The album was first teased as a cassette tape last week, and today (10 April) the band have shared it on Bandcamp.

Songs for Pierre Chuvin is their first release since last year's In League With Dragons album, and started when the "entire band was decamped at an undisclosed location working on the next Mountain Goats album".

John Darnielle of the band writes, "I had brought books with me to read, and one of them was Pierre Chuvin’s A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, which I was reading as research material for another thing I’m working on; and it’s been a long time since I sat around playing music and thinking about antiquity, but I used to do it all the time, and several of you know that because the old tapes are all littered with stories about Ajax and Agamemnon and the cult of Cybele, stories which, when I was learning them, got me so fired up that as soon as I got out of class I’d drive home in my yellow 1969 Superbeetle and write songs about them."

Pitchfork notes that it's the first album that Darnielle has recorded on his boombox since 2002’s All Hail West Texas.

Darnielle adds, "I dedicate this tape to everybody who’s waited a long time for the wheels to sound their joyous grind: may they grind us into a safe future where we gather once again in rooms to sing songs about pagan priests & hidden shelters, and where we see each other face to face."