The Alpha Couple is in Nevada during “Alpha Gelida,” scaring each other before the really scary part to come.

Track: “Alpha Gelida”
Album: Taking the Dative (1994), Ghana (1999)

There is continuity in the catalog of 500+ Mountain Goats songs, but John Darnielle has often said that he doesn’t consider it possible to find one true version of it. It’s a journey, not a destination, and whatever threads you find seem to be generally okay with him. That makes a process like this more like storytelling and less like history, but even so there are primary documents. In an introduction for “Alpha Gelida” in the summer of 2014, John described the song as “one of the songs that looked towards Tallahassee.” He said of the Alpha Couple that “they’re from California, but they go to Nevada, and that’s where they get married.”

The specific details of the horrible/wonderful couple at the heart of most of “the Alpha series” of songs aren’t important, but the specificity of their journey is part of what makes it more than a story. These aren’t real people, but they’re every single bad relationship everyone has ever had. They’re the horrible darkness in all of us that we’re afraid, sometimes, is all there really is.

That’s why the details matter. In “Alpha Gelida” they’re drinking in Nevada and, like John, they’re avoiding Tallahassee. It’s a horror story, filled with biblical versions of destruction (“let the young lions come out // let me break their jaws” is from Psalms) and smells of popcorn and cheap coffee. You can smell the room as one of them focuses on the fridge. They are drawn to it, as all characters in horror stories are always eventually drawn to something with evil overtones. John has said at shows that he doesn’t know what’s behind the fridge here, but you can hear in the quiet, intense delivery that even if it isn’t specific, we’re supposed to understand how they feel.