Out Now: The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree (20th Anniversary Edition)

On 26 April 2005, John Darnielle’s third 4AD full-length album as , The Sunset Tree, presented a deeply confessional and emotionally vivid narrative drawn from the depths of the prolific songwriter’s turbulent personal history. Twenty years on, Darnielle revisits the career highlight record with a reissue dubbed The Sunset Tree (20th Anniversary Edition).

It’s a mark of Darnielle’s extraordinary fertility that, of the 800-plus songs he has recorded, only a handful directly concern his own life experience; The Sunset Tree’s 13 tracks, written after Darnielle’s stepfather passed away in December 2003, are the bulk of this small subsection. It’s a collection of songs about the house that Darnielle grew up in and the people who lived there – an ensemble cast which includes Darnielle himself, an ex-girlfriend, his mother, stepfather, and sister; old friends and old enemies. “I’ve put off writing about this stuff for years,” he said at the time of its release, “because I’m a little squeamish about milking my own trauma for art, and getting good songs rather than cry-fests from these experiences is a really excruciating process. And also because my stepfather was still alive”. 

In further celebration of the anniversary, an upgraded version of the music video for ‘This Year’, directed by Rian Johnson (Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Knives Out), was released earlier this year.

The Mountain Goats’ The Sunset Tree 20th Anniversary Edition is out digitally, and on CD, Cassette, and Limited Edition Apricot Coloured Vinyl on 17 October.

Pre-order / Purchase The Sunset Tree 20th Anniversary Edition https://themountaingoats.ffm.to/thesunsettree20
Watch music video for ‘This Year’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7fBFtif9H4