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This Year 365 songs: March 6th
Mar. 6th, 2026 04:19 pm Today's song is Black Molly
This is "Firearms Suite #3". That Hippolytine feeling has the narrator under threat from someone else wielding a gun, while Going to Georgia and this track both feature the narrator exhibiting troubling behavior with firearms. The sound of the song is nice. The music is good, and the way he sings it works with the music. This narrator feels more troubled and troublesome than the narrator of Going to Georgia (maybe the fact that the narrator in Going to Georgia traveled with the gun is more troubling; but this narrator—described by Darnielle as having their anxiety turned all the way up—is engaging in much clearer violent ideation.
Darnielle's novel Wolf in White Van also features a troubled protagonist with a disturbing interest in a firearm, though the narrative is largely set subsequent to that protagonist's primary encounter with firearms, in the aftermath. I saw that Darnielle started writing Wolf in White Van almost immediately after finishing Master of Reality, and that actually helped click some things into place about the protagonist of Wolf in White Van, who shares some DNA (figuratively speaking) with the narrator of Master of Reality.
Darnielle's choice to label these songs as "firearm suite" suggests that he wants us to focus on the brief period when his writing leaned into romanticization of guns, but the actual annotations tend to be almost entirely about other aspects of the stories, punctuated by maybe one comment on the presence of firearms in the song. In this case, he doesn't really linger on the presence of the gun, except to mention that he feels nervous about whether the fish tank will get shot when he sings the song (even knowing how it turns out).
I suspect that this song didn't have the crowd appeal and staying power of Going to Georgia, and so doesn't get the same level of scrutiny or mixed feelings from him.
Darnielle's annotations did give me something else to look forward to; a date I suspect will be one of my favorite songs (March 22nd), since he mentioned buying a particular pack of peanuts that we will hear more about on March 22nd. Now that one is a song I love and don't have conflicted feelings about its role in the Mountain Goats fandom hierarchy or Darnielle's reflections on his own unfortunate narrative fascinations as a young writer.
This is "Firearms Suite #3". That Hippolytine feeling has the narrator under threat from someone else wielding a gun, while Going to Georgia and this track both feature the narrator exhibiting troubling behavior with firearms. The sound of the song is nice. The music is good, and the way he sings it works with the music. This narrator feels more troubled and troublesome than the narrator of Going to Georgia (maybe the fact that the narrator in Going to Georgia traveled with the gun is more troubling; but this narrator—described by Darnielle as having their anxiety turned all the way up—is engaging in much clearer violent ideation.
Darnielle's novel Wolf in White Van also features a troubled protagonist with a disturbing interest in a firearm, though the narrative is largely set subsequent to that protagonist's primary encounter with firearms, in the aftermath. I saw that Darnielle started writing Wolf in White Van almost immediately after finishing Master of Reality, and that actually helped click some things into place about the protagonist of Wolf in White Van, who shares some DNA (figuratively speaking) with the narrator of Master of Reality.
Darnielle's choice to label these songs as "firearm suite" suggests that he wants us to focus on the brief period when his writing leaned into romanticization of guns, but the actual annotations tend to be almost entirely about other aspects of the stories, punctuated by maybe one comment on the presence of firearms in the song. In this case, he doesn't really linger on the presence of the gun, except to mention that he feels nervous about whether the fish tank will get shot when he sings the song (even knowing how it turns out).
I suspect that this song didn't have the crowd appeal and staying power of Going to Georgia, and so doesn't get the same level of scrutiny or mixed feelings from him.
Darnielle's annotations did give me something else to look forward to; a date I suspect will be one of my favorite songs (March 22nd), since he mentioned buying a particular pack of peanuts that we will hear more about on March 22nd. Now that one is a song I love and don't have conflicted feelings about its role in the Mountain Goats fandom hierarchy or Darnielle's reflections on his own unfortunate narrative fascinations as a young writer.
