Last week, we interrupted our regularly scheduled Traffic Jams program to bring you something special: Skalopnik Week. But in our hubris, we made a crucial mistake — scheduling an all-ska week to overlap with the release of a new Mountain Goats album. The sin is unforgivable, but a new track this week will hopefully ease things.
“Wage Wars Get Rich Die Handsome” was released as a single off of Bleed Out, but it’s still one of the best tracks on the album. The whole LP (or double LP, if you got the splatter vinyl like I did) has quickly become one of my favorite Mountain Goats records in the band’s history.
Some of that credit likely goes to Alicia Bognanno’s production, bringing a bit of that Bully energy to JD and the crew, but much of it is from the songwriting itself. This is Power Chord Mountain Goats, and Power Chord Mountain Goats rules.