This Year 365 songs: January 15th
Jan. 15th, 2026 02:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
js_thrill Today we have Song for Mark and Joel:
The annotations on this song are, or at least feel, a bit inside baseball. That's not, like, inappropriate. They explain how this song's chord structure is based on something the titular Mark and Joel do in one of their songs (Fortune Came Today) for their band Wckr Spgt, and so he used the chorus ("trouble came by") and the title to allude to Wckr Spgt. But it's written more for people who are in the know than for those who are not. In the last annotation, Darnielle talked about how he liked that song because the narrator "withholds more than he shares", and so, I guess it is fitting that this annotation tells us some very specific details about the origin of this song, and him relating the homage to Mark and Joel, while hinting at all the stories not being told.
I did also listen to that Wckr Spgt song. Wckr Spgt is not for me. One thing I do find interesting is the music that John Darnielle likes that I don't. Darnielle is a big fan of metal, and that has not really been my genre. He wrote a book of epistolary novel music criticism about Black Sabbath, and he was a guest expert on Judge John Hodgman's podcast one time for a dispute about heavy metal. (Nothing against metal! Mygirlfriend fiancée is a big metal fan. I'm sure there is metal I would like, to be honest, but it feels like it is in the "few and far between" category, rather than the "pop on any old playlist".)
Anyway, I'm not sure how much of my awareness of this is related to just the sheer breadth of the musical styles that Darnielle appreciates (I can't actually imagine a general category of music he would shut down carte blanche), but I don't think it is just that, because he has strong identification with his roots in metal fandom, or his Wckr Spgt (dadaist punk?) influences/time-in-that-band. And I am not sure what to make of the fact that he mostly doesn't make music like that when he is making music, even though that's the music he has such fondness for.
The annotations on this song are, or at least feel, a bit inside baseball. That's not, like, inappropriate. They explain how this song's chord structure is based on something the titular Mark and Joel do in one of their songs (Fortune Came Today) for their band Wckr Spgt, and so he used the chorus ("trouble came by") and the title to allude to Wckr Spgt. But it's written more for people who are in the know than for those who are not. In the last annotation, Darnielle talked about how he liked that song because the narrator "withholds more than he shares", and so, I guess it is fitting that this annotation tells us some very specific details about the origin of this song, and him relating the homage to Mark and Joel, while hinting at all the stories not being told.
I did also listen to that Wckr Spgt song. Wckr Spgt is not for me. One thing I do find interesting is the music that John Darnielle likes that I don't. Darnielle is a big fan of metal, and that has not really been my genre. He wrote a book of epistolary novel music criticism about Black Sabbath, and he was a guest expert on Judge John Hodgman's podcast one time for a dispute about heavy metal. (Nothing against metal! My
Anyway, I'm not sure how much of my awareness of this is related to just the sheer breadth of the musical styles that Darnielle appreciates (I can't actually imagine a general category of music he would shut down carte blanche), but I don't think it is just that, because he has strong identification with his roots in metal fandom, or his Wckr Spgt (dadaist punk?) influences/time-in-that-band. And I am not sure what to make of the fact that he mostly doesn't make music like that when he is making music, even though that's the music he has such fondness for.
