“Autoclave” sticks with one powerful metaphor the whole way through and comes out all the better for it.

Track: “Autoclave”
Album: Heretic Pride (2008)

I can’t find any discussion of it, but I’ve always been fascinated by the choice to include a line from the theme from Cheers in a song like “Autoclave.” Here at 400+ entries in this project I think it’s not really necessary that I say I’m willing to give John Darnielle more than a little slack, but I don’t think it’s even required here. If you told me in a vacuum that a song includes “sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name” I would be skeptical. I think if this is a bridge too far for you, that’s fine. For me, it works here, largely because the metaphor of the song is so strong.

An autoclave is designed to heat surgical tools to a temperature that will destroy bacteria, but some specific bacteria actually love the dangerous environment. Darnielle said he saw a comparison there to the kind of people he writes about and it’s definitely true. Right before that line from the Cheers theme, Darnielle pictures a narrator that is locked in a single image of themselves over a throne of skulls with piercing noise in the background. Their heart destroys almost everything that it comes in contact with, thus, “Autoclave.”

The performance here is excellent, as well. Annie Clark of St. Vincent adds some guitar and her signature vocals in the background. The band has done this one a few different ways over the years, but the studio version really benefits from those combined vocals. Clark and Darnielle make very different music, but both of them are distinct and specific and both would agree with a metaphor of a normally hostile situation for love.