In the intense “Home Again Garden Grove,” two characters with a dark past drive towards similarly dark futures.

Track: “Home Again Garden Grove”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

Every song on We Shall All Be Healed is about John Darnielle’s time in Portland and California and the meth addicts he knew while he lived there, but none of them are as intense as “Home Again Garden Grove.” Most the album tilts more towards the low-key. Songs like “All Up the Seething Coast” and “Mole” are concerned with the quiet sadness of addiction, and their tones reflect that. While “Palmcorder Yajna” and “Quito” are certainly rockers, “Home Again Garden Grove” is the Mountain Goats at their foot-stomping best.

John Darnielle once defined his early career as “one guy stomping his foot on stage for anyone who would watch,” and you can feel those early 90s shine through in the manic chords of “Home Again Garden Grove.” The song opens with preparations as John and a friend prepare to go score some heroin. The album’s cast is motivated almost solely by the acquisition of drugs, but this song is the only one entirely about the hunt itself. They wrap themselves up and avoid the police in their quest. It’s methodical and the driving beat helps it all feel inevitable and practiced.

Though the angry guitar is the best part, the second half deserves special mention. John speaks to his driver of happier (or at least other) times: “I can remember when we were in high school // our dreams were like fugitive warlords // plotting triumphant returns to the city // keeping TEC-9s under the floorboards.” The next line is just a panicked, primal”Ahh-ah!” Must of the rest of the album describes considering the duality of “getting high” and destroying yourself, in “Home Again Garden Grove” the characters know what they’re doing and just don’t care about “shoving our heads straight into the guts of the stove.”