The Mountain Goats have a lot of songs about places. There’s a whole series of “Going To…” songs about Going To A Place. They’re also, necessarily, often about leaving a place. “Going to Japan,” for example, is not about Japan. It’s about saying goodbye. “Going to Maine” isn’t about Maine: it’s about running away together, escaping the problems you’ve made wherever you are, and going somewhere you aren’t. The problems will always follow you, and that’s the beauty and contradiction of the Going To songs.

The Mountain Goats have a lot of songs about houses, too. A house is a place where feelings and memories collect, grow, and decay. A house is both a structure and a way of living in that structure, both shelter and prison, both the family and the dysfunction.

The car, then, may be the ultimate symbol in Mountain Goats songs, because it represents both travel and home. Motion and stasis. I’ve never owned a car–I’ve never even had my driver’s license–but I’ve been on a lot of road trips. My husband and I dated long distance for three years. And what I know is that a car is a crucible, an incubator of feelings. When you ride in a car with someone for some hours, you’re hotboxing those emotions, and whether you express them or not, they build up.

On The Coroner’s Gambit, there’s a brilliant three-song run: “Scotch Grove,” “Horseradish Road,” and “Family Happiness.” In each of these songs, the narrator hates the other person in the car. Maybe also loves them? But definitely hates them. In “Scotch Grove” and “Family Happiness,” the narrator hopes an act of nature will kill them both (“wished [the rain] would wash us both away” and “I hope we both freeze to death”). In “Horseradish Road,” he hopes for a more karmic settling of accounts:

You’re gonna get yours and I’m gonna get mine.

’Cause in this car, in this car,

Somebody’s bound to get burned.

I know.

I know.

Because I’ve been watching the road turn.

The narrator and the second person are trapped together until they reach their destination, which may be a place, an event, or the ultimate destination of the grave.

Sometimes the two people in the car are in love. In “Twin Human Highway Flares,” they’re taking a trip together, and the narrator is so happy to be with the second person he can hardly stand it. In this song, too, he wishes for death, but only as a potential self-reproach. Only if he forgets this moment of bliss will he wish for his heart to explode. In “The Recognition Scene,” the two characters have burglarized a candy store and the narrator uses this moment, eating their loot on a joyride, to reflect on how much he’ll miss the other person when they’re gone. Like Emily Dickinson before him, John Darnielle writes about cars where the narrator, Death, and Immortality all ride together.

It’s not always love that binds the people in the car: sometimes it’s a solidarity of purpose, a shared grim determination. Sometimes they’ve decided to light out for the territories together. In “Home Again Garden Grove,” the narrator and second person are alone together against the world: “don’t let anyone see that you’re bleeding … don’t speak unless someone speaks to you.” They’re going to Garden Grove, where “the jackals are breeding,” and in this case the car is the protection between them and the rest of the world. We’re in here, and they’re out there. In “Psalms 40:2,” the narrator and friend(s) are going on a crime spree, and he assures his companions: “we will get there when we get there, don’t you worry.” It’s about going there, not getting there.

There’s also a category of song where the narrator is alone in the car, and the vehicle functions as his method of interacting with the world. When you’re on the highway, you’re both alone and surrounded by people. You’re moving, but you’re bringing yourself–your fast food wrappers, your cup of old change, your regrettable odors–with you wherever you go. On All Hail West Texas, both “Jeff Davis County Blues” and “Source Decay” feature narrators taking long trips alone. In the first, the narrator has “no place to go,” so decides to come home to Midland, where he doesn’t know whether he’ll be welcomed. He has his memories with him, in the form of polaroids on the passenger seat, tangible reminders of a past he’s hoping to regain. In “Source Decay,” the narrator makes a long drive to the post office to pick up postcards from a former lover. In the old neighborhood, he sees “Chevy Impalas in their front yards up on blocks”–both a class signifier and a symbol of people who have settled down and made a permanent home. The cars are immobile because the owners aren’t going anywhere, or don’t require the cars’ protection. They can move through the world as themselves. The narrator wishes he never had to stop driving, that the highway were a Mobius strip and he could “ride it out forever.” The car offers both the illusion of forward movement and insulation from the world. If he stops moving, he has to confront his life as it is, not as a transition state between what was and what will be.

All of these characters think they’re going somewhere, but it’s an illusion. It’s always an illusion. The dark thing that demands confrontation will still be waiting when they get there. Here are some songs about being in a car with your worst self in hot pursuit. Recommended activities for this playlist: crimes.

The Recognition Scene

Twin Human Highway Flares

Scotch Grove

San Bernardino

So Desperate

Jeff Davis County Blues

New Chevrolet in Flames

Source Decay

Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace

Southwestern Territory

Psalms 40:2

Home Again Garden Grove

Family Happiness

Going to Port Washington

Pure Milk*

Horseradish Road

This Year

The Grey King and the Silver Flame Attunement

Alibi*

See America Right

Listen to this playlist on Spotify here.

*These aren’t on Spotify, but you can find them on YouTube (I added the links to this post). As always, please support artists, and especially support the Mountain Goats. Thank you.

*******

This essay is from Hard to Love #4, a Patreon-supported zine. Buy it on Gumroad here, or become a patron and get instant access to this issue and all the back issues.

illustration by John Keogh