https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4CfG7cKmfk

John Darnielle and Peter Hughes, don’t you forget it, belt it out in “Pigs That Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph Of.”

Track: “Pigs That Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph Of”
Album: We Shall All Be Healed (2004)

I’m sure there are others, but there are not many songs beyond “Pigs That Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph Of” that have a “Comments by John Darnielle and Peter Hughes” section on the Mountain Goats Wiki. I’m on a tight word count, so I’ll have to call this “the song” for all other mentions, but let us just bask in that title. It’s even a joke, as though you were looking up a lot of other details about these pigs. The song, as it were, is about someone who comes from Chino and they now are going to jail. Well, they’re supposed to go to jail, but they have other ideas.

The section on the Wiki refers to a conversation that’s too long to quote here from, but has Peter Hughes and John Darnielle talking about people who commented on the song online. The commenter mentioned John but not Peter and Peter laughed about it in an introduction during a recent streamed concert the band did. It’s easy to do this, because John Darnielle by himself “is” the Mountain Goats, but the Mountain Goats are also everyone in the band with him. Just as you must be careful not to assume that every “I” in these songs is John Darnielle, the writing is also a group effort.

The song itself is phenomenal, but you don’t need me to tell you that. This is wishful thinking from someone who really needs it and it’s the best “woo” on any studio track. Scream it out when you need to steel yourself. There are other songs for harder times, but this is about a fists clenched, wolf-howl moment before bad news.