The Mountain Goats have released the first single from their new record, Transcendental Youth. The horn-laden “Cry For Judas” is available now both as a stream and as a free download. According to Goats’ frontman John Darnielle, the track is about “saddling up your demons and learning to ride them like devil horses with big leathery wings.” It’s also, to his knowledge, “the first song ever to feature both a swinging horn section and a line about a Baphomet drawn in chalk on an altar cloth, so everyone else who was trying to square that circle can take a breather now.”
Transcendental Youth will be released Oct. 2, but the first 1,000 mega-fans who pre-order the record starting today will get a bonus 7-inch featuring two exclusive songs, “Steal Smoked Fish” and “In The Shadow Of The Western Hills,” both of which are performed solo by Darnielle.
The Mountain Goats will be touring this fall, though no dates have yet been announced.
Transcendental Youth tracklist:
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