Pitchfork

Photo by Natalie Kardos

The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle recently stopped by PRI's show "Fair Game" to talk about which singer/songwriters he could "take" in a hypothetical showdown, and how both "the condition of being doomed to be burnt" and the Norwegian thrash metal band Aura Noir helped inspire his latest album, Heretic Pride. He also showed off a song he's pretty sure had never been played before live, "Surrounded", written for a side project with frequent collaborator John Vanderslice called the Comedians. "There's a whole plot line behind it about organ-harvesting colonies being set up on the moon ... and the people who secretly work in the organ-harvesting colonies on the moon who spend six months up there, and the remaining six months of their time, they have to spend in hiding, because this is a secret project," Darnielle explains. The organ harvesters can live in wealth in their mansions in Colorado, it seems, but they can't fraternize with the non-lunar people. With his usual acoustic strums and stirring cello by Erik Friedlander, Darnielle sings of grown-ups obsessed with their toys, and leaves us waiting to find out how the rest of the story goes. (Listen to the full show here.)

MP3:> The Mountain Goats: "Surrounded" (Live on "Fair Game")
[Heretic Pride is out now on on 4AD]