{"id":2010680,"date":"2025-09-10T04:36:54","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T04:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2010680"},"modified":"2025-09-10T04:36:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T04:36:54","slug":"the-mountain-goats-announce-23rd-studio-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/the-mountain-goats-announce-23rd-studio-album\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mountain Goats Announce 23rd Studio Album"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p>As John Darnielle\u2019s restlessness persists, the Mountain Goats will release their 23rd studio album, <em>Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan<\/em>, on November 7. And, for the first time since 2009, the band is working with an entity other than Merge Records, moving over to their own label Cadmean Dawn. <em>Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan<\/em> is the first Mountain Goats LP since longtime bassist Peter Hughes left the group, and the project is dedicated to him. Multi-instrumentalist Matt Douglas produced the album, and bass parts were supplied by Cameron Ralston.<\/p>\n<p>Ralston isn\u2019t the only new, unofficial addition to the Mountain Goats. Replacements bassist Tommy Stinson is here, as are harpist Mikaela Davis, Bonny Light Horseman\u2019s Josh Kaufman, and Tony winner Lin-Manuel Miranda. Yes, you read that right. He sings backup on four of the new songs, including today\u2019s lead single, \u201cArmies of the Lord.\u201d The concept of <em>Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan<\/em> is the story of a \u201csmall crew shipwrecked on a desert island, where three surviving members\u2014an unnamed narrator, Captain Peter Balkan, and Adam\u2014are plagued by diminishing resources and apocalyptic visions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere were 16 men on a fishing boat, but only three survived the storm, and one of those went missing, and is presumed dead,\u201d Darnielle says. \u201cThat leaves me and Peter Balkan, whose health is failing as his apocalyptic visions dissipate in the spray at the shore.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the night of May 29, 2023, I had a dream. Waking from it, I transcribed what I could remember of it into the note-taking app I keep on my phone. The note reads: \u201cthrough this fire across from peter balkan #dream. It was the title of a work, not sure which form.\u201d The next time I sat at the piano to see if I had ideas, I got the notion of writing a work that proceeded from its title, and that tried to make real the dreamlike grammar of that title. This album is that work. Since its protagonist shares a first name with our longstanding bassist Peter Hughes, who bid farewell to the sea in 2024, this album is dedicated to him\u2014he who served aboard the good ship Mountain Goats for so many years: may the fire always keep you warm, and may your nights in its light be as numerous as the grains of sand on the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"revcontent-hidden\">\n<p><em>Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan<\/em> is the first Mountain Goats full-length since 2023\u2019s <em>Jenny From Thebes<\/em>, which we named Album of the Week two years ago, when we were still doing that kind of thing (it would still be a Paste Pick under today\u2019s criteria). In her review, Laura Dzubay <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pastemagazine.com\/music\/the-mountain-goats\/album-of-the-week-the-mountain-goats-jenny-from-thebes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">wrote<\/a>, \u201c<em>Jenny from Thebes<\/em> knows that if you push your imagination hard enough, your imaginings can become your lived convictions. And if you act enough on your convictions, you yourself might be expelled into imagination. One of this record\u2019s biggest achievements might be building out the character of Jenny while managing to not sacrifice her central mystery.\u201d Read our cover story with Darnielle <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pastemagazine.com\/music\/the-mountain-goats\/cover-story-the-mountain-goats-harbingers-of-mystery-and-absence\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Listen to \u201cArmies of the Lord\u201d and check out the <em>Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan<\/em> artwork and tracklist below.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"jeg_video_container jeg_video_content\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"the Mountain Goats - &quot;Armies of the Lord&quot; (Official Visualizer)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sqMWZd5qmUc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><em>Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan<\/em> Artwork:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><em>Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan<\/em> Tracklist:<\/strong><br \/>Overture<br \/>Fishing Boat<br \/>Cold at Night<br \/>Dawn of Revelation<br \/>Your Bandage<br \/>Peru<br \/>Through This Fire<br \/>Rocks in My Pockets<br \/>Armies of the Lord<br \/>Your Glow<br \/>The Lady from Shanghai 2<br \/>Broken to Begin With<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.pastemagazine.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As John Darnielle\u2019s restlessness persists, the Mountain Goats will release their 23rd studio album, Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan, on November 7. And, for the first time since 2009, the band is working with an entity other than Merge Records, moving over to their own label Cadmean Dawn. Through This Fire Across from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2010681,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2010680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/The-Mountain-Goats-Announce-23rd-Studio-Album.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2010680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2010680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2010681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2010680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2010680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2010680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}