The couple in “Insurance Fraud #2” go through some hypothetical solutions to money woes that turn far more real than they’d like.

Track: “Insurance Fraud #2”
Album: The Coroner’s Gambit (2000)

876 people live in Colo, Iowa. Many years ago John and Lalitree Darnielle also lived there while John wrote The Coroner’s Gambit. It’s a sad album about loneliness and death. That may be calling water “wet,” but this specific album is more about those things than the other ones.

Often at live shows John describes his time in Colo with alternating descriptions. Sometimes he talks about how quaint the tiny house in the middle of nowhere was and sometimes he calls his landlord a slumlord and says it was depressing. We all have those feelings about old houses we used to live in, and the disparity between those feelings is all over The Coroner’s Gambit. “There Will Be No Divorce” is one of his best love songs. “Elijah” and “Shadow Song” are sad, but they’re a kind of productive sad that allows you to process feelings about dead friends and family members.

Then there’s “Insurance Fraud #2.”

A few songs in the catalog are numbered. There are many “Standard Bitter Love Song(s)” and “Heel Turn 2” is #2 because the first one only gets played live. This one is unique because #1 is just the first take of #2. John Darnielle says he rerecorded it because he had to rerecord a ton of songs in Iowa that were ruined by a nearby train. He left the train sounds in this one and the result is haunting and fascinating.

The song itself is direct. It’s the kind of extreme darkness that most of us never consider, but it’s par for the course for one of Darnielle’s couples. The song features a few examples of insurance fraud, but the creepiest part is the ending where one of them realizes that a person capable of such evil will come for them next.