The unreleased demo “Deserters” sets the stage for We Shall All Be Healed and draws a picture of one night in that world.

Track: “Deserters”
Album: Unreleased (released by John Darnielle online as a holiday gift in 2005)

The characters in “Deserters” are the characters that would become We Shall All Be Healed. John Darnielle released the song online in 2005 and said as much, calling it a demo that “sparked the We Shall All Be Healed album” and added that it “has a number of images that are sort of touchstones for me.” It feels like a cousin to “Home Again Garden Grove” to me, another song about battle plans and the insistence of moving forward even among destruction. Here we have similar paranoia and dark hopes for the future and a sense that not just what comes next, but what comes right now is going to be very bad.

The duo hang out and watch a televangelist and spend some time “trying to better ourselves” before “giving up after one or two tries.” They use the knowledge that the cops are done trying to bust up the local element and the presence of a map of the surrounding area as enough of a sign that the “future’s disarmingly bright.” We know that’s probably not the case, but it’s hard to argue with the findings.

“Deserters” has such an eerie vibe, but the most powerful piece of it, to me, is the follow up line to a wild claim that the local high school is full of Japanese gangsters. “Everyone, everyone knows it,” our narrator says, echoing so many people you have probably met in your life who double down in times like these. We’ll hear a lot more about these folks and folks like them in future songs, but we’ll never get a clearer picture of these nights than that, right there.