“Song for Dennis Brown” isn’t really about Dennis Brown, but it references him to make a point.

Track: “Song for Dennis Brown”
Album: The Sunset Tree (2005) and Come, Come to The Sunset Tree (2005)

The choice to pitch “Song for Dennis Brown” so high has always been an interesting one to me. I don’t think there’s anything to this, but the longest songs on The Sunset Tree are all ones that John Darnielle sings much higher than the others. You get 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 matter of a death from a collapsed lung.

Dennis Brown was a reggae singer who was held in high esteem. Bob Marley loved him. He was a legend, though I’ll admit I’m going on some recent research here and I’m not all that familiar with the genre. It’s easy enough to hear what people love, though. Brown’s voice is incredible. He died of an overdose that collapsed his lung, but you can hear that in the lyrics. There are a lot of Mountain Goats songs about famous people who died tragically and unexpectedly and you might just say this is one more of them. You might say that, though the self-insert asks you to go a little deeper than that. We’re in similar space to “Dilaudid” here or even “This Year,” though we’re asked to draw a slightly different conclusion. “We’ll see just how much it takes” is a threat, read one way, and you realize this isn’t about Dennis Brown as much as it is about what might happen if you lean into your worst impulses.