2012

The Mountain Goats’ latest release, Transcendental Youth comes complete with something new and shiny.  No, it’s not the lyrics or subject matter.  Rest assured, longtime listeners, John Darnielle is still eloquently mining the depths of the fragile human psyche for some of his best material, dropping lines like “Long black night/Morning frost/I’m still here/But all is lost” with aplomb throughout the album’s twelve tracks.  However, this time around, the songs are buoyed by a rousing and sometimes even uplifting horn section, expertly arranged by the emerging and proficient musical jack-of-all-trades Matthew E. White