js_thrill: goat with headphones (goat rock)
Lewis Powell ([personal profile] js_thrill) wrote2026-02-12 09:57 am

This Year 365 songs: February 12th

 Today's song is Pure Gold






I enjoyed this song, but the thing that most caught my attention relates to the annotations.  "Don't touch the door" was taken from a readout on the Twilight Zone pinball machine. The annotations go into a bit of detail about the machine and Darnielle's time playing it, but what I think is most impressive to me about this track is how Darnielle took his affection for/fixation on that aspect of a Twilight Zone pinball machine and used it as a seed for lyrics to a song that is not about pinball at all.  In some cases, his songs have been directly about what inspired them, but here, we get a compelling partial narrative attached to this phrase that must have been stuck in his head for some time.