Mountain Goats Announce ‘Transcendental Youth’ Album Details

Indie folk band the Mountain Goats have announced an Oct. 2 release date for their 15th overall studio album, ‘Transcendental Youth.’ Their follow-up to last year’s ‘All Eternals Deck’ will feature a dozen tracks and, for the first time ever, head Goat John Darnielle will be backed be a full horn section on the platter — so expect some fancy brassiness.

A few months back, Darnielle took the opportunity of an appearance at the Ecstatic Music Festival in New York to preview material from ‘Transcendental Youth’ with classical music vocal quartet Anonymous 4 and violinist Owen Pallett, although neither Anonymous nor Pallett actually appear on the album.

The name of this 15th disc has been out in the public since at least January, when Darnielle was performing a handful of tracks from it during a southern tour. Back then he was supposedly calling ‘Youth’ by a very different name: ‘The Satan Record.’ Obviously, that one didn’t stick.

Darnielle announced the disc with a 1,000-word missive about how it came to be that’s posted on the band’s official website and promises more road activity soon. “We will be touring this fall until we run out of places to go or the winged serpent returns, whichever comes first,” reads the post.

‘Transcendental Youth’ Track Listing:

1. ‘Amy AKA Spent Gladiator 1′
2. ‘Lakeside View Apartments Suite’
3. ‘Cry for Judas’
4. ‘Harlem Roulette’
5. ‘White Cedar’
6. ‘Until I Am Whole’
7. ‘Night Light’
8. ‘The Diaz Brothers’
9. ‘Counterfeit Florida Plates’
10. ‘In Memory of Satan’
11. ‘Spent Gladiator 2′
12. ‘Transcendental Youth’