John Darnielle is that rare writer who has successfully crossed mediums. A cult figure in rock music for more than 20 years, he released his first novel, Wolf in White Van, to critical acclaim in 2014.

Like many of his 600 songs as leader of the Mountain Goats, Wolf tells the story of a marginalized character, a disfigured young man named Sean Phillips who invents a text-based game that, in the pre-internet age, is played through the mail. It was long-listed for the National Book Award.

Two careers have kept the 50-year-old Southern California native busy. In February, Darnielle published another work of fiction, Universal Harvester ($25, Farrar, Straus and Giroux), which traces the mysterious scenes that begin appearing on movies rented from an Iowa video store.

Then on May 19, his band dropped its 16th studio album, Goths, in which Darnielle sympathetically tackles the subject of 1980s gothic rock and such bands as the Cure and Gene Loves Jezebel.

As he prepared to take the Mountain Goats on a tour that stops in Dallas on May 28, we talked to Darnielle about the connection between his twin writing pursuits.

Universal Harvester, by John Darnielle (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

"The only real connection is that I have a good sense of rhythm, the rhythm or progression of a story, because my songs are essentially ballads," he says in a phone interview. "They have narrative development, so I have a lot of practice. But they're different disciplines."

How so?

One of them takes a long time, and there are infinite moments for movement. But with a song, there's a process of elimination. You're narrowing something down to as clear a distillation as you can get in three verses and a bridge. Whereas in a novel, you write whole things that you don't use. You do character studies. You have side plots you eliminate. That doesn't happen in a song. Songs come pretty quickly.

What about the differences in the styles of Wolf and Universal Harvester?

The first one is more of a character study than it is anything else. It has plenty of action in it. But as a reader, you come to intimately know the narrator. Universal Harvester is not a character study. It's a story about some people, and it's an exercise in misdirection where you think it's about somebody but it's really about somebody else.

John Darnielle (Brandon Eggleston)

Thematically, I understand it a little better. The characters are more traditional. They have multiple layers of meaning and motivation, but they are knowable. Whereas the whole thing about Sean is he reaches the point where he's so private, he can't or won't share with you what happened in the past. I'm still more of a reader trying to figure it out.

Both books contain mysteries and play with chronology. Is that a connection?

That's not how I work, and it's not how a lot of people I know work. I do the thing, and then we can both look at it and say it looks to me as if straight progression through time is not something that interests me. So I think it's true, yeah, but it's one of those things that I try not to dwell on too much because I find that it puts me in an uncomfortable position. I think when people dwell too much on their methods and think too hard about why they're doing what they're doing, it's just gauche.

It seems you work more instinctually.

I'm super-instinctive. I have methods, but I'm not programmatic. I find out what I'm thinking about through my characters and through their actions, which I plan out to a certain extent. But I always leave a lot of room for improvisation because I think improvisation — it's a big musical rule, a good rule I think — is a great development in creation.

There are no guitars on Goths, but you didn't set out to make the album that way.

That's sort of how it always happens. I write a few songs and when I have a few that are about the same thing, I know what I'm writing about. I see what I do as work. Whether it's prose or anything else, I look at the particulars.'Do I have a few chords or lines I want to put together?

Goths sounds subtler than previous records.

Sonically, this is probably the most interesting record we've made. We leave a lot of space in the songs. We'd like for every instrument to be audible. I think the longer you make music, the more you prize space, creating a sonic space in which you can hear the things that are going on.

1 / 3Fans sing along with John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats at the band's last, sold-out performance in Dallas at the Kessler Theatre in 2015. The band plays Trees on May 28.(The Dallas Morning News / 2015 File Photo) 2 / 3Drummer Jon Wurster and singer-songwriter John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats play a sold-out show at the Kessler Theatre on June 8, 2015.(Rex C. Curry / Special Contributor) 3 / 3John Darnielle and Mountain Goats bassist Peter Hughes perform at the Kessler Theatre in 2015.(Rex C. Curry / Special Contributor)

Because the following for the Mountain Goats is so fanatical, people tend to spend a lot of time analyzing the songs.

That's right and natural. I do that with the stuff I'm into. But to be the person who makes it, analyzing it that way, it seems like narcissism. I have my own connection to it. But there's a sense in which if you know everything about your work while you're doing it, then it's probably not very interesting work. It needs to in some ways be obscure to you. You have to be trying to chase something that you can't quite get.

Manuel Mendoza is a Dallas freelance writer and former staff critic at The Dallas Morning News.

Plan your life

May 28 at 8 p.m. at Trees, 2709 Elm St. 214-741-1122. $26. treesdallas.com. ticketfly.com.