The Mountain Goats have announced a new album In League With Dragons. It’s out April 26 via Merge. They’ve also released a new song from the record called “Younger.” Listen to it below; scroll down for the tracklist and John Darnielle’s statement on In League With Dragons.

Later today (January 28), the Mountain Goats will perform at Wizards of the Coast (makers of “Dungeons and Dragons” and “Magic: the Gathering”). The set streams at 4 p.m. Eastern on Facebook Live.

The Mountain Goats embark on a North American tour in April. Their last studio album, Goths, came out in 2017.

Read “Familial Bond: Mountain Goats’ Sunset Tree and Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie & Lowell” on the Pitch.

In League With Dragons:

01 Done Bleeding
02 Younger
03 Passaic 1975
04 Clemency for the Wizard King
05 Possum by Night
06 In League With Dragons
07 Doc Gooden
08 Going Invisible 2
09 Waylon Jennings Live!
10 Cadaver Sniffing Dog
11 An Antidote for Strychnine
12 Sicilian Crest

The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle:

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.

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