Release Date: October 2nd. 2012
The Mountain Goats’ lead handler John Darnielle has a gift for discerning peculiarities of the human condition and capturing these oddities in his songs. Transcendental Youth is focused around the unremitting survival of counter-culture social outcasts. The album reflects a “cast of characters” living in Washington state who all seem to be suffering from a degree of mental illness or social clumsiness. While many Mountain Goats albums include storytelling and the weaving in about out of characters, Transcendental Youth is one of a handful of records produced by them that leans more toward the concept album category.
In terms of sound, Transcendental Youth is a mixed bag, and tossed in is a full horn section in select songs. You get the bouncy “Harlem Roulette” (where the “loneliest people in the whole wide world are the ones you’re never going to see again”), and the hand-clapping, full horn section on “Cry for Judas,” which speaks directly about survival: “Long black night/Morning frost/I’m still here/But all is lost.” And then there’s the dark, minor-chord-driven tracks, like “In Memory of Satan,” where this narrating character has taped up the window and cloistered himself away from society. “But no one screams cuz it’s just me / Locked up in myself / Never gonna get free,” Darnielle sings. In “Lakeside View Apartments Suite,” the song follows the story of a person who sleeps most nights in the kitchen (“keep my face cool on the floor”). The song opens slowly with piano chords and a melancholic feeling. Though it speeds up to a mid-tempo and employs a soft drum beat, the chilly ambiance perseveres throughout.
Whether the subject is religious antagonism or people who live like outlaws, suffer from schizophrenia or recluse into their own human psyche, Darnielle and his crew have their number. It’s almost as if every Mountain Goats album is a different chapter in a college psychology book. And there’s no telling what subject matter the Mountain Goats will unearth and grapple with next.
Transcendental Youth is the threesome’s (Darnielle, writer, guitarist, vocalist and composer; Peter Hughes, bass; and Jon Wurster, drums) 14th studio album. It is scheduled to release Oct. 4 on Merge Records. The Mountain Goats are currently touring the U.S. in support of the new album.
The Mountain Goats — Transcendental Youth tracklist:
- “Amy aka Spent Gladiator 1”
- “Lakeside View Apartments Suite”
- “Cry for Judas”
- “Harlem Roulette”
- “White Cedar”
- “Until I Am Whole”
- “Night Light”
- “The Diaz Brothers”
- “Counterfeit Florida Plates”
- “In Memory of Satan”
- “Spent Gladiator 2”
- “Transcendental Youth”
