John Darnielle isn't one to rest on his laurels. His band the Mountain Goats released the Exclaim!-approved All Eternals Deck back in the spring, and he just shared a new track earlier this month. Now, the prolific songwriter is planning to premiere a new project called Transcendental Youth with a little help from Canadian pop maestro Owen Pallett.
As Pitchfork points out, on March 24, the Mountain Goats will perform at New York's Merkin Concert Hall for the Ecstatic Music Festival. The show will feature Darnielle performing alongside the all-female vocal quartet Anonymous 4 with arrangements for piano, guitar and voices by Pallett.
So is this Transcendental Youth project a new Mountain Goats album? By the sound of things, yes. The festival ambiguously calls the upcoming show "a collaborative presentation of songs from Transcendental Youth, a new work by John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats."
In an update on his website, Danielle is slightly more forthcoming, as he calls the material the "newest as-yet-only-heard-by-people-mentioned-in-this-paragraph Mountain Goats songs."
The festival further adds that the new songs "visit a small community on Puget Sound in Washington, north of Seattle at the foot of Glacier Peak, and are inhabited by the mournful voices of the isolated and the lost in motels and apartment complexes around Snohomish County."
As for working with Pallett and Anonymous 4, Darnielle had this to say about the collaborations: "I am person who likes to eat candy. Every time somebody says 'kid in a candy shop,' I think to myself: 'I wanna be that kid in the candy shop, after hours, with the go-ahead to have all the candy I like.' Anonymous 4 singing my new songs in arrangements by Owen: this is all candy ever all at once for me. I simply cannot wait for this show."
The evening will begin with a short solo set of Mountain Goats material. For more about the festival and information about tickets and passes, go here.
As Pitchfork points out, on March 24, the Mountain Goats will perform at New York's Merkin Concert Hall for the Ecstatic Music Festival. The show will feature Darnielle performing alongside the all-female vocal quartet Anonymous 4 with arrangements for piano, guitar and voices by Pallett.
So is this Transcendental Youth project a new Mountain Goats album? By the sound of things, yes. The festival ambiguously calls the upcoming show "a collaborative presentation of songs from Transcendental Youth, a new work by John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats."
In an update on his website, Danielle is slightly more forthcoming, as he calls the material the "newest as-yet-only-heard-by-people-mentioned-in-this-paragraph Mountain Goats songs."
The festival further adds that the new songs "visit a small community on Puget Sound in Washington, north of Seattle at the foot of Glacier Peak, and are inhabited by the mournful voices of the isolated and the lost in motels and apartment complexes around Snohomish County."
As for working with Pallett and Anonymous 4, Darnielle had this to say about the collaborations: "I am person who likes to eat candy. Every time somebody says 'kid in a candy shop,' I think to myself: 'I wanna be that kid in the candy shop, after hours, with the go-ahead to have all the candy I like.' Anonymous 4 singing my new songs in arrangements by Owen: this is all candy ever all at once for me. I simply cannot wait for this show."
The evening will begin with a short solo set of Mountain Goats material. For more about the festival and information about tickets and passes, go here.
