“Seeing Daylight” seems simple at first, but the importance of one phone call when you need it shines through.

Track: “Seeing Daylight”
Album: Beautiful Rat Sunset (1994)

Some of the songs evolve. In 1994 on Beautiful Rat Sunset, “Seeing Daylight” sounds like a song from a troubled narrator. John Darnielle’s voice trembles as he sings the simple chorus of “boil, boil.” He lilts as he talks about the strange niceness of hearing a voice on the other end of a phone. He’s contemplative, but clearly very sad about his day and his space in the world. It’s understandable, even though we don’t get any details about this narrator.

By 2011, the song changes. On this live recording in New York, John is even quieter when he speak-sings the sad, mundane lyrics. The narrator is still troubled, but it’s now a more specific, less hopeful kind of troubled. He vibrates over “the impossible echo inside” and it makes you consider what that means, both to the narrator and in general. There are a dozen lyrics like that scattered over the catalog. There is no clear meaning to it, but you can get a general sense of the tone it is meant to evoke. The narrator is cooking a very simple meal and they are surprised by how much they are surprised by a phone call. Everyone can remember a day where they felt like they were the only person on earth and were then taught otherwise by a surprising interaction.

The only comment on this song I can find is from that same live show, where John said “this is a song about death.” I take that to mean that the narrator is feeling lost and scared and is only tethered to this world by one interaction. This is not unfamiliar territory for the Goats, but this song’s mundane nature requires deeper digging to find your own meaning in it.