There’s a notable difference between most Mountain Goats characters and the ones in “Poltergeist,” and it’s a third character.

Track: “Poltergeist”
Album: Unreleased

Very few Mountain Goats narrators are permitted to have children. One of the most famous Goats songs carries the title “No Children” without using those words seemingly as a joke about this very fact and the reasoning behind it. As dark as it ever gets for the two people who are usually the Alpha Couple in a Goats song, it’s more or less contained to just those two. Everyone else gets plenty of warning to leave and typically does.

In “Poltergeist” there is a child. “I can’t stand it when he smiles up at you just because you’re his mother” is as cruel a sentiment as exists. There’s violence all through this one and even though we hope it’s just emotional violence, whew, what a hope, when that’s the best shot you have.

I’d put the snarl John Darnielle delivers “Poltergeist” with up against “Baboon” and the other truly bitter ones. It’s so grim and so rough, but it’s also slanted because you remember these people have responsibilities outside of themselves. We only ever get the narrator’s perspective but here we have an inarguable truth beyond even the typical occlusion of the other side that these two are in the absolute bleakest spot imaginable.