Never has a person bringing a blanket home seemed more sinister than in “Million.”

Track: “Million”
Album: Nothing for Juice (1996)

Iowa shows up from time to time in John Darnielle’s world. His second novel, Universal Harvester, considers the darker and stranger elements of what happens in a quiet, small community in the state. John Darnielle loves the idea of places many people either think they know but don’t or don’t even think they know. Whichever Iowa is for you, live show banter will help fill in the idea of places like Colo, Iowa, where so many of the mid-90s Mountain Goats songs were born.

“Million” opens with Finland, which couldn’t be further from Iowa, as our narrator returns home to the Midwest with a blanket. One person brings an Iowan a blanket from Finland in a quick song on Nothing for Juice that’s nestled between songs about addiction and madness. It’s a simple idea, but it’s deepened by the hard strums and the wavering delivery.

“The moon is high over Iowa at night,” John Darnielle repeats. This would generally be a description of something pleasant, but here it’s some kind of threat. The narrator notices “questions only a masochist would ask” in their lover’s “big brown eyes,” which is another odd confluence. We’re in picturesque country with description of flowers and moonlight and one character has traditionally positive features but there’s a sense that something worse is coming. “Million” feels creepy without being specific about what’s afoot, but don’t try to tell yourself it’s nothing as you listen to the final voice crack over “Iowa at night.”