The furious “Jaipur” engages with the question of if you can go home again, but also if you really want to or not.

Track: “Jaipur”
Album: The Coroner’s Gambit (2000)

“Jaipur” is the perfect song to open The Coroner’s Gambit. It sets the tone early, as this is a difficult album and the things it forces you to confront are uncomfortable. No disrespect intended to classics like Sweden or Full Force Galesburg, but John Darnielle considers 2000 the year his songwriting changed and when the stories got more complex. This one is about death, it’s right there in the title, but it’s about your relationship to death, as well.

Darnielle says “Jaipur” is about not really being able to go home again. He once introduced the song with a classic line that he recently repurposed for “Rain in Soho” as he said that you cannot cross the same river twice. This refers to the Heraclitus line that the river and the person stepping into it both differ, which we can tell from “Jaipur.” What’s interesting is that this is usually presented in somber tones, with reflection on how the world changes around you as you also change, but here we’re closer to the vibe in “Quito.” This is fury, where you realize you thought you wanted to go home but you’re too angry and everything feels too wrong to call it home.

There are dozens of references here and we don’t have the space to get into all of them. I’ll close by mentioning the delivery here, as this is one of my favorite Darnielle vocal performances from the era. You can hear how mad this person is as they build towards confrontation. They’re mad at everyone else but also themselves and that kind of rage spills out in every direction.