The Mountain Goats give Bon Iver's "Bloodbank" a subtle and charming makeover

John Darnielle has been caught in a whirlwind of chaos the past year while juggling his book writing, Mountain Goats-ing, and recording sessions.

Speaking about the Bon Iver cover, Darnielle states, "The Bon Iver song that I initially read as being about junkies in the Pacific Northwest donating plasma for money in the ’80s, because that was a thing a lot of my friends did and a lot of those friends have gone home to God now so this song holds, for me, both great pain, and the sweet memory of friends too beautiful for this world."

Teaming up with Matt Douglas, Darnielle explains how the cover came about, "Aquarium Drunkard asked us to do an EP of covers over a year ago, and I said: “Sure!”, because I am pretty manic when I have a new album coming out, and I don’t think about how busy I’m about to be. Complicating matters further was that I’d just published a new book a few months before, so the whole season was sort of blossoming into this glorious stress-test blur of motion, to which I was trying to respond with more “Sure!”s and fewer “I’m going to crack, like a fine porcelain figurine from Delft, or, if Delft is not where they make porcelain, then wherever it is they make porcelain, the Czech Republic or something, please somebody stop me, I don’t know my limits.”

The Mountain Goats' last release was 2017's Goths.