The world of “Incandescent Ruins” is one you will create yourself, but the fear and the drive are right in the text.

Track: “Incandescent Ruins”
Album: Bleed Out (2022)

John Darnielle described “Incandescent Ruins” as “cheating” on the theme for Bleed Out because it’s more of a science fiction world than an action one. The main character here is escaping somewhere that has androids rather than remembering their youth as a two-bit hood, but the emotions are the same. Darnielle says it highlights his strength as a songwriter because you get these bits and pieces but you don’t get a full explanation. There’s no “the year is 20XX and the robots have taken over” but you don’t need it, because you’ve got enough to fill it in.

This one reminds me of the world of Moon Colony Bloodbath, an underrated piece of the larger Mountain Goats world about something sinister that happens in a future world where people harvest bodies on the Moon for sinister purposes. We don’t get enough time in “Incandescent Ruins” to know what happened, but that just isn’t important here. It’s more fascinating to not know and have to imagine it.

People have listened to the “singles” from Bleed Out five-to-ten times as many times as they have this one on most streaming services and it has virtually no commentary from fans that I can find, but I think this is one of the best on the album and one of the best of the last five years. Darnielle’s signature snarl is part of it for me, but this is just such a masterful set of lyrics. You’ll “see” this story the first time you hear it, but ask yourself why you imagine moss on these tunnels? What are you bringing to it?