The wait is over: The Coroner’s Gambit, the classic 2000 album by the Mountain Goats, is back in print. Featuring new liner notes by John Darnielle, The Coroner’s Gambit is available on CD, standard LP, and limited Kandy Korn Hybrid Yellow Peak Vinyl from the Merge store and the Mountain Goats’ Bandcamp and band store. True to the initial release, Peak Vinyl copies of The Coroner’s Gambit are housed in a paper bag featuring the printed liner notes—watch it come together on the Merge Instagram page and read a new feature about the reissue over at Discogs!

John Darnielle, on The Coroner’s Gambit:

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.

The Coroner’s Gambit finds John Darnielle between physical and sonic spaces, five of its sixteen songs recorded in Simon Joyner’s Omaha, Nebraska, studio, five more at home in Colo, Iowa, and the rest after he moved to Ames. The mix of home and studio recordings grants The Coroner’s Gambit a thrilling sense of immediacy, its sharply drawn characters and the immaculately appointed lore of the worlds they occupy representing a breakthrough for Darnielle as a practitioner of the full-length album. It is an early masterpiece, an introspective epic that further burnishes Darnielle’s reputation as one of our greatest songwriters, one whose gift for confessional fabulism knows few rivals.

The Mountain Goats’ summer tour kicks off in July, including a John Darnielle solo performance at Merge 35 as well as a full-band co-headlining show with The New Pornographers in August. Tickets for all shows, below, are on sale now!

The Mountain Goats on tour: 
Jul 24 Carrboro, NC – Merge 35 (John Darnielle solo)
Jul 25 Indianapolis, IN – The Vogue Theatre*
Jul 26 Cleveland, OH – Agora Theatre*
Jul 27 Woodstock, NY – Bearsville Theater* [SOLD OUT]
Jul 28 Norwalk, CT – District Music Hall*
Jul 31 New York, NY – The Rooftop at Pier 17* [LOW TICKET WARNING]
Aug 01 Boston, MA – Citizens House of Blues*
Aug 02 Millersville, PA – Phantom Power*
Aug 03 Philadelphia, PA – Union Transfer* [LOW TICKET WARNING]
Aug 04 Vienna, VA – Wolf Trap+
Aug 06 Charlottesville, VA – The Jefferson Theater*
Aug 07 Virginia Beach, VA – Elevation 27*
Aug 09 Knoxville, TN – The Mill & Mine*
Aug 10 Columbia, SC – The Senate*

* w/Field Medic
+ w/The New Pornographers