Better days come to those who wait, or at least we hope they do, in “In the Shadow of the Western Hills.”

Track: “In the Shadow of the Western Hills”
Album: Steal Smoked Fish (2012)

“In the Shadow of the Western Hills” appears on the Steal Smoked Fish EP, alongside the song in the title. “Steal Smoked Fish” is one of the absolute best Mountain Goats songs of the last ten years and as a result, I’ve never given as much time as I should to the song that’s paired with it. Both songs go with the cast on Transcendental Youth, where people struggle to connect with the people around them and struggle in much greater terms to connect with themselves. During an introduction to this one, John Darnielle once spoke of the entire package of songs as an attempt to grapple with people in this struggle. With this song specifically, Darnielle imagines (or remembers) a person who is fighting the chemicals that make them do things they don’t want to do or can’t understand.

“Call up Rebecca, maybe try to explain // but she hangs up while I’m still talking, I walk out into the rain” is a sad image, but it’s also sad for Rebecca. Characters are rarely named like this and we never hear anything else from Rebecca, so it’s not like a Jenny character, but it is a real person. It’s not “a friend” or “my love” it is Rebecca, a person, someone else out there who maybe wants you to feel better and maybe can’t even identify that as what you need. This one imagines the pain in both directions, where it’s sad that you wander outside and imagine visions and try to make connections, but it’s also sad how that reads to everyone else.