Bleed Out - Vinyle Jaune

Description

Like John Darnielle, the leader of the Mountain Goats, you may have spent the end of 2020 watching movies to find comfort in familiar and gentle things. Except for John Darnielle, comfort is found in action films, French thrillers like Mesrine (2008), vintage Italian poliziotteschi, or the plant-human crossovers in Mutations (The Freakmaker) with Donald Pleasence (1974). This brought him back to his formative years as an artist, when these films fueled and soundtracked his songwriting sessions or served as visual background during home recordings. His very first tapes even contained samples from these films that he watched sitting on his couch, guitar in hand. He took notes on dialogues, plots, tropes, and styles, mainly from action films, as an immersive role-playing technique. These films influenced his twentieth album, Bleed Out, which explores the allure—and futility—of revenge. One song about preparing a bloody revenge gives rise to another song about the act of revenge, and then others that evoke the consequences of such an act. Bleed Out is something of a cinematic experience in itself. Titles like "Make You Suffer," "First Blood," "Hostages," and "Need More Bandages" set the tone, acting as expressive vignettes of desperate characters trapped in no-win situations trying to bring down as many people as they can with them. These are stories with universal scope in their desire for justice. "Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome" stirs up raw anger in 2022. This is not the first time John Darnielle has reflected on violence and its representation. His third-most recent novel, Devil House, deals with the relationship between tragedy and entertainment, although he is careful to minimize any parallels with Bleed Out beyond a natural inclination for tragic things as a psychological defense mechanism. For this album, he surrounded himself with new collaborators, such as Alicia Bognanno from Bully, a producer capable of helping him shape the rawer aspect required by the songs.