The Mountain Goats – “Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome”

Last month, John Darnielle announced a new the Mountain Goats album, the action movie-inspired Bleed Out, which was produced by Bully’s Alicia Bognanno. Lead single “Training Montage” landed on our best songs of the week list, and today the band is sharing a new song with the very good title “Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome.”

“When I write an album that revolves around a theme, it usually takes two or three songs before I notice what’s going on,” Darnielle said in a statement, continuing:

There’s always one song that becomes the ‘might as well dive all the way in’ song and on Bleed Out that song was ‘Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome,’ written while watching a French action movie way past my normal bedtime. Once I had the chorus of this one I started asking myself the kinds of questions that usually end up shaping the album: What if I just wrote all the songs on guitar? What if I leaned into the uptempo ones? In recent years I shy away from the fist-punch no-brakes anthemic style but here I figured, you know, no point just wading around in blood if I’m already in knee-deep.

Listen below.

Bleed Out is out 8/19 via Merge Records. Pre-order it here.