Thirty years of the experience of the Mountain Goats comes to a head in “Younger.”

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

I have a lot of love for “Waylon Jennings Live!” but I think “Younger” is probably the best song on In League with Dragons. It’s clever in a way that’s compelling, with at least a half-dozen references to other Mountain Goats songs to unpack. “I saw a face there once before when I was younger,” John Darnielle tells us, referencing a darker, older time from Get Lonely. The power of a reference like this is that it isn’t just something to figure out. It’s not just a line cribbed from another song. It’s a direct statement that we’re further along in the timeline of who John Darnielle is. It’s also a suggestion that times have changed.

John Darnielle wrote hundreds of songs before he started telling his story in them. Surely every piece of art has part of the creator in it, but only the later Mountain Goats albums even suggest that the narrator might be John Darnielle. He’s not the guy in “Going to Georgia” but he is the guy in “Broom People.” That matters a great deal for “Younger.”

Even the riff is based on “No, I Can’t,” a much older song that serves as a list of things that will “fix” someone. We’re more than two decades past that point and in “Younger” we see a character who feels the weight of what they’ve been through. “It never hurts to give thanks to the broken bones you had to use to build your ladder,” they tell us, in a grand telling of what the experience meant. “Younger” is huge and serious, but that’s how you feel when you’re looking back. John Darnielle wants you to engage with the entire thing at once here, which is an extremely tall task that “Younger” accomplishes.