infinitelyelastic asked: Hey! You're Q's favorite band. Why do you only get the end credit song and a poster nod? I was looking forward to an entirely mountain goats sound track. "Follow me down your twisting alleyways / find a few cul-de-sacs of my own" that is PERFECT

Ha, I’m actually quite happy to occupy the end-credits slot – to me that’s always been a position of honor; music over the end-credits gives the impression of summarizing what’s gone before, I’ve felt that way since I was a child. (I always stay in my seat until the lights come up.) I feel like in my writing, I’m pretty good at at conclusions (which is weird, right, because along with everybody else I’ve ever met I don’t think I’m particularly good at conclusions in real life) – at bringing a narrative to that breath-point, or to the hold-your-breath point: at leading the score up to the big

where a space opens up for reflection. So that’s an honor, for me.

Beyond that though - I’ve been getting versions of this question since the movie was in production, but people tend to run hot or cold with the Mountain Goats. We are not ever going to be a band whose music, should it play in a scene in a mainstream, box-office-smash movie, will cause everybody in the theater to go “hell yes! this is exactly what I was hoping to hear!” I am 100% proud of this: people who get what we do feel passionately about it and want others to hear what they hear, but people who don’t groove to it really don’t dig it. As an artist, this is a pretty satisfying role to occupy: the music I like is pretty much all in the “the people who love it really love it” zone. But if you’re a music supervisor or a director, you gotta think really hard before you put the people-tend-to-run-hot-and-cold-with-it music in a key scene (or in multiple key scenes). Music within a film is for complementing or intensifying a scene, not making people stop and go “wait…what is this exactly?” which is a lot of people’s reaction to the Mountain Goats the first time they hear us. Some people, having asked that question, take it further and discover that they really connect with what we do, and those are the people for whom we’re playing in the first place. That’s the kind of music we make, music for curious people who ask questions about what they’re hearing.

But soundtracks within a film are usually intended to reach as many of the viewers as possible. That is not ever going to be what one uses the Mountain Goats for, which is why the Walking Dead usage was so brilliant: that whole episode, and that scene especially, was for a certain type of person who’s felt a need to burn a house to the ground and give the finger to it while it burns. That’s not all “Up the Wolves” is about, but it’s some of it, and it worked perfectly for me. “Used to Haunt” is about remembering someone who occupied a very important time and place in someone’s life. The end credits is where that song belongs and I’m stoked that it’s there!

