Goths was released in 2017. For annotations on individual songs, please see the linked pages. If you prefer the annotation experience all in one page, I encourage you to check out the extremely sick sister website "More Annotated Goats".
sending this album out to Kim & Quinn & Lanny & Devon & Wes, forever perfect in the strobe’s embrace
NO COMPED VOCALS
NO PITCH CORRECTION
NO GUITARS[1]
The theme this time around is goth, a subject closer to my heart perhaps than that of any Mountain Goats album previous. And while John writes the songs, as he always has, it feels more than ever like he’s speaking for all of us in the band, erstwhile goths (raises hand) or otherwise, for these are songs that approach an identity most often associated with youth from a perspective that is inescapably adult. Anyone old enough to have had the experience of finding oneself at sea in a cultural landscape that’s suddenly indecipherable will empathize with Pat Travers showing up to a Bauhaus show looking to jam, for example.
But underneath the outward humor, there is evident throughout a real tenderness toward, and solidarity with, our former fellow travelers—the friends whose bands never made it out of Fender’s Ballroom, the Gene Loves Jezebels of the world—the ones whose gothic paths were overtaken by the realities of life, or of its opposite. It’s something we talk about a lot, how fortunate and grateful we are to share this work, a career that’s become something more rewarding and fulfilling than I think any of us could have imagined. We all know how easily it could’ve gone the other way, and indeed for a long time did.
Vinyl etchings
Side A: SENSATIONS ET SOUVENIRS[2]
Side B: WHALE, BROWNING, MAMOULIAN[3]
Side C: HE PRAYETH BEST WHO LOVETH BEST[4]
Side D: THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO[5]
The bonus tracks do not have lyrics, and therefore do not have pages here.