“Recite the songs that kept me whole/ On the day I hand over command control/ Try to let them all flow into this one,” sings John Darnielle on “Done Bleeding,” the track that opens In League with Dragons. The new album from the Mountain Goats famously stirred to life as John Darnielle tinkered with various songs inspired by the sort of sprawling fantasy worlds conjured up by legions of sweetly introverted Dungeon Masters over the decades. Following albums solidly themed around professional wrestling and the gloomiest, most glamorous subgenre of nineteen-eighties music, the reasonable assumption was that the new new album would be similarly wrapped up in the concept implied by the title.

There remain vestiges of TSR-driven preoccupations, such as “Younger” and “Clemency for the Wizard King.” Mostly, though, the album wanders freely among the flurry of topics that make up slices of Darnielle’s relentless, rambunctious autodidactism. Most memorably, that approach leads to songs about damaged icons who don’t seem like natural subjects for songs. “Passaic 1975” gets into the skin of Ozzy Osbourne, gifted with a stage teleprompter and wearied by touring life, and “Doc Gooden” brings a quick-picking flourish to recounting the late-career travails of the 1986 National League Cy Young Award winner. I once saw a live performance in which Darnielle recalled his youthful enthusiasm in learning material in classes and immediately rushing to his guitar to pen a related song, no matter how esoteric the topic. That blithe eagerness, and corresponding rejection of what concerns are cool enough for rock ‘n’ roll, is all over In League with Dragons.

Much of what impresses on the album is the fullness of the sound. Long viewed as essentially a one-man show, a perception fueled by the intimacy of Darnielle’s songwriting combined with a hangover from the early years when he recorded whole Mountain Goats releases by himself directly into a boombox, complete with the audible clunk of the record button being jabbed into engagement. He’s in fact been backed by the same players for years: ace musicians bassist Peter Hughes, drummer Jon Wurster, and Swiss army instrumentalist Matt Douglas. In League with Dragons often seems designed to showcase the intricacy and clarity the band brings to the sounds, added shades to the vivid drama Darnielle crafts from words and music. Produced by Owen Pallett, the album is warm, deep, and lush without tilting toward ostentation. Whether the jaunty stroll of the title cut (which provides the millionth reinforcement of Darnielle’s dork bona fides with its Boris Vallejo reference) or the gentle hoedown “Waylon Jennings Live!” the tracks come across as proper full band showcases.

The Mountain Goats have been at this a long time and Darnielle can be a ludicrously prolific songwriter. By one count, this is the eighteenth album to bear the band’s name, and that doesn’t take into account a slew of smaller releases nor the handful of Darnielle’s side projects. In League with Dragons faces an enormous task in standing out as the newest entrant in the band’s overstuffed discography. It’s charming, but not always striking enough to really rattle the soul in the manner of the band’s most impressive works. There’s a sense that these songs will go into the big bingo tumbler that contains all of Darnielle’s songs, to be retrieved on occasion in concerts ahead. If the album doesn’t approach classic, it’s also true that when the Mountain Goats draw from it in the future they won’t find a single bum number.