All Hail West Texas

Studio album by The Mountain Goats
Released February 19, 2002
Recorded 2001
Genre Lo-fi
Length 42:02
Label Emperor Jones
Producer John Darnielle
Professional reviews

The Mountain Goats chronology
The Coroner's Gambit
(2000) All Hail West Texas
(2002) Tallahassee
(2002)

All Hail West Texas is an album by The Mountain Goats. After the slight increase in production values on 2000's The Coroner's Gambit, All Hail West Texas is the last Mountain Goats album on which all the songs were recorded on John Darnielle's trademark Panasonic RX-FT500 boombox.

The album is loosely a concept album, with the cover stating that the album consists of "fourteen songs about seven people, two houses, a motorcycle, and a locked treatment facility for adolescent boys". Many of the songs explicitly refer to places in Texas, and evoke a lifestyle ethos born of the vast expanses of desert and highway found in West Texas itself.

Several songs were written to appear on the record that were not included in its final version. Three were given away on the Tiny Mix Tapes website ("Song for God", "Warm Lonely Planet", and "Waco"). John Darnielle said there was a full set of fifteen outtakes that he intended to release for free one day, but he destroyed them after hearing about the leak of Hail and Farewell, Gothenburg. It is not known if that set included the three listed above or not.

When the promotional copies of this album were sent out, a unique General Highway Map of a part of West Texas was included in the mailing. Apparently this was not acknowledged by any of the critics who received it.[1]

Track listing

All songs by John Darnielle.

1. "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton"
2. "Fall of the Star High School Running Back"
3. "Color in Your Cheeks"
4. "Jenny"
5. "Fault Lines"
6. "Balance"
7. "Pink and Blue"
8. "Riches and Wonders"
9. "The Mess Inside"
10. "Jeff Davis County Blues"
11. "Distant Stations"
12. "Blues in Dallas"
13. "Source Decay"
14. "Absolute Lithops Effect"

References

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External links

• Complete lyrics to the album

The Mountain Goats

Studio albums
EPs & singles
Split albums
Compilation albums
Former members