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Jan 25, 2018 Amanda Palmer By Christopher Roberts Photography by Ray Lego (for Under the Radar)

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Amanda Palmer has covered The Mountain Goats’ “The Mess Inside” for the I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats podcast. The podcast is a conversation series featuring Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle and Joseph Fink, creator of Welcome to Night Vale and Alice Isn’t Dead. Each episode features a different artist covering a song from the band’s album All Hail West Texas. All the covers will be collected as I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats: All Hail West Texas, due out on Merge on April 6. Listen to the cover below, followed by The Mountain Goats’ upcoming tour dates.

Palmer had this to say about the cover in a press release: “There’s something weirdly challenging about covering The Mountain Goats because the very hallmark of these songs is how authentically no-frills and lo-fi the original recordings are, and it felt like it would be insulting to overproduce anything. I was walking to town one night in upstate New York with my musician friend Sxip Shirey and we were ticking off the projects we had on our to-do list, and I mentioned this covers project, and by 10 pm that night we were in my kitchen playing ‘The Mess Inside’ together, and by 9 am the next morning I’d roped in my violist friend Rachel who happened to be staying with us, and my two assistants sang back-up and clapped. We didn’t do more than 6 rehearsals in a row before we recorded the song in the backyard, high on the immediacy of it all…that felt like the right way to do it. And you can’t hear it on the recording, but we were also watching Coco Karol, Sxip’s wife, dancing on the lawn with Rachel’s tiny baby in her arms, while we did the recording, because we also made a video of the take. Coco had just come through the darkness of a miscarriage, and as she danced with the tiny baby, ‘The Mess Inside’ took on a whole new meaning for everybody playing and singing. Music is amazing.”

The Mountain Goats released a new album, Goths, last year via Merge.

Read our 2016 interview with Palmer.

The Mountain Goats Tour Dates:

Feb 26 Mobile, AL - Laidlaw Performing Arts Center
Apr 12 Cincinnati, OH - The Woodward Theater
Apr 13 Cleveland, OH - Beachland Ballroom (SOLD OUT)
Apr 14 Toronto, ON - Phoenix Concert Theatre
Apr 15 Montreal, QC - L’Astral
Apr 17 Portland, ME - Port City Music Hall (SOLD OUT)
Apr 18 Burlington, VT - Higher Ground
Apr 20 Buffalo, NY - Asbury Hall @ Babeville
Apr 21 Clifton Park, NY - Upstate Concert Hall
Apr 22 Ardmore, PA - Ardmore Music Hall (SOLD OUT)
Apr 23 Ardmore, PA - Ardmore Music Hall

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