Name: Bleed Out
Brand: The Mountain Goats

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

MRG799LPC1

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Colour

Yellow

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: Yes

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Cut at 45RPM. Housed in Gatefold Sleeve with OBI.

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2022-08-19

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Cargo

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

0673855079912

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Total Cap

2 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / yellow

MRG799CD

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Download code: No

Digi Wallet with 12 Page Booklet and OBI.

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0673855079929

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1 / CD / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

The Mountain Goats

Genre GB

Alternative / Modern

Label GB

Merge Records

Merge Records is an independent record label based in Durham, North Carolina. Founded in 1989 by Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan, it started as a platform to release music from their band Superchunk and their friends' creations. Over the years, Merge Records has grown to include talented artists from all over the world, with some of their records even reaching the top of the Billboard music charts.
With its headquarters nestled in Durham, North Carolina, Merge Records has become a renowned name in the music industry. The label was established by Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan back in 1989 with a vision to share their own musical endeavors as well as support fellow musicians within their circle.
What began as a humble endeavor quickly flourished into something much greater. Today, Merge Records boasts an impressive roster of artists spanning various genres and backgrounds. From indie rock to experimental pop, *Superchunk* paved the way for other talented musicians to join forces under this esteemed label's umbrella.

The Mountain Goats are an American indie folk band formed in Claremont, California by singer-songwriter John Darnielle. Although initially a solo project, Darnielle has collaborated with various musicians over the years. In the 1990s, they gained recognition for their lo-fi home recordings and releases on cassette or vinyl formats. Since 2002, the band has recorded studio albums with a full lineup. Currently based in Durham, North Carolina.

Line-ups:
<ul>
<li>1991-1996: John Darnielle and Rachel Ware</li>
<li>2002-2007: John Darnielle and Peter Hughes</li>
<li>2007-2015: John Darnielle, Peter Hughes, Jon Wurster</li>
<li>2015-present: John Darnielle, Peter Hughes, Jon Wuster, Matt Douglas</li>
</ul>

Occasional members:
<ul>
<li>1991-1995: Sarah Arslanian, Amy Piatt, Rosanne Lindley</li>
<li>1995-present: Franklin Bruno, Erik Friedlander, John Vanderslice</li>
</ul>

Maybe you are just like John Darnielle: In the depths of the pandemic end of 2020, the Mountain Goats frontman passed the time trapped at home watching pulpy action movies, finding comfort in familiar tropes and sofabound escapism. But you are not really like John Darnielle, unless the action movies you found comfort in included French thrillers like 2008’s Mesrine, vintage Italian poliziotteschi, or the 1974 Donald Pleasence mad-scientist vehicle The Freakmaker. Or unless watching them brought you back to your formative days as an artist, when watching films fueled and soundtracked your songwriting jags and bare-bones home recordings and in turn inspired your 20th album to be a song cycle about the allure and futility of vengeance. But there’s no shame in not being like John Darnielle; few people are.

“On earlier tapes you’ll find these sound samples,” Darnielle says. “‘Oh, where’s this sample from?’ It’s from whatever movie I was watching while I was sitting around on the couch with a guitar. I watch a movie, somebody’d say something that I like the sound of and I’ll write that phrase down. And then I would pause the VHS, write the song, record the song on a boombox, and go back to watching my movie. I got into doing that again; I just kept watching action movies and taking notes on what they’re about and on what the governing plots and tropes and styles are. It was very much like an immersion method acting technique.”

The resulting performance is Bleed Out, a cinematic experience unto itself. One song about preparing to exact bloody revenge begat another song about the act of exacting bloody revenge and then more songs about and the causes and the aftermath of being driven to exact bloody revenge, each delivered with the urgency and desperation deserving of their narrators and circumstances. “We often make a record and then bring in some guests who flesh out the textures,” Darnielle says. “And for this one, it was very much like a pack mentality. That sort of seemed to proceed from the songs.” One new face was that of Bully’s Alicia Bognanno, recommended to Darnielle by his manager as a producer who could help nurture the rougher edged sound these songs requested. “We met up and hit it off. She’s a great guitarist. It was kind of just a lark, to see what would happen, and it was totally great.”

Running narrative themes are not new to Mountain Goats projects, especially in recent years, be it the pro wrestlers of 2015’s Beat the Champ or the goths of 2017’s Goths. Darnielle was drawn to the antiheroes of the hard-boiled action flicks he was bingeing, particularly the ways in which their quests for justice were almost all inevitably doomed.

Bleed Out could be all one movie, from the opening training montage to the demise in the elegiac closing title track. Songs like “Make You Suffer,” “First Blood,” “Hostages,” and “Need More Bandages” do what they say on the tin, telling typically vivid, deliberately recognizable vignettes of desperate characters in no-win situations who plan on taking as many people down with them as they have to. But Darnielle sees these as unconnected stories that feel universal in their desire for justice, if not in their wanton bloodshed. Anthems don’t get more straightforward or anthem-y than “Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome,” tapping into an anger that’s easy to reach in 2022, even if the solutions aren’t.

Few people think as much, or as well, about violence and its portrayal as John Darnielle. His recent bestselling novel Devil House (his third) is all about the relationship between tragedy and entertainment, though he is careful to downplay any parallels to Bleed Out beyond a natural attraction to terrible things as a coping mechanism. “That’s what catharsis is,” he says. “When you are able to experience something that is frightening to you but you don’t have to be harmed by it that experience is really valuable. I think we’re reflecting on the nature of what we consume and of what it says about us.”

Bleed Out

Music GB

Buy The Mountain Goats - Bleed Out (Vinyl, CD) now from Rough Trade - independent purveyors of great music, since 1976.