Jenny shows up in “Straight Six” but the narrator has only the moon and their thoughts to help on a late drive.

Track: “Straight Six”
Album: Jam Eater Blues (2001)

Jenny can be a blessing or a curse in a Mountain Goats song. In “Jenny” she’s a symbol of tremendous hope for the narrator. That character and Jenny ride away from their troubles on a motorcycle and seemingly get away with it, at least in the moment. In “Night Light” she’s the lifeline that a terrified narrator needs to keep their sanity. They’re being pursued by external or internal demons and they get calls from Jenny that keeps them tethered to the real world.

The Jenny of “Straight Six” doesn’t seem to be as much help as her “Night Light” counterpart. In “Straight Six” she serves the same function as a proposed savior for the narrator, but she’s not likely to be as successful given that “Jenny’s on the cellular // high as a kite.” Considering how rarely characters in Goats songs actually get names it’s safe to assume that all three are the same Jenny and to view her as functionally the same character with the same purpose through the catalog.

“Straight Six” is the third and final song on Jam Eater Blues. The title track is, well, a blues song about making the most out of life’s simple pleasures. The middle track is a brutal look at specific, violent death and how it impacts us. The through line here is tough to find, but all three songs feature some form of introspection in a dark time. The trick is that they all find different outcomes. The narrator in “Straight Six” offers both possible outcomes to introspection on the single as they consider their troubles: “sometimes the moon shines like a beacon to the weary and the sick in spirit // and sometimes, sometimes it’s dark.”