The death of Judy Garland and what comes after is one snapshot in “Hospital Reaction Shot.”

Track: “Hospital Reaction Shot”
Album: Hex of Infinite Binding EP (2018)

There are several Mountain Goats songs about Judy Garland, often more directly so than songs about other figures. Without context you might not be able to pick this one out, but John Darnielle released album notes that describe “Hospital Reaction Shot” as “drawn from a picture of Mickey Deans holding a press conference to inform the world of the death of Judy Garland, to whom he had been married for three months.”

Hex of Infinite Binding is one of a handful of EPs released in the last few years, at the time of this writing. Most of the albums have accompanying singles, but now the band is also releasing a relative flood of one-off EPs. I don’t know if this is a common sentiment among fans, but I never seem to digest these EPs as fully as the albums. I haven’t spent as much time with Hex of Infinite Binding as I have with the other recent material, but “Hospital Reaction Shot” feels especially distant.

Despite the traditional subject matter, it’s really not a traditional Mountain Goats song. There’s a brief instrumental bridge, which is just about unheard of in a Mountain Goats song. John Darnielle’s vocal delivery is deliberately thin, with a distant effect as though he’s Mickey Deans himself, overcome in the moment and not sure how to tell the world. I can’t find the specific photo the song references, but I don’t think you need to see it in place of that delivery. In other songs we hear about the terrible influences and the struggle Judy Garland faced, but in the reaction shot, we just need to consider the moment it all goes away.