The Mountain Goats’ latest release, “We Shall All Be Healed,” is John Darnielle’s latest masterpiece.

-Darnielle, known for his high-pitched, nasal voice and lyrics that are often as poetic as they are abstract, has established himself over the years as one of indie rock’s most prolific songwriters. He has released 12 albums since 1995, not counting the live bootlegs or the hundreds of unreleased tracks he recorded with a defective department store boombox.

“We Shall All Be Healed” maintains The Mountain Goats’ earlier, austere musical simplicity (which includes percussive, frantic acoustic guitar), while soothing the listener with the pitter-patter of acoustic drumsticks, whining hammered dulcimer, cascading piano melodies and violin pieces that seem to cry into the sunset rather than scream into the night.

He is, as always, extremely literate and bizarre, tying together loose ends like rats that jump out of exploding cargo boxes with low-life creeps who apologize “for things they can’t and won’t feel sorry for.”

As pissed off as Darnielle might appear, most tracks are hopeful, swaggering with the relentless energy of a teenager.

Such is “Home Again Garden Grove,” a metaphoric, vicarious journey to Garden Grove, a place where he remembers his dreams “feeling like fugitive warlords.” Near the song’s climax, Darnielle sings the most poetic and visceral image on the album: “We tether our dreams to the turf/ And cruise down these alleys for honey to feed them/ Jellyfish riding the surf/ Shoving our heads straight into the guts of the stove.”

In the liner notes, Darnielle asks “brave young scavengers” to “hold on with both hands.”

We had better because it’s one hell of a ride.