The Mountain Goats announce their new album Bleed Out (Merge Records) with a video for its opening track, “Training Montage.” The album, a cinematic experience inspired by action movies from the 60s, 70s and 80s, was produced by Bully’s Alicia Bognanno. Bleed Out is available for pre-order now on “High-Velocity Spatter” red marble, double Peak Vinyl, CD, or cassette and is due out August 19th.

Bleed Out’s lead single “Training Montage” lovingly documents the getting-ready-for-battle scene in any action movie regardless of provenance and loudly declares its intentions: “I’m doing this for revenge.” It sets the tone for everything that follows on Bleed Out, an album delivered with the urgency and desperation deserving of its narrators and circumstances.

Heavily informed and influenced by their historic settings, Bleed Out is all pent-up energy and explosion, executed by a bunch of friends who were mainly happy to be in a room together making loud noises. In January 2021, just weeks after John Darnielle had started writing, his bandmates Peter Hughes, Matt Douglas, and Jon Wurster joined him at a studio in the woods near his home in Chapel Hill (Sylvan Esso’s Betty’s Studios). Everything was finished inside of a week.

“So, heads up. I got this idea to write a bunch of songs where they were all uptempo mini-action movies. 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. Alicia Bognanno produced & played with us, and the great Shani Gandhi mixed. The first single is ‘Training Montage’ which does what it says on the tin, and you can preorder the album now, and as for tour dates…you know we gotta bring these uptempo jams to a stage near you at the earliest possible convenience,” says John Darnielle. 

Additionally, the Mountain Goats have announced a full-band US fall tour that kicks off in August. The band will also be doing duo tour dates this summer and hitting Europe and the UK in November. All dates are listed below.

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