Songs for Pierre Chuvin, by the Mountain Goats

Songs for Pierre Chuvin

by the Mountain Goats

supported by

fayina This is exactly what I needed right now. Favorite track: Until Olympius Returns.

FlowersinitsTeeth Amazing just how far he's come as a songwriter. Going back to lo-fi and doing it flawlessly, it's really something. Favorite track: For the Snakes.

Otis Nugatory Bought my 1st Mt Goats cassette in 1993?94? from Shrimper -- direct. Best song? "Going To Chino." Been deeply in love w/ Mr. Darnielle since. And this new one's going on my Best of 2020 List. You done the pagans proud, kind sir. Favorite track: Aulon Raid.

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2021 reissue
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Includes unlimited streaming of Songs for Pierre Chuvin via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	Aulon Raid 02:13	buy track
2.	Until Olympius Returns 02:12	buy track
3.	Last Gasp at Calama 01:58	buy track
4.	For the Snakes 02:09	buy track
5.	The Wooded Hills Along the Black Sea 02:57	buy track
6.	January 31, 438 02:22	buy track
7.	Hopeful Assassins of Zeno 03:15	buy track
8.	Their Gods Do Not Have Surgeons 03:34	buy track
9.	Going to Lebanon 2 02:26	buy track
10.	Exegetic Chains 04:11	buy track

about

All copies of the cassette are now sold out. They will ship to arrive on or around the release date of June 19.

SO THIS TAPE STARTED while the entire band was decamped at an undisclosed location working on the next Mountain Goats album, and I had brought books with me to read, and one of them was Pierre Chuvin’s A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, which I was reading as research material for another thing I’m working on; and it’s been a long time since I sat around playing music and thinking about antiquity, but I used to do it all the time, and several of you know that because the old tapes are all littered with stories about Ajax and Agamemnon and the cult of Cybele, stories which, when I was learning them, got me so fired up that as soon as I got out of class I’d drive home in my yellow 1969 Superbeetle and write songs about them.

At our undisclosed location, one morning, immersed day and night in our work but also beginning to get the feeling that the increasingly febrile pitch of the newsfeed would continue to rise until it reached registers not seen in a while, I had a thought—what if the next Mountain Goats album was just songs about these pagans? And I wrote down the title “Aulon Raid.”

I GOT HOME about seven days later and the world was a very different place by then, and I took my old boombox down from the shelf where it sits flanked by brass deities from a former period of my life, and I got a wild idea to stand it on its end to reduce the unpleasant clicking that made it unusable—the hum & grind are one thing, basically ambient noise that adds to the pleasure of the sound if you’re into it, but the clicking I’m talking about developed sometime in the early 2000s and is not a conscriptable effect, it renders the Panasonic unusable.

Unless you stand it on its end, I learned, by accident, one day during the early weeks of the new days.

AS THESE DAYS WERE DEVELOPING, I realized, as I’d feared a week before, that the work schedule my band and I had planned for spring probably wouldn’t be panning out. The four members of the band split up our touring income equally, nightly pay & sales of merchandise; before we split up that income, we pay several people from gross receipts: Brandon, our soundman and tour manager of over a decade; Trudy, who works the merch table with style and flair; and Avel, who manages the stage no matter how unmanageable I become. I can’t do what I do without these people and I take great pleasure in trying to make their job a fun place to work. All seven of us rely on the Mountain Goats for our paycheck.

The boombox and I knew we had to do something. Back in the early nineties, when I’d first met Peter Hughes, I wanted to make a tape to be on his label, Sonic Enemy. It was Christmas break and I was on a hot streak, so I decided to try to make a full tape over the course of the break. That tape became Transmissions to Horace, which consisted entirely of work done on a daily basis during that span. I haven’t tried anything like that in a while.

I WROTE A SONG EVERY DAY for the next ten days while reading A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, starting with “Aulon Raid” and working in exactly the style I used to work in: read until something jumps out at me; play guitar and ad-lib out loud until I get a phrase I like; write the lyrics, get the song together, record immediately. Those original lyrics, exactly as written on the cardstock I save from comic books I buy, with corrections and everything, will be randomly inserted into orders; each is one of a kind, an original first draft of the lyrics to the first all-boombox Mountain Goats album since All Hail West Texas. It seems unlikely that I will ever again offer original drafts of lyrics for sale or otherwise, but pandemics call for wild measures.

I dedicate this tape to everybody who’s waited a long time for the wheels to sound their joyous grind: may they grind us into a safe future where we gather once again in rooms to sing songs about pagan priests & hidden shelters, and where we see each other face to face.

Hail the Panasonic! Hail the inscrutable engines of chance! Hail Cybele!

—John Darnielle, Durham, NC, March 2020

credits

released April 10, 2020

Recorded March 16–25, 2020, Durham, North Carolina, utilizing the trusty Panasonic RX-FT500 & the Marantz PMD222. Mastered by Brent Lambert at the Kitchen, Carrboro, NC. Maximum thanks to Merge Records & Ryan Matteson.

This album is for Peter & Jon & Trudy & Avel & Matt & Brandon, pagan stowaways in a supercathedral world

license

about

the Mountain Goats Durham, North Carolina

John Darnielle has written almost 600 songs now, and some of them are very sad, dealing with hard drugs and tragic ends, hurting yourself and others, sicknesses of both body and brain, off-brand alcohols. They are told in beautiful, unnerving, specific detail because he is a very good writer, and also some of them are just true stories about his own life.
—John Hodgman, 2012 ... more

shows

Jun 22

Henry Maier Festival Park

Milwaukee, WI
Jun 29

Mercury Ballroom

Louisville, KY
Jun 30

The Salt Shed

Chicago, IL
Jul 01

The Salt Shed

Chicago, IL
Jul 02

SPACE

Evanston, IL
Jul 04

Codfish Hollow Barnstormers

Maquoketa, IA
Jul 05

Wooly's

Des Moines, IA
Jul 07

Pablo Center at The Confluence

Eau Claire, WI
Jul 10

The Lyric Oxford

Oxford, MS
Jul 11

Ryman Auditorium

Nashville, TN
Jul 13

The Vanguard

Tulsa, OK
Jul 13

The Vanguard

Tulsa, OK
Jul 14

Liberty Hall

Lawrence, KS
Aug 04

The Rooftop at Pier 17

New York (NYC), NY
Aug 05

Citizens House of Blues - Boston

Boston, MA
Aug 08

Woodland Park Zoo

Seattle, WA
Aug 09

Pioneer Courthouse Square

Portland, OR
Oct 02

Belly Up Tavern

San Diego, CA
Oct 03

The Belasco

Los Angeles (LA), CA
Oct 05

August Hall

San Francisco, CA
Oct 06

August Hall

San Francisco, CA
Oct 07

Ace of Spades

Sacramento, CA
Oct 09

Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox

Spokane, WA
Oct 10

Knitting Factory - Boise

Boise, ID
Oct 11

The ELM

Bozeman, MT
Oct 13

Fox Theatre

Boulder, CO
Oct 14

Gothic Theatre

Englewood, CO

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