“02-75” is the address of one lover in a love song that’s only unique for the Mountain Goats if you think it’s all about one guy.

Track: “02-75”
Album: Unreleased

Marc Maron has mentioned many times on his podcast WTF with Marc Maron that one of the lightbulb moments for him as a fan of music was that people are not writing about themselves all the time. It’s one of those things that sounds stupid to say but is still a switch you need flicked in your brain at some point. When I started writing this series I gendered Mountain Goats narrators without thinking about it. He is John Darnielle, ergo these must be either him or similar men. It’s a pretty simplistic view of narrative, but it’s an easy hole to fall in.

That’s what would ordinarily make “02-75” sound like a strange song for John Darnielle to write. It’s an honest, straight-ahead love song. It’s beautiful and has that Darniellian turn of phrase with “real rain, real power” but it is very specifically a love song. It’s not a love song about obsession or masking a secret resentment. It’s a love song he wrote for the woman he would go on to marry and start a family with and that’s just that. It only sounds weird in comparison if you imagine all these people to be the same one. This one is John Darnielle. Those others aren’t.