https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5xWFaTdkvo
An intense metaphor consumes “Magpie,” a story about something bad on the horizon.
Track: “Magpie”
Album: The Sunset Tree (2005)
I must thank the people at the Mountain Goats Wiki, who I thank often but should thank even more, for finding this article from Willamette Week. The conceit is that the interview asks questions about every song on The Sunset Tree in haiku form and John Darnielle was asked to respond. The questions find romance in “You or Your Memory” and John Darnielle asks, essentially, how they got that out of that song. In response to a question about if the narrator of “Lion’s Teeth” really pulled the tooth, John Darnielle tells them he learned to drive stick in a parking lot. The responses are genuine, but they are very John Darnielle. They also show how difficult it is to get off of “your” version of a song, which always reminds me of an old friend’s insistence that the cannibalism in “Golden Jackal Song” was literal. Maybe it is!
For “Magpie,” the question asks directly what the meaning of the magpie is, and John Darnielle says “only a traitor // undresses his metaphors // as if they were whores.” This speaks to a few things, but mostly it suggests to me that the point is that you figure it out yourself. Magpies, as far as I’ve ever heard, supposedly like shiny things and are easily distracted into thievery. I doubt that’s true, but it suggests a reference to someone that steals indiscriminately. There are some jumping off points there for The Sunset Tree that make sense to me, but I refer you back to the songwriter on this one.
A Few Things, Maybe Several Things 
Just came across your blog yesterday. Was listening to the Hound Chronicles and I was really struck by the line “I see you’ve resorted to petty theft / You want to take something from me but there’s nothing left”, and was wondering if anyone had written anything about “Standard Bitter Love Song #4”. Turns out at least one person has.
I think this is a great idea for a blog and I wish I had had the idea myself.
I don’t have anything in particular to say about “Magpie”. Magpies are very beautiful and striking birds and they are very common in Europe and Asia. In the barren city of Beijing I don’t think I saw a single bird that wasn’t a magpie. The interpretation of the song that always stuck with me is one from songmeanings.com: “This makes me think about when my mom, sister and I tried to make everything seem O.K. when the social woker came to check up on the family.”
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I didn’t set out to be the “one person” for any of these, but I think that’s how most people find this thing. I’m glad to provide a service!
I think you’re right on Magpie. The basics seem pretty clear, but the deeper you go on The Sunset Tree, the more it gets to be really even darker than it appears on the surface.
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[…] a chance to sit with a song like “Song for Dennis Brown” in a way you do not sit with “Magpie” or “Dance Music.” There’s a lot of room to breathe here, despite the subject […]
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