin at FAME Studios, the Muscle Shoals institution that’s captured Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Gregg Allman, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and hundreds more. Darnielle announced the record last night (describing it as the “weathered, gnarlier cousin to Getting Into Knives“) before the third installment of the band’s Jordan Lake Sessions concert series and subsequently shared Dark in Here’s gentle-but-ominous lead single, “Mobile.”

Pre-order Dark in Here on CD and etched 2-LP today. The Merge store is offering “High Noon Somewhere Blue” Peak Vinyl, along with a Mountain Goats pog pack and jigsaw puzzle that can be bundled together with the album, while the band store carries an exclusive “Mine-Lantern Pale” color-in-color vinyl edition.

 

Marty Duda
Latest posts by Marty Duda (see all)