“Aulon Raid” is about triumph that won’t last forever, but it will definitely last for today.

Track: “Aulon Raid”
Album: Songs for Pierre Chuvin (2020)

“Aulon Raid” is the first song from Songs for Pierre Chuvin, a unique album in that John Darnielle wrote it solo and released it at the start of what seemed like dark times. He made it quickly and released it immediately and you feel that immediacy as you listen to it. I write this to you in 2022, two years later with not all that much changed. It still feels immediate.

The whole album reminds you that nothing gold can stay, which makes “Aulon Raid” a perfect opener. Darnielle says he wrote the title for the song and the rest flowed out of him, in just a few days. We hear the narrator express a common emotion for a Mountain Goats narrator as they insist they and their compatriots will “deal with you” over and over. These people are going to win the fight. You should feel great comfort in this fact if you’re with them and you should feel great fear as the opposition.

The thing is, you win the battle, but you lose the war. The title of the album comes from the author of A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, a book Darnielle was reading at the time. It’s right there in the title that the pagans don’t make it, but you know that, too. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t yell proudly, and in fact you should celebrate this day where you sent home the enemy commander on their back. It won’t work forever, but it’s working right now. Right now might just be enough.