The surface of “Island Garden Song” is a sad moment, but it asks you to consider what you get out of the experience.

Track: “Island Garden Song”
Album: The Coroner’s Gambit (2000)

John Darnielle once said that “Island Garden Song” is about finding something useful in isolation. Obviously, from where I sit in 2021, this idea means something different now than it did when he wrote it decades ago. We are isolated now. We are less so than we were a few months ago, but we are still very isolated. It feels like this may be permanent, in some ways, and it is difficult to imagine finding the strength to be excited in the ways we let ourselves be excited before.

That feels grim, but “Island Garden Song” penetrates through. The narrator here is not hopeful, necessarily, but they are dedicated. That dedication is important. “My garden will grow so high” is an insistent phrase and one that we are given to assume is positive. However, the narrator follows this with “that I will be completely hidden.” This is productive in ways we recognize and then destructive in surprising ways.

The Mountain Goats have spent decades writing music that a new listener might find sad. Themes of divorce, loneliness, pain, and disconnection run through most of the albums. This is not music for your best moments. But is that really all of it? “Island Garden Song” is a song for a dark day, maybe, but it’s for a day that you absolutely need to meet with the right energy for it to be useful. You may need to hide, but that’s just because you’re charging up.