All Hail West Texas by The Mountain Goats

All Hail West Texas is the sixth studio album by the Mountain Goats. After the slight increase in production values on The Coroner's Gambit album of 2000, All Hail West Texas is the last Mountain Goats album recorded entirely on John Darnielle's trademark Panasonic RX-FT500 boombox. It is also the last album by the Mountain Goats to only feature John Darnielle. The cover states 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 was not included in its final version. Three were given away on the Tiny Mix Tapes website ("Song for God", "Warm Lonely Planet", and "Waco"). 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 whether that set included the three listed above. 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.In May 2013, Darnielle announced that Merge Records would reissue All Hail West Texas on July 23 of that year, on vinyl for the first time. The announcement included a link to an explanatory essay by Matt Fraction. The reissue includes remastered versions of the original recordings, seven previously unreleased tracks contemporary to the original album, and a new 1,800-word essay by Darnielle about the album and his writing process.