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Photo by Chrissy Piper

Jul 28, 2009 The Mountain Goats By By Kyle Lemmon

According to a news post from leader John Darnielle, the new Mountain Goats LP is titled The Life of the World to Come and it’s dropping on our doorsteps October 6th on the oh-so-dreamy 4AD. We already posted the first MP3 (“Genesis 3:23”) from the LP here but here’s the skinny on the rest.

Recorded earlier this year, the record finds Darnielle working with usual suspects Jon Wurster (also of Superchunk and Scharpling and Wurster) on drums and Peter Hughes on bass, and features string arrangements from new cohort Owen Pallett, aka Final Fantasy. If you notice below, all of the songs are named after Bible verses. That closer looks like the title of an exegesis paper.

Anticipating a puzzled response from longtime fans, Darnielle had this to say about the record’s seemingly incongruous themes:

“I guess the obvious question is going to be: ‘John, have you had some sort of religious awakening?’ and while I guess lots of people might want to be coy about answering that, that’s never really been my style, so: no. It’s not like that. It’s not some heavy-narrative-distance deal either, though, and it’s not a screed. It’s twelve new songs: twelve hard lessons the Bible taught me, kind of. More than that I’d want to wait to say until some people have heard it, which won’t be long. Will there be more news soon, quite soon? Like, next week, even? Oh yes there will!”

The full tracklist and album artwork are below:

The Life of the World to Come:

01 1 Samuel 15:23
02 Psalms 40:2
03 Genesis 3:23
04 Philippians 3:20-21
05 Hebrews 11:40
06 Genesis 30:3
07 Romans 10:9
08 1 John 4:16
09 Matthew 25:21
10 Deuteronomy 2:10
11 Isaiah 45:23
12 Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace