The title track of In League with Dragons shows us what dragons can do for us and asks us if we’re prepared to see it.

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

In League with Dragons is two albums, really. It’s a fantasy epic and it’s a retrospective of John Darnielle’s songwriting career. Even this duality is a simplification, obviously, as everything any artist makes can be said to be in conversation with everything else they’ve said. I think the man himself would have a lot of problems with this reading, but we need to sit in it for a moment to talk about the title track.

“In League with Dragons,” the song, is a melding of the two ideas. The narrator is navigating life until a dragon comes and burns up everything that troubles them. There a lot of narrators hoping for this outcome (or at least a similar enough one) but this one is likely going to get what they want. One of the many messages of the Mountain Goats is to bide your time, that darkness fades and you will be rewarded for your patience. “In League with Dragons” is about what you do when your moment actually gets here. Do you look and watch the flames or do you feel complicated about retribution, even justly given?

“It’s so hard to get revenge // the human element drags you down,” John Darnielle tells us. We want to be the kind of person who turns the other cheek. We want to rise above and to grow. But sometimes, as in “Up the Wolves” and a dozen other songs, we want to watch the fire that’s finally here to do what fire does.