John Darnielle talks about longevity and surviving in “For Charles Bronson.”

Track: “For Charles Bronson”
Album: All Eternals Deck (2011)

The folks that created Charles Bronson’s Wikipedia page did something I’ve never seen before: They added a “genre” column to the filmography section. It draws a distinction between “war drama” and “war” as different genres somehow, but I mention it because it shows that Charles Bronson basically did one thing for fifty years. He was a guy with a gun in a truly staggering number of films, from westerns to whatever a “comedy drama” is.

John Darnielle says he was watching a Bronson movie and looked up his story. That’s the really basic explanation for how we got “For Charles Bronson.” This is his story, more or less, and there’s not much that needs to be said about the text itself. John Darnielle really stretches his voice for the delivery, from contemplative in “try to hold the gun straight // and true // and steady” to the extended, thunderous “pull back the hammer” with his signature scream in the middle of the word. It’s not necessarily a love letter, but it is the right degree of awe for someone who did so much.

That’s what makes it memorable, for me. It’s straightforward and if you took out the specific city mention and the title it would be defensible as a song about a dozen Hollywood guys from the era. But it’s interesting because it does just what it should and makes you wonder why it exists. Charles Bronson led a remarkable life and stands for a remarkable thing that most Mountain Goats characters can only dream of. “Be grateful for the attention,” John Darnielle tells us in this story about finding what you do and doing it.