Dance along with “Blood Capsules” as you wait for the inevitable ending even the narrator sees coming.

Track: “Blood Capsules”
Album: Blood Capsules (2015)

It is a standard Mountain Goats move to leave one of the best songs from the album off of it. John Darnielle has said that in his early years as a songwriter, he loved to leave hidden gems on import EPs and compilations. He described it as a willful insistence to keep the mystery alive and to reward people willing to do the work. Modernity has really killed this idea, but there was a time when you needed to find the Japanese import version or track down an out-of-print album to really find the best of the best, Mountain Goats or otherwise.

“Blood Capsules” is, as John Darnielle nearly always describes it, “a dance number.” It’s an extremely polished and consistent one, with every live performance including a version of the intro from the album where John Darnielle names the players and the location. It would be at home on Beat the Champ, obviously, and I stand by it as one of the absolute best songs from this era. Just try not to “woo” along with the intro after hearing it once.

The story is straightforward. A wrestler is going to rob a bank after exhausting their other options. What makes it interesting is the final verse, after telling us how they got to this moment, they say “I know this isn’t going to work // I guess I’ll see ya when I see ya // I can’t work any other jobs // this was my last and best idea.” What could you say to that character? So many characters across Mountain Goats songs offer us a suggestion of what comes next or just an idea about how they got here, but “Blood Capsules” is unique. We know exactly what happened, exactly what happens next, and exactly how it will go.