A peculiar title and a curious meaning lie behind some powerful vocals in “Song for Julian Calendar.”

Track: “Song for the Julian Calendar”
Album: Full Force Galesburg (1997)

John Darnielle once said “Song for the Julian Calendar” was “as overtly Christian” as he once was willing to be in a song. I find that such an interesting statement given that the album that preceded Full Force Galesburg had a song on it with a series of Bible verses for a title, but that doesn’t mean that’s an incorrect statement. Just as many of the wrestling songs aren’t really about wrestling, a song’s title isn’t always as direct as it seems. The Julian calendar was the calendar the Romans forced on people before the world switched to the one we have now. Does that title go further than just being an oddity?

If I had to pull meaning out of the title, I would tell you that it refers to the phenomenon of something going away that you would assume could never leave. Picture something that feels truly beyond change to you, like the concept of how we measure temperature or time. Once upon a time, those were not as they are and presumably will remain. I choose to see it as an ode to something gone that seemed like it might never leave.

The song itself has all of these great pockets of language. It’s one person talking to another, as so many of them are, but it’s someone grounding their surprise in words that John Darnielle hits hard unexpectedly. He slams on the last word in “and I felt the shock” but also stretches the end of “wondered what it was I’d bargained for” with some unique flair. There’s a lot to love here, though you may have to dig in to start finding a deeper meaning.