The Mountain Goats explore the feeling of moving through points in your life in “Done Bleeding.”

Track: “Done Bleeding”
Album: In League with Dragons (2019)

John Darnielle has called In League with Dragons a very personal album. It started as a concept album of sorts and those bones are still there, but the one-two punch of “Done Bleeding” and “Younger” that opens the album tell you it is something else entirely as a finished product. At many live shows during the album launch, the band started shows with the two songs that start the album, in order. That’s uncommon, but it makes sense here as these are connected.

“Younger” is a puzzle filled with references to other Mountain Goats songs and “Done Bleeding” is a story about what happens after that. On I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats, a podcast I have to assume you’ve already listened to if you’re reading this, John Darnielle said the title refers to self-mutilation and the period of life after that stops. It’s a really compelling conversation, even among the other episodes that go deeper into song construction. The episode for “Done Bleeding” is interesting because John Darnielle rarely speaks this frankly about his writing, even on the podcast. He talks about the idea of a new part of one’s life where it’s possible to look at someone else that’s in a point you were once in and have difficulty relating to their situation. You aren’t better or worse off, but you aren’t where they are right now.

There are a lot of songs that dance around this emotion, but “Done Bleeding” confronts it directly. You are never really done with grief, with anxiety, with fear, but you recognize moments where you realize you have escaped something and hope that others who haven’t escaped yet find their way out. This is a song not about pitying that person, but about your own next steps and the process of moving on.