The Mountain Goats Announce The Coroner’s Gambit Reissue

The Mountain Goats have announced they’re reissuing The Coroner’s Gambit, their long out-of-print 2000 album. The classic LP will be released on “kandy korn” colored vinyl, CD, and—for the first time ever—cassette. All versions will be released on June 28 via Merge and feature new liner notes written by singer-guitarist John Darnielle. On the Mountain Goats’ Bandcamp and in the Merge store, a limited number of copies of The Coroner’s Gambit will be “housed in a paper bag featuring the printed liner notes” in a nod to the original release.

Darnielle recorded The Coroner’s Gambit in numerous locations, with five songs being tracked in Omaha, Nebraska, five more in Colo, Iowa, and the rest in Ames, Iowa. In a statement, Darnielle reflected on the transitory nature of the album:

There are few records in the Mountain Goats catalog that are closer to my heart than The Coroner’s Gambit. It bears a sonic thumbprint shared by none of its brethren (Panasonic RX-FT500, Marantz PMD-222, and sessions in Omaha probably recorded to a Tascam Porta-One) and while two of those sources appear on several later releases, none of the other records really sound like it. Although it contains exactly no autobiographical songs, it feels personal to me—intimate, diaristic. I have vivid memories of the songs I wrote and recorded in Colo, and foggy memories of the Greyhound trip to & from Omaha. I was taking Greyhounds across midwestern state lines to record songs with friends when I made The Coroner’s Gambit, is what I’m saying. You can maybe hear the exhaust of the Greyhound in the songs if you listen close.

In 2023, the Mountain Goats released the new album Jenny From Thebes. Also last year, Darnielle made a cameo on Rian Johnson’s TV show Poker Face, where, in the episode “Rest in Metal,” he starred as a guitarist in the one-hit-wonder metal band Doxxxology.

Read the interview “Inside John Darnielle’s Boiling Brain.”