Tag Archives: Mountain Goats

Merge Records Celebrates 25th Anniversary — Watch Video Documentary, Download Free Mountain Goats & Superchuck Tracks

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Watch this documentary on Merge Records here.

Download free songs by the Mountain Goats and Superchunk and others here.

Here’s the press release from Merge:

Today, Google Play premiered a new documentary in the US about Merge Records. In candid, amusing interviews, Mac, Laura, Merge musicians, and friends of the label talk about its evolution and unwavering focus on its artists. Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, author of the A Series of Unfortunate Events books—and sometime member of The Magnetic Fields—narrates the documentary.

Also, music fans in the US are invited to download 25 free Merge tracks, including five new and exclusive recordings from Superchunk, The Mountain Goats, Telekinesis, Saint Rich, and Hiss Golden Messenger.

Visit Google Play now to watch the videos and download the free tracks (US only). In addition to a selection of Merge album tracks, Superchunk, The Mountain Goats, Telekinesis, Saint Rich, and Hiss Golden Messenger each cover songs originally made popular by fellow Merge artists Spoon, The Magnetic Fields, Wye Oak, Mikal Cronin, and American Music Club. All 25 tracks will be available to download for free until August 5. Google Play also filmed some behind-the-scenes footage of the making of several of these “Merge on Merge” recordings.

The unique cover art accompanying the five new tracks was designed by Dave Eggers, popular author, philanthropist, and founder of the 826 Valencia literacy project.

[In August of this year I’ll be publishing my rock ‘n’ roll/ coming-of-age novel, “True Love Scars,” which features a narrator who is obsessed with Bob Dylan. To read the first chapter, head here.

–- A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news –-

Mountain Goats’ Mainman John Darnielle Has a Novel for Us

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Mountain Goats’ leader John Darnielle will have his first novel, “Wolf in White Van,” published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux this year at the end of September.

Here’s the description of the book on Amazon:

Welcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival! You may now make your first move.
Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of “Trace Italian”—a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail—Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America.
Lance and Carrie are high school students from Florida, and are explorers of the Trace. But when they take their play into the real world, disaster strikes, and Sean is called on to account for it. In the process, he is pulled back through time, tracing back toward the moment of his own self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live.
Brilliantly constructed, Wolf in White Van unfolds backward in time until we arrive at both the beginning and the climax: the event that has shaped so much of Sean’s life. Beautifully written and unexpectedly moving, John Darnielle’s audacious and gripping debut novel is a marvel of storytelling brio and genuine literary delicacy.

-– A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post: sounds, visuals and/or news —