While it opens up with a truly sweet set of two lines, “Lab Rat Blues” largely tells the sad tale of the title rat.

Track: “Lab Rat Blues”
Album: The Hound Chronicles (1992)

“I apologize for the “early” i.e. first 5 years’ worth of hair/there rhymes but as I remember it there was a lot of hair there” – John Darnielle

John Darnielle’s Twitter is routinely outstanding reading, but there is a special joy in little pieces of ephemera like that. Darnielle said the above in response to a tweet from the Canadian punk band Propagandhi when they said they were “studying Mountain Goats lyrics.” The man The New Yorker called “America’s best non-hip-hop lyricist” has always been sheepish about his early work, but he’s rarely been as specific as he was in that tweet.

“Lab Rat Blues” opens with “I saw you // I saw your hair // I could spend the rest of my life in there” and it’s the best part of the song. The song seems to be an extended comparison of the titular lab rat and a lover who feels jilted. Both are beyond in love with their creator/lover and both express it through descriptions of power and beauty. The comparison is sad, but one we can appreciate in the memory of times we felt we were at the mercy of someone else, likely in an emotional balance of power.

The difference is that lovers perceive a disparate amount of power where lab rats are literally right about their powerlessness. “I saw you, but you saw me first” from the lab rat’s view reveals the terrifying reality of speaking to an actual creator that knows even the moments of your life that you’ll never know. There are a lot of emotions tied up in this comparison, but it’s also worth viewing at face value. “Trapped like a rat” is thrown around a lot as a phrase, but Darnielle asks us to consider the actual rat.