The brief “Parisian Enclave” sets the scene for Dark in Here as a hard, cold place that is going to challenge you.

Track: “Parisian Enclave”
Album: Dark in Here (2021)

It’s not the shortest Mountain Goats song or even the shortest “released” Mountain Goats song, but “Parisian Enclave” is notably short. It’s less than 90 seconds long. It has 55,000 views on YouTube and zero comments as of this writing. This is the opener for Dark in Here and we mostly must consider what kind of album it opens.

You don’t get much breathing room in a song this short. John Darnielle really crams the lyrics in, too, fitting “beneath the streets of the city with my brethren in the never-ending shadow” in a half-breath that feels more instrumental than vocal. This one’s over in a flash and none of the images really stick with you other than a sense of a gross world you do not want to linger within. We see spores in lungs and brine and rats. Dark in Here is, unsurprisingly, not a world full of positive imagery. The band would probably challenge my use of “positive” there, as not all rats foretell something negative in a Mountain Goats song, but “Parisian Enclave” seems to want to make absolutely sure you know you’re entering a place that is not welcoming to most folks.